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Published: July 29th 2009
Tuesday we woke up fairly early to go snorkeling. The boat first took us to White Haven beach on Whitsunday Island. This beach was rated the most beautiful beach in the world. It has the whitest sand, which if you get caught stealing any, it’s a $40,000 fine. Everyone took pictures, splashed around in the bluest water I’ve seen, and laid out on the sand. After about an hour we headed to another island, where we laid anchor in Pitstop Bay. A ten-minute hike led us to a beautiful lookout of heaven. See pictures attached. White sand bars surrounded by the bluest water.
I chose not to pay $60 to scuba since we’d be scuba diving later in the week. The water looked cold, especially when a boy in a wetsuit got out of the since he was too cold in the water. I decided to be cheap and just brave the cold. Where we jumped into the water, it looked like we were going to hit the reef. That scared me, because after watching Planet Earth, I didn’t know what would jump out and bite me if I touched it. The noodles we had kept us afloat enough, though.
Me again..
It was really bright! However I did swallow a good amount of salt water. It was really nice just flipping around, seeing all the fish undisturbed by us.
Tuesday night’s event was karaoke. We came in to sing a song, and the host went on a smoke break, so we left. I forgot to mention that I beat our leader, Matt, at ping-pong.
Wednesday we traveled for eight hours on a bus. It wasn’t that bad. We popped in a few movies, and I had two seats to myself. Once we got settled at our hostel, Gilligan’s, we took a walking tour of Cairns. It’s a really neat town; lots of shops and restaurants, big parkways with giant trees, and lots of good deals.
A bunch of us went to the Woolshed, the rival hostel, for dinner. They had a $10 deal that included entrée , salad or veggies, fries or potatoes, drink and dessert. After dinner we got ready to go out on the town. There’s a bar attached to Gilligan’s called… Gilligan’s. There was a body painting competition worth $500, which one of the girls wanted to participate in. I guess they paint the flag of your country on
Me, Laura, Jackie, Brenna
On the most beautiful beach in the world! your chest and you have to get the most people to cheer for you. Classy, I know. Since it wasn’t until 11, we went to Woolshed first for drinks. They love 90s American music so much! After spending most of my money, we went to check on the competition. It hadn’t started so I just went to bed. Apparently I missed her winning first place.
Thursday we went out to the reef. The Great Barrier Reef is breathtaking. For as far as you can see, there were patches of blue water and brown coral, and where they met it was kind of green. It turns out that I can’t scuba because of my random fainting spells. That was kind of a bummer, but the girls that went said that they focused too much on what they were doing and not on the reef. We all had time to snorkel together, though. We hired wetsuits since it was really windy and choppy. I took a lot of pictures with my underwater camera, and still have to get it developed. Stay tuned for that.
At one point we were swimming across the reef and it looked like there was only
one foot between the reef and us, if that. Since the water was pretty choppy, we were worried we’d touch the reef. Past that, there was a little area of sand that I could stand on. The current was pretty strong though.
Back on the boat, lunch was delicious. They, like the Hamilton Island snorkeling trip, did not get Matt’s memo about me needing gluten free food. However, there were trays of fruit and hot chicken. We were all pooped by the end of the trip, because on the way back the boat was rocking back and forth enough that you couldn’t walk without grabbing onto a railing.
Today was a two-hour bus ride to the Tully River. After having some mid-30s German hit on me and ask for my number, I was ready to raft. My boat’s guide name was Steve. He was really nice- answered all of my questions including “are we going to flip at all?” and “what’s the biggest rapid here?” On the second or third big class 4 rapid , both the guide and Dan who was sitting next to him flew all the way to the front
of the boat. On their way, some unknown body parts did damage to both me and Laura, who was sitting behind me. A picture is attached with the bruise on my arm, but I had another bruise on my upper arm, and my kneecap was bloody and bruised in two places, now scabbed.
The last rapid of the morning was called River Guide’s Revenge. We were typically last all day because our guide had to be the lookout for the other boats. That means that we got to see the other boats have everyone get to the front of the boat and huddle together without paddles. Every boat also flipped over.
With all the action of “get left” and “get down”, I wasn’t sure if I was going to do the session after lunch. After I melted an ice pack on it, though, I got some movement back and took on the afternoon. There were names for the rapids, like the maze, shark fin, staircase, wet and moisty, and little and big rapid. The little and big were the last two of the day. Little rapid was actually quite large, and we ended up getting stuck on a
big rock right before a drop. After that I was scared to see what Big Rapid would be like. Turns out it was barely even a rapid.
If we kept going downstream, we would have met a very hungry crocodile. Welcome to Australia!! Once we changed into dry clothes, we headed back to Raging Thunder's base to buy pictures and drinks. They took pictures at a few different rapids. Even when Steve told us to look up and smile, in every single picture someone is either underwater or scared out of their mind. We ended up buying the group photo, which hopefully I'll post soon.
I went out since we didn't have bungee jumping until 3pm the next day. We went to Gilligans, where there was techno music inside and a live band playing 90s American music outside. While dancing to the live band, we noticed a table of six guys and decided to be social with the locals. Turns out two were from England, two were from Sweden, and I think the other two were from somewhere else in England. They joined us in dancing after talking for a bit, and one of them busted out moves
Rusty Anchor
This was on the beach of the resort like the lawn mower, shopping cart, and other ridiculous dance moves from the 90s. It was fun talking with people that weren't American for a change.
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