With finals coming up next week, I should be studying. Especially since I have about 50% of my grades for each class remaining. But I’d rather write about the trip I took this past weekend to Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef.

Max and I knew we had to make a trip out to the reef, and we decided the ‘study break’ before finals was the perfect time.  We, and 4 others were supposed to take a 12:35 am bus on Friday night/saturday morning to Cairns. We got a call from greyhound saying the bus was late and to arrive at 1:40 for a 2am departure. Gabby gave us a ride to Max’s friends house (the other travelers) since they live closer to the bus terminal. We were all already really tired, but set out with our backpacks at 1:20 through the Townsville streets to go to the terminal. We had to walk through the club/bar area, and of course got many stares and comments about being tourists with our backpacks. Two am came and went. One of the guys called greyhound to find that it was now a 3am departure. Our friends weren’t able to get on the same dive trip as Max and I, so they were supposed to leave on a boat at 8am that morning. That didn’t happen. We got into Cairns at 8:10 that morning after ‘sleeping’ on the greyhound for 5 hours. Sleeping was really just a lot of head rolling, numb legs, and open mouths. Luckily the others were able to reschedule their dive trip for the following day. The rest of the day we spent walking around like zombies, while also enjoying Cairns. Max and I met another friend, Owen, who took a later greyhound (wise decision) before going to dinner. We were ready for bed at about 5pm but decided to go get a couple of beers with everyone before we parted ways.

Max, Owen, and I got picked up from our hostel at 7:40 the next day to head to the boat. We went to the dive shop for a quick briefing, before we went to the port. It took about 2 hours to get out to the outer reef. It was a really beautiful ride. There was a 20 min period where the boat was rocking considerably back and forth, which caused max and I to get nice and sea sick. We were dropped off at a dive platform before a little boat came to pick us up and take us to the Kangaroo Explorer, our vessel for the next 2 days. We had a tour of the boat and got our cabin assignments before we were briefed for our first dive/snorkel. It turned out there were only 2 other snorkelers, both named Karen; what are the chances! We had a bit of a swim to get to the reef, which of course made me a bit nervy to swim in water where all you can see in front, below, and behind you is blue. When we got to the edge of the reef though,  everything seemed less scary. It seems silly to say ‘oh man there are so many fish on the great barrier reef,’ but there are. There are so many different colors, shapes and sizes of fish, starfish, sea cucumbers, and coral. It’s astounding! I got back on the boat and met up with Max and Owen, all giddy from our first experiences with the reef. The second reef we went to was even better than the first. In addition to the 7 million fish, I saw about 12 sea turtles (got close enough to touch some if I dared), some sort of ray, and 2 white tip reef sharks. It was unreal. Every time we would all get back on the boat, Max, Owen and I would share all the new creatures we saw. Max and Owen went on a night dive, but apparently didn’t see too much, and were mostly freaked out. We got up at 5:45 for a 6am dive/snorkel. It was cool being in the water as the sun came up.

We got back to Cairns that evening, and had a couple of hours before the greyhound took us back to T-ville. We got some dinner ($7 foot-longs, of course they’re more expensive here) While we were sitting on the wall by the beach, a man from the Cairns post came up to us, and said we looked a little chilly. He said he was doing an article on the “winter weather” and wanted to take a picture of us looking cold. He had me wrap up in my nasty, salty, towel, and cuddle up to Max like I was freezing in the 72 degree weather. At this point we hadn’t showered in 4 days, ‘slept’ on a greyhound, and been in the ocean 7 different times. My hair was like a salty helmet. Luckily we don’t look too crusty in the picture. http://www.cairns.com.au/article/2011/05/31/166915_local-news.html

The greyhound was on time (!) and we got back to Cairns around 12:30am, and luckily Gabby was waiting to pick us up. I have pictures to put up, which will have to wait until I get a new computer!

