...Reef Sharks

Day 7:

GREAT (Barrier Reef) Day! This was what I had been waiting for all trip. A chance to swim among the largest living organism on the planet! Unfortunately, the weather wasn't the best. We woke up to gray skies and a bit of drizzle. But it wasn't a big deal; we boarded our huge Ocean Spirit cruise vessel anyway and got underway.

The water was pretty rough and a lot of people got sea-sick on our two hour ride out to the Coral Sea. Thankfully, I did fine and as soon as we got to our destination I was ready for some snorkling. Even though the sun wasn't out my visibility underwater was unreal! The coral was beautiful, so many different colors: electric blue, vivid organes, red and purples. Just absolutely beautiful!

After about half an hour I was forced to come in (I could have stayed out there all day exploring and swimming among the Nemos and other exotic fishies), but lunch was being served on the boat. And I wouldn't have missed that lunch for the world! Seemed like the crew had gone out while we were snorkling and fished for our lunch...we had a delicious fresh sea food buffet!

Then, after lunch, it was finally time for my scuba diving debut! On the ride out to the reef we had been given a crash course on diving techniques. Since we didn't have our liscense we were permitted to do a short dive down to 3 meters, accompanied by an instructor.

And oh man, the instructor was so attractive! Jacques Cousteau himself, but hotter. Anyway...

The instructors helped us strap into our tanks and then we plunged into the water off the back of the boat. We had been told to make our way to the side of the boat where two metal bars had been attached, one at surface level, the other 3 meters below the surface. While our dive coach, a Japanese woman, guided us over to the first bar she told us in broken English: "When you go down, you see small fishy...they nice fishies, they like you, don't be afraid." No worries, I thought, I came here to see fishies!

Once we were all settled, holding on to the surface level bar, our coach started guiding us down a rope to the second bar below the surface, one by one, to make sure we had the breathing down and were able to adjust our ears to the pressure. I had no problems but a girl in my group was having difficulties with her ears. So while the coach spent some extra time trying to sort her out I was just chillin, holding on to that lower bar, observing my surroundings...not much to see yet, just clear blue water.

Oh except for those 'small, nice fishies'...

Yea, they were not fishies. Mate, those were reef sharks. Baby reef sharks, but sharks all the same. She may have lied about the species, but she hadn't lied about their affection for us: they swam in and out of our legs, in front of our masks... but they were harmless.

Finally, we all got underway and began actually scuba diving! It was amazing! We saw sting ray, lots of exotic fish, stuck our hand in a clam. Everything was so beautiful!

Unfortunately we were only allowed to stay under for a 30 minute dive which passed by way to quickly. But hey, I did it!

After my group got back from diving it was time to head back to the mainland. We had to prepare for that night's event: a group pub crawl. OH BOY.

It was a great night! A party bus, the same one that took us bungy jumping, picked us up and carted us to our various destinations that night. Met some great people, had some great laughs!

...Lagoon Fish

Day 6 (RATED M FOR 'MOTHERS BE ADVISED THE CONTENT OF THIS POST MAY BE MILDLY DISTURBING'):

Day of rest for those who cannot afford sky diving.

This day was scheduled in as a free day and people had the option of just hanging out at our hostel's pool, checking out the Carins Esplanade, or for those lucky kids with $350 extra dollars in their pockets, a day to go skydiving. Alas, money was not burning a hole in my pocket and I had to sit this extreme activity out. But no worries, I had a great day just wandering around Cairns, checking out the markets, and finally meeting some of the hilarious footie players at the pool who had flocked to Cairns for their footie trips.

After a nice relaxing day it was time to meet up with our group at 7 p.m and strap up for another wild ride: a double decker party bus awaited us to take us into the rainforest to our techno bungy party!!

After a ride that was adventurous in itself as one had to duck to avoid those stray rainforest vines dangling into the top deck of our open-roofed bus we arrived at the AJ Hacket Tower in the rainforest. The AJ Hacket Tower is probably the best known site for bungy jumping in Australia. It features a bar with TVs from which you can watch those daring enough to 'have a go' on the sky swing and a 50 meter bungy jump from a platform towering over a lagoon. Our trip included both activites!

My first stop: the sky swing. After all, I did not want this to seem anti-climactic after the bungy jump. The waiting line for the sky swing faced the lagoon and every so often a body would just appear dropped out of the sky and you would hear a faint splash...a few hundreds of a second after which we would finally hear the scream that had been emmitted from that body in bungy transit. OH boy!

