The Great Barrier Reef!

So Thursday, March 25 I got my lazy ass out of bed at 5AM to get ready for a bus ride to Sydney, then a 3 hour plane ride to Cairns (pronounced cans). Connie and THE BRIAN (what she calls her husband, this gets amazing when she uses it mid conversation) picked us up from Weerona College and then went over to Campus East to pick up the rest of the Gate. Hour and a half later we're in Sydney, and 3 hours later we're in Carins.

Cairns is essentially a tourist town placed right in the middle of the rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef (which isn't really one reef but like 2,000 individual reefs). We stayed at the #3 hostel in the world (Thank you Colgate) which had 8 person rooms and a bar downstairs that had constant happy hour and a party every night of the week. $4.50 for 2 drinks. Amazing. Thursday we got there and we didn't really do much. Me, Kevin, Emily and Abby went to the pool so they could teach me how to swim, and some of it got through. Some of us went to check out the bar that night, and it was a decent place to be. We stayed until midnight to celebrate Emily's birthday and then we all just went back to our rooms.

Next morning, we got up and left at 7AM to take a 2 hour boat ride offshore to one of the tourist areas. at least 70% of the ship had to go outside and throw up into brown bags. When we got there, we were informed that we could only stay on a small portion of the beach because we don't want to disturb the (literally) THOUSANDS of birds in the area, as well as contribute to erosion of the small island and other stuff. We were restricted to a small area too, so we couldn't go off and explore on our own. We put our stinger suits and snorkels on and took a boat from the ship to the beach, and then got in the water. Connie pulled me and Phil aside who both weren't good swimmers and gave us a little mini lesson. I got it down really fast but Phil was having some trouble with his mask, so Connie paired me with Emily instead. For my first time swimming, on the Great Barrier Reef no less, i was pretty damn good.

I saw a ton of coral obviously. Blue spiky ones, boulder, mushroom, cabbage and a whole mess of other types. And the fish were just as amazing. I actually was good enough at swimming with my flippers at that point that I chased many fish down just to get pictures of them. I did end up seeing a giant clam which was amazing. I also found an anemone that had two clownfish (nemo) lurking in them! All these pictures are on facebook. We were supposed to go to two areas but there were storms passing so we just stayed in that one area. Still an amazing time. That night we all were exhausted so we just went to bed really early.

Next morning we left at 7AM again to head off to a rainforest tour. We went about an hour or so north of Cairns and had one dude basically guide us through some walking paths in the rainforest. He also took us to a zoo where some of us got our picture taken with koalas (!!!!!). We also got to pet kangaroos, and they were so adorable. Oh yeah, there were ducks and stuff too. We then went to Cape Tribulation and walked along the beach, looked at some mangroves, and then had lunch at some rainforest restaurant. After that we went on a boat ride to go spot crocodiles and snakes, but we ended up not seeing many crocs because they were all hiding. After that we went back home and then went to a restaurant. That night all the Colgate people (except Emily K and Nate) got together in one group at Gilligan's, and I was super excited for this. It's really hard to organize both dorms to do stuff since we live so far away from each other and the buses stop at 6pm on weekends. After partying we all eventually went back home to sleep for Sunday, travel day.

We got up early and went to the botanical gardens to do one of our assignments. After that we basically had free time to wander about, so i took this time to go buy some Australian souvenirs. After our bus ride to the Cairns airport, plane to Sydney and bus to Wollongong, we were all exhausted. And we had class the next day.

Spring break NEXT WEEK. Well as of this post, after tomorrow I am on break! More news then! Pictures on facebook! Woooo