With 3 weeks of classes left, my computer ist kaputt. (Broken) So that’s a treat. I have heaps of photos still to put up, but it may be a while before I get a chance to load anymore pictures. In the meantime, here is a bit of a list of interesting/amusing things I’ve noticed since I’ve been here.

Shoes are optional in most places. Grocery stores, banks, malls, cafes, pretty much anywhere

There’s no “cheddar” cheese here. It’s called “tasty” cheese. You have extra tasty, light tasty, and tasty.

McDonald’s is called Mackers.

Burger King here is Hungry Jacks

This isn’t really that interesting, but there are no black or pinto beans here! I’m getting a bit tired of kidney bean burritos.

Shops in T-ville close at 5pm on weekdays and 1pm on the weekends. When we go down to the beach on Saturday afternoons, all the clothing shops are closed. Even Los Alamos has stores that are open longer.

If you order a pitcher of beer at a bar, you’ll probably get stared at, and then the bartender will say, “oh a jug?”

Everyone says “how you going?” as a form of saying hello

The guys here wear short shorts and tank tops. There’s also a pretty bad hair style here. Like euro-trash meets hic

Beets are on everything. Especially burgers, even at Mackers and Hungry Jacks.

You don’t throw a shrimp on the barbie. It’s a prawn. No shrimp

Squash is called pumpkin (I haven’t seen any of our idea of pumpkins)

There’s no rootbeer, but rather sarsparilla soda. It’s close but not as good

They have baked beans here called “Man beans” lol

Yahoo here is terrifying. I’m used to the Us.Yahoo which has some occasionally national/global news but a lot of rather trivial articles on fashion, food, housing etc. The yahoo here only as 10 stories at a time, and the first three are usually absolutely horrifying: “Man cooks up own finger with vegetables” “Rugby player left head hanging by a nerve” “Man throws daughter off bridge.” Umm, I beg pardon?

Z is pronounced Zed here. H is pronounced haytch.

My roomies never say, “What?” They say “Hey?”

The nicknames for a lot of things here are just “ies” Runnies (running shoes), trackies (sweats) sunnies (sunglasses) stubbies (bottle o’ beer) swimies (swim suit) middies (a middle size o’ beer)

That’s all I can think of right now!

Another Huntsman decided our bathroom is the prime location for laying eggs. It’s fabulous. Once again, Shaun and I were home alone watching tv when he informs me that another hunstman has released it’s spawn in the same place as last time. Now I’ll have the heebeegeebees for days.

Anyway, last weekend was lecture recess. Our plans of spending a couple days on Maggie Island were ruined by me getting a stomach virus. I got about 35 Mozzie (mosquito) bites a few nights before, so I probably got some weird mozzie sickness. So unfortunately the first 2 days of lecture recess were spent in bed. On Wednesday I was able to go to crystal creek with Gabby and Max, which was yet another gorgeous place. It reminds me of hiking to East Fork in the Jemez, only I was on the watch for taipans.

Crystal creek has natural rock slides that we were all a little reluctant to go down at first. After we watched a few “seasoned rock sliders” go down and determine whether their coccyx was still in place, we gave it a go.

Max and I went looking for wallabies on campus today. We immediately spotted a mother and a “teenage” joey. They quickly hopped away, but we weren’t disappointed. We walked away but then almost walked into another mom and joey!! They are too cute, eeeee!

Paluma

Last weekend we went on a field trip with a Rainforest Ecosystem class to the rainforest, imagine that. Paluma is about 60km north of Townsville up in the mountains (2500ft mts). When we arrived at our lodgings, a lodge thing for “catholic environmental education” we set out on a couple of walks. Not before we were briefed about dealing with pythons and leeches. Tips for encountering pythons: just leave them alone, don’t try to catch them. Tips about leeches: oh, you just roll them around so they come off you then flick them away. Unfortunately we didn’t see any pythons, but plenty of leeches. Rolling them around does work though; if they’re too big, salt works. The forest had a lot of damage from the cyclone. Because there are so many vines and such, one huge tree covered in vines takes several trees with it. It looked a real mess in places. The food we got there was very good including cakes and scones served with morning and afternoon tea, sticky date pudding, and vegetarian sausages for the veg freaks. It rained (misted, more like) just about the whole time we were there, but it was still very beautiful and enjoyable!