Although I had done a sky swing before the ride was still thrilling! So much fun. But my mind was focused on those dropping bodies. Soon that would be me, and even though you might not think it from reading this...I was genuinely excited!
So after I disembarked from the sky swing I began my journey up the tower of doom...

The tower is an open, wooden staircase structure. It takes about 10 minutes to walk up. There are nets around you to catch stray garments... never mind stray people being hurtled off the tower. After all, that is what you have come here to do, to consciously make that ridiculous decision to let yourself fall?

As you walk up, step by step, you see high you are, how little that lagoon seems now. The stair case sways in the wind.

Finally, you are up there. The deck is quite big, with a little fenced off section ecompassing the jumping platform. Heavy metal music is blasting from speakers and guys with huge biceps are working like the cogs and gears of a clock - pull rope...wind up...strap in...tick tock tick tock...

...and before you know it you are the one being wound up, strapped in, attached to the rope. This process only lasts a maximum of 5 minutes, but in your head it seems like an eternity has passed. One body goes over the edge, two bodies go ver the edge, three bodies go over the edge...

then the fourth body, you...or in this case me, I am at the edge. The last things you hear are: "Ready? Toes over the edge, spread your arms, get ready to swan dive, look at the camera, smile, on the count of five, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1!"





This succession of rapid fire instructions washes right over me as I hobble to the edge of the platform, bungy cord binding my ankles together, and peer at the lagoon beneath me, now only a sparkling tiny pond. Then...I dive...

What an experience!!! Honestly the most exhilerating moment of my life. Afterwards, after I have been bouncing up and down like a yoyo for a minute or two, I was lowered into the raft on the lagoon and then delivered safely on solid ground.

I honestly can't remember much about the jump, only the events leading up to the jump. And in fact I would have to say the whole experience of bungy jumping ultimately boils down to the anticipation and anxiety of the pre-jump period. Once you are on that platform, you just do it. Well...maybe not. A few kids could just not do it. We sat in the bar afterwards and watched people still doing the jump on the TVs showing the live feed. It was entertaining for us, but some poor kids just couldn't bring themselves to take the plunge, even when they were all strapped in.
I also got to watch my video. I didn't buy it, but it was awesome that I got to see the moments my mind went blank for. And you know what...I did look genuinely excited!

It was just such an awesome experience and I definitely want to go again sometime. Perhaps even higher next time!

Still more to come guys!

...Three Fish

Day Five:

Well, after our adventures on South Mole Island, our Whitsunday resort, and around the other Whitsunday Islands it was time to mosie on to our next destination: Mission Beach. And indeed, we had but one mission there: extreme white-water rafting on the Tully River. The Tully River is primarily a rafting tourist attraction because it is considered one of the best rafting rivers across Australia and New Zealand. Even though Australia is a sun burnt, draught-stricken country, the Tully is always full of water.

Rapids are rated on a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being the most extreme and dangerous, and in fact, impossible. No one has ever rafted a grade 5 rapid. If someone does in the future, the scale jumps up to 6, with 6 being the most extreme, dangerous, and impossible.

Well if anyone still had any doubts about how extreme our day of rafting was going to be even after learning that our rafting tour was called 'Raging Thunder'...those doubts were eliminated soon enough; turns out, we would be rafting grade 4 rapids all day. Lots of them.

Since pictures are worth 1000 words here are just a few to give you an idea of our day:

Apparently I was pretty excited...

Our guide was Al, the rookie of the rafting guides. He got us into a few scrapes, but we had the best time because of it! I may have fallen in...once...in a grade 4 rapid...

The day was awesome. A solid 5 hours of rafting and a very delicious barbeque along the river during a pit stop at lunch time. Afterwards we were dropped off at the Raging Thunder office which turned into a pub in the afternoon. Here we got to chill with Al and some of the other rafting guides before our departure for our final desitnation of our trip: CAIRNS!!!

From the Tully River we hopped into our bus and set of for Cairns. The bus ride was relatively short (only an hour and a half) but seemed much longer because the bus' air conditioning broke down; 34 degrees celcius and we were sitting on hot, sweaty, leather seats with no air conditioning. It was not pleasant.

