My Life

Okay so it has been awhile. Not much has happened over the past week that is too exciting. I turned in my first major essay on Monday...well actually I wrote and turned in my first major essay on Sunday/Monday. I did go to the Palmetum Botanical Gardens with Boyd on Monday. They were quite beautiful. Tuesday was "Old School" night at the Consortium in town so that was fun - I dressed up as a 70s (ish) hipster...kind of. Basically I wore a head band and aviators and called my self retro. So yeah, just over here living my life. I will for sure have a lot to write about because I leave tomorrow for Melbourne and then will be in Sydney from next Wednesday to the following Tuesday.

Driving!

I officially drove for the first time in Australia. To those of you in the states, that would be on the left side of the road on the right side of the car. I was completely fine. I didn't even accidentally get into the wrong lane or anything. Impressive. The most intimidating aspects of driving were the roundabouts, which they use here instead of having so many stop lights. Lucky we were driving at a time where traffic wasn't intense so I got a watered down experience but hey, it was an experience nonetheless.

Where Reef meets Rainforest

I spent my long Easter weekend in Cairns.

1. I took the Greyhound bus up on Friday morning, leaving at 7:15am and arriving in Cairns at 1:00pm. I did not take into account that almost everything would be shut down because of Good Friday. The buses were not running and the majority of stores were closed. Way to plan. I also had a flashback to Europe backpacking shenanigans as my hostel was supposed to pick me up in a shuttle at the bus station but the number they gave me to call was conveniently not valid. Thus, I walked in and out of a rainstorm through the tourist trap of Cairns to find my hostel...it only took an hour.

2. Friday was uneventful; just me wandering around. I did walk along the Esplanade, the equivalent of the Strand in Townsville. That was enjoyable. I woke up early on Saturday to catch the shuttle to the dive shop - I was doing a two day live aboard snorkeling trip. We set sail on this little boat shuttle for the two hour ferry ride to the Kangaroo Express. Lucky for me, I did not get sea sick; but, because the ocean was extremely choppy, most everybody else did. Once we got to the Express, we unloaded our stuff and met on the top deck for a briefing. The ship in total was probably 25meters in length, ten meters wide maybe. The lowest floor was where my room (two tiny bunk beds and a tiny closet bathroom) was located, the main deck was where the dining room, kitchen, bar and loading docks were (all very tiny), the second deck was for equipment and the sun deck was where a tiny library and supposedly the sun, although I didn't see it all weekend. Okay, I am rambling.

3. I got to go on a total of six dives. I literally can't put into words how beautiful the GBR is. Absolutely incredible. The colors, the fish, the textures. The most charismatic creatures I saw were both black and white tipped reef sharks, green sea turtles, parrot fish, clown fish, angel fish, and butterfly fish. So good. The ship also had a wonderful feel to it and I got to meet a lot of wonderful people from the UK, Denmark, France, Switzerland and Australia. By far one of my favorite trips I have ever done.

4. We got back to port on Sunday late afternoon. The rest of the night was uneventful because I practically went to bed as soon as it got dark. On Monday I took the skyrail from Cairns to Kuranda, a village located 45 kilometers north in the rainforest. The morning was promising in terms of weather but the day ended up being rainy and all I could really see from the 45 minute gondola life was fog (no worries, I did manage to capture some good pictures). I spent the day doing some jungle walks, trying to avoid all of the tourist traps, and going to Aboriginal art galleries. Overall the day was good but I was really ready to catch the Greyhound bus back to Townsville at 6:45pm. We rolled into the station at half past midnight, Brooke kindly picked me up and I was in bed by 1:30am. Overall for my first true, lone backpacking excursion -suscess.

Orpheus Island

Wow I have been slacking on this blog. My apologies. Anyways here is a brief recap on my wonderful weekend (two weeks ago) at Orpheus Island. We left JCU at 4:30am and drove 2 hours north of Townsville. From here, our class left for the island in three shifts, the ferry taking about 16 people at a time and taking about an hour each trip. It had been raining off and on and this proved to be a weekend trend. The point of our Coral Reef Geomorphology course going to Orpheus was not as a vacation, although, the only other thing on the island is a 5 star resort: $2000 per night. We were doing surveying field work to study sea level change in relation to various reef features. Enough of the science. The important thing to know is we did field work all day Saturday, all day Sunday and had to turn in a group report before we departed the island. Besides getting to meet backslash hang out with some really cool people, the highlights of the weekend were snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). I was able to go out three times (twice off of the research boats). We saw huge giant clam beds and a lot of beautiful coral.The weekend was really awesome. The research station is 100% eco-friendly. They use compostable toilets, all of their water comes from rainfall, showers are limited to three minutes (one per day). The scenery was as equally impressive as the facilities. Mangroves clung to the beaches, dipping into the interior and eventually morphing into rainforest with elevation. The beaches ranged from boulder, to sand, to coral. When it was low tide, wonderful reef flats stood exposed leaving behind shallow pools and exposed marine life. Such a good place to be both for the geeky scientist and the natural explorer.

In general the weekend was a blast. I was really excited though to come back to Pauls and see all of my friends. That and the fact that I was so tired after getting only like 15 hours of sleep in 4 days and I really needed a shower and clean clothes. Clutch.