Pictures from our hike up Castle Hill in Townsville. We hit the trail at 9am, and I’ve never sweat so much on a short hike. There wasn’t full sun, I think I would have passed out if there was, but the visibility was still quite good.

While on my evening run along the river, I was nearly dive bombed by several rainbow lorikeets. Not a usual occurrence in Oregon or NM. Life in the tropics thus far has been an enjoyable challenge. I’ll do my best to give an account of what living in the dry tropics of Northern Queensland has been like. Firstly, the weather. It is HOT. And humid. I am used to the heat for the most part, but I’m used to the dry heat. Here, you sweat brushing your teeth. You go to bed sticky and wake up sticky. What a treat. Any sort of relatively quick movements, i.e. running, biking, reading a book, and you will be sweating like the man on Airplane. While it’s miserably hot and humid, it is still in the last few weeks of the wet season. This brings rainstorms that, if you don’t have to bike to school, are wonderful. It absolutely pours for up to an hr, but is still warm enough that you can sit outside under a covered patio. The rain also cools down the temperature to a very comfortable temp, for us Americans at least. After it had been raining for a couple days, our roommate from Darwin, NT, was wearing a heavy coat. I could not believe it; he said he was so cold. At this point I think it was about 84 degrees instead of 94.

Townsville is located close enough to the equator that the UV is extreme. A UV gauge at the Uni pool, similar to our fire danger boards, shows the level of UV strength for the day. Extreme to you’ll be a walking blister if you go outside. On Saturday, Max and I spent the day at the beach. We found a nice palm tree to sit under, and only got in the water for about 10 minutes. All the while we thought we were very good at applying sunscreen. When we got home, we found we were greatly mistaken. Max somehow had both is stomach and back badly burned, even though he was sitting the whole time. I luckily only got burned on my back. It’s been a fun couple of days since then. I think Max is mostly aloe vera at this point.

Not surprisingly, there are heaps of birds here. I’ve already mentioned some of the birds of Townsville, and I’ve seen and heard several more. I nearly stepped on a black cockatoo today; it was just so focused on eating a little coconut, I get it. You are never at a loss of creatures in this place. Especially insects. They are just everywhere and you have to get used to them. One thing I’m not crazy about getting used to are Huntsman spiders. A couple weeks ago I went in the bathroom to find about 100 baby spiders covering the wall. Max wasn’t home so I called in our Darwinian roommate and said, “umm there are like 100 little spiders in here.” He just glanced at them and said “oh yeah they’re probably just baby huntsman. You’ll be fine, they’ll run away before they get big.” A week or so before this, he was telling us that hunstman get to be about the size of a small plate and “will bite your arm and it’ll swell up real big, but you’ll be fine.” So I just said, “oh, ok, so we’ll just leave them?” Well we left them, and they are all gone. Most likely in our closet. There are always geckos all over outside the house, and often inside. Frogs are out every night, and I feel that when I got home and don’t hear the geckos and frogs barking, it will be very quiet and weird. Biking at night is a bit unnerving. There aren’t loads of street lights, so you can’t see the creatures that are right next to you in the bush, but you can hear them. I imagine some creature w/evil eyes like in a Disney movie racing along side of me waiting to pounce, but I change directions just in time. You can see the huge bats fly out of the tree’s when you walk past them; probably because they wait till you’re only about a foot behind them to fly right in front of your face. These bats are little flitting things, they have wingspans of around 3ft.

All in all it has certainly been an experience living here these last 4 weeks, and I’m sure I’ll learn heaps more about living in the tropics. I just hope it’s not how to soothe a huntsman bite.