But as soon as we pulled up to Gilligan's, our luxury backpacker's resort and home for the final four days of our trip, the uncomfortable bus ride was forgotten...we had again arrived in paradise! After another awesome free meal, this one provided to us at the biggest bar in town, the Woolshed, we partied with some of the locals and had a blast!

One Fish...Two Fish...

Hello all!

As many of you know I have just returned to Sydney from my 10 day 'spring break' adventure in northern Queensland, Australia's tropics. I arrived back in Sydney safe and sound, though my extreme adventure trip provided many occasions when this may have not turned out so...

My trip started in Brisbane, a one-and-a-half hour flight north from Sydney, ten days ago. Sean, Steph, Richie and I (the Marist group here in Sydney) arrived in Brisbane the night before we were to meet up with our Extreme Adventure Tour group. We arrived in Brisbane at 10 p.m in the evening and hit the sacks right away in our hostel for the night. We had a very early meeting time at the Brisbane coach terminal to meet the group the following monrning.

Day One:

7 a.m arrived and we made our way to the coach terminal via the free shuttle bus from our hostel. Unfortunately this 15 minute shuttle bus ride was the only opportunity we had to get a very brief glimpse of Brisbane, a famous Australian city in its own right. I must go back some day; I did not feel too upset about missing out on Brisbane since some even spectacular places awaited us.

When we got to the coach terminal in Brisbane we met our tour group: 60 kids, all pretty much Americans studying abroad at various places throughout Australia! I had not expected our group to be so large, and at first was a little dissapointed. How were we going to see all we had to see in ten days when we would constantly have to wait for 60 people to get their act together each morning. However, to my great surprise and relief, the trip ran incredibly smoothly, and if anything, the larger group added to my amazing experiences.

Our two tour guides for the trip came and met us at the terminal, then led us to our bus for the trip. The guides, after introducing themselves as 'Doggie' and 'Baz', introduced the 61st member of our group for the trip: a blow-up kangaroo that was to accompany us on all our endeavours on the trip. Indeed, we were not to go anywhere or do any of our activities without taking him along. After he had been passed around the bus, signed, drawn on, and christened 'Wangaroo', our trip finally began.

First stop: the Australia Zoo.

It was only an hour drive to the Australia Zoo, home of the Croc Hunter Steve Irwin. As our entire trip ran on a very tight schedule, we had only two hours to walk around and explore Australia's most famous zoo. So we had to prioritize: we made a bee line for the 'Crocosueum', designed and built by Stevo himself to showcase his favorites: the crocs!

Crikey! The show, during which Steve's partners exhibited the crocs and fed them, was very cool. After checking out the crocs, we headed in to the free-range paddock, home of the 'roos and the emus.

All Australian zoos are very open, lots of space, and most zoos here have these 'walkabout' paddocks in which zoo visitors can just walk around with the animals, pet them, pose with them, etc.

Very cool experience. But watch out for that renegade emu! Foreign visitors absolutely love the 'roos and emus, but Australians generally hate them: apparently they are like a plague here, and so Australians try everything possible to thin the population of both animals. And so, they eat them. In fact, Australia is the only country in the world that eats the animals depicted on its coat of arms. Hmm...

We saw many more cool animals but before we knew it, it was time to hop on the bus again and head out to our next and final destination for the day: Hervey Bay.

Hervey Bay is a beautiful coastal town, well-known as the gateway to Fraser Island. This was to be our destination the following day. But first, the Booze Cruise! Our tour had arranged for our group to have a BBQ dinner and open bar extravaganza on a privately chartered cruise boat for the evening, during which we would roam around Hervey Bay's famous waters. The weather unfortunately was a bit chilly but nothing could but a damper on our fun that night at getting to know the other kids on the tour. Awesome night! The cruise was over too soon, but we had to head back to our hostel for the night; another early morning awaited us the next day!

Day Two:

7 a.m. and 60 hung-over kids have already eaten breakfast, put on sun screen, packed their bags and boarded the bus to the Hervey Bay marina. We may not have been smiling or even had our eyes all the way open, but we did it!

At the marina we boarded a ferry that took us to Fraser Island, the largest sand island in the world, and home to the beautiful Lake MacKenzie and the world's only rainforest growing entirely out of sand! To see all this we boarded multiple smaller, 4WD buses that were to take us around the island for the day. Once on the bus, we were informed by our driver and tour guide for the day that seatbelts were not an option: they were mandatory. Now all bus drivers tell you this, but no one really heeds their advice. Well, those who did not buckle up when this diver first told us to did so after about a minute once we got underway: suddenly we found ourself riding a roller-coaster!

There are no paved roads on Fraser Island: you drive through, over and on sand. The ride was unbelievable. One minute we were on a sand beach, crusing along the water's edge at 100km/h, other vehicles passing us in the opposite direction going the same speed, the next minute we were in the heart of a rainforest! I have never seen such diversity in such a small radius. Absolutely unbelievable.

The highlights of Fraser Island day were definitely cruising along the beach highway, checking out the famous shipwreck of the SS. Maheno, going on a guided tour through the Jurassic Park-like rainforest, and finally, chilling for a while on the white sand beach of Lake MacKenzie. What an unbelieavable day!

After our Fraser Island day tour we made our way back to the mainland via Hervey Bay. There we boarded our bus that was to be our beds for the night: we faced our longest bus ride for the trip, a 12 hour overnight bus ride to get to Airlie Beach early the next morning.

The bus ride was of course torturous... (yes, that is a bag of wine, chadeaux de cardboard if you will, or a 'Goon Sack' as we like to call them in OZ...much like Wangaroo the Goon Sacks accompanied us everywhere on this trip)

Day Three:

And so at 6:45 a.m. the next morning we arrived at the famous Airlie Beach! After a quick breakfast on the water front we went on a brief walk along the beach and through the picturesque, backpacker hub of Airlie to get to the docs where our next adventure awaited us: an extreme ocean raft boat ride!!

Our tour had chartered two Ocean Thunder boats for our group to transport us to our new home for the next three days on South Mole Island, one of the world famous Whitsunday Islands.

The boat ride and the scenere were unbelievable and unforgettable!! I have never seen such crystal clear, turquoise water...and never been on such a wild boat ride! Our captain had us jumping wakes, spinning donuts, etc. Along the way we even spotted a whale breaching out of the water. You have to see these things with your own two eyes to believe the awesomeness...

Our boat then briefly stopped at South Mole, where we quickly discarded our 3-day packs we had been advised to prepare for this part of the trip (the Thunder Boats were not big enought to all of us and all our luggage). We then got back on the boat for a wild 40 minute ride to the beach named one of the most beautiful in the world: Whitehaven beach.

Again, words cannot describe the scenery. Think Pirates of the Carribean and you might be close...

(images have not been photoshoped!!!)

Here we chilled for the afternoon, playing beach cricket and rugby. The sand is so white that it never gets hot, so no worries about burning your feet!

Whithaven Beach is out in the middle of nowhere and a listed national heritage site, and so is only accessible and open to very few tourists at a time. As it were, we were one of the only groups on this unbelievable beach.

After this amazing day we headed to the South Mole resort for some pool-side relaxtion, drinks and dinner.

They day may have been over, but the night had only just begun, and we partied hardy at South Mole's only bar (which happened to be the resort bar, as the only thing on the island was the resort!).

Let's just say it was a great night, and my new found friend Christina and I somehow ended up meeting the owner of the island - that's right, the man who owns one of the Whitsunday Islands. This was indeed proving to be one excellent adventure trip...

Day Four:

...and on the fourth day the adventure tour group rested.

After so many adventures in such a short span of time, we all need a little recovery time and so lounged by the pool, walked around the island, and kayaked around on the resort's complimentary ocean kayaks. Another glorious day in paradise!

Day Five:

Our final day on South Mole Island. The early wake-up calls commenced and our group was ready to board our maxi-sailing yacht for a day of sailing the open seas surrounding the Whitsunday Islands. The vessel was a tight squeeze for 60 kids plus the crew, but we made it work without too much discomfort...

The sun was so strong and hot, we all zinced up to keep from frying. We also made frequent stop to get into the water and swim. Once the sailboat stopped and the crew told us to go ahead and get off to go for a swim; we got up from our tanning positions and could not believe our eyes: a sand bar - nay a mini island was chilling all by itself in the middle of the ocean!

So naturally we jumped right in with mask and snorkel (provided to us) to check out what we may find on this Gilligan's Island...

We were not dissapointed! Sea turtles were circling around this small island in packs! And as we made our way back to the sailboat, huge batfish decided they might like some of our leftover lunch being thrown from the boat and soon we were swimming amongst them!

Keep checking back guys...the most adventurous part of the trip is still to come!!!!!