My wonderful week!

Here comes a super long post! It is going to include everything I did on my trip last week (in more detail than any of you care to know probably! :P)

So Monday was the beginning of our adventure. I went with my friend Ashton who I met here... she lives in Michigan. We were running a little bit late to the airport so we were a bit panicked already. And by late I mean we left like 15 minutes later than we wanted to but still had plenty of time. We didn't really know where the best spot was to grab a taxi so we just went down to the busiest corner in town and just waited. Ashton pulled out her pro taxi grabbing skills and got us one in just a few minutes! We got to the airport a little bit later than we wanted to but we got through SOOO quick! The airport process is much more relaxed here than it is in the states. They never check any ID, and our bag was a little bit over the limit, but she just put a heavy sticker on it and didn't say anything.

We had hoped to stay with some fellow Americans that we had met through our program introduction. We called them and they didn't return our calls ever so we were flying by the seat of our pants as far as accommodations went. Thankfully when we found a hostel after we arrived, there were vacancies. We also had no plans for the next day and we stumbled upon tours that took people to the Australia Zoo (the zoo owned by the Irwin family). We thought why not!? We have nothing to do tomorrow so we booked that. We didn't do much else the rest of the night, just strolled around town (stumbled upon a mall) and went to bed early.

Tuesday we woke up at the crack of dawn (literally!) and caught the sunrise over the ocean. It really was a beautiful sight! I have never actually been awake to see a sunrise, much less one over the ocean, so it was a wonderful experience for me! We headed on our way to the zoo (it took about 2 hours to get there). The zoo was spectacular! We were there for 6 hours and just barely made it around the whole thing, it is HUGE! The zoo is very passionate about conservation efforts so I really appreciated that. Every time we watched a show that was put on by the keepers there, they made clear that they were all about conservation and sometimes were asking for donations. We saw a lot of wicked (a little lingo for ya... means similar to Awesome) shows about all sorts of different animals. Elephants, birds, tigers, crocs (CROCS RULE! as they always say) etc. and it was very informative and awesome to watch! Bindi's (Steve Irwin's daughter, she turned 11!) birthday was coming up on Friday so they were gearing up for that. They were expecting 10,000 people that day! As we were glancing through the gift shop I stumbled upon the book that Terri (Steve's wife) wrote about Steve and his life and decided to buy it. I already finished it! It was a wonderful book and I recommend it to everyone!

Wednesday was a pretty lame-o day. We woke up pretty early as check out was at 10. We went down and got breakfast by the beach and as we were sitting at a table outside the birds started to get closer. Next thing I knew a sea gull swooped down and literally tried to grab my food out of my hand! I was in shock that it was THAT brave. Needless to say, I hung on to my sandwich and didn't give him any! We boarded a bus around noon and sat on it for the next 8 hours while it took us to Hervey Bay. From there you grab the ferry that takes you over to Fraser Island and we were planning on doing that the next morning. It was a pretty relaxed bus ride, we got into our accomodation and pretty much just went to bed.

Thursday we got picked up bright and early and hopped on the ferry over to Fraser Island. We got picked up in our HUGE 4WD bus (there was a group of about 25 people) by our tour guide Chris. Wow that guy was knowledgable! Holy cow! A couple of things about Fraser... you can't swim in the ocean because of 1. the tiger sharks 2. the undercurrent and rips and 3. they drive cars on the beach and use them for airplane landing strips. There is a patch of beach (75 mile beach) that is used as a highway so people are driving darn fast on it, as a Chris claims loved by international drivers as you can drive on either side! Even though you cannot swin in ocean the island offers many freshwater lakes that you CAN swim in. The whole island is made of sand, so there are no paved roads, you just drive on the sand. It's a bit like riding a rollercoaster as it is incredibly uneven! So anyway, back to what we did Thursday. We walked to Lake Basin (our first freshwater lake stop!) and hung out there for a couple of minutes. They ask that people don't swim in this one. It is so small that all the oils from people affect the reptiles and fish too much. We then walked to Central Station (the middle of the rainforest) and back to the bus. The whole walk totaled about 5 km (which is a little over 3 miles). It was a wonderful walk, most of it being through the rainforest which was neat. We then ventured over to Lake Mackenzie which is the biggest and clearest of the freshwater lakes. It was absolutely gorgeous. It was a brilliant blue color, and it was COLD! I decided that even though it wasn't a very warm day, and a freezing cold lake, that I was going to swim in it anyway. Why not?! That only lasted a couple of minutes because I got bored by myself and it was cold, but hey! I still did it!! :D We didn't do much after that, just ate dinner and went to bed early (as usual haha).

Friday was jammed packed with stuff to do! We started out by checking out the Mojave Shipwreck on the beach, saw the Coloured Sands (big cliff sands in supposedly 78 shades of color), hiked up Indian Head which came with many phenominal views, chilled in the champagne pools (They are this rocky area where when the ocean spills over the rocks and into the pools it is said to look like champagne), walked around Eli Creek (the second biggest creek on the island), and did a lot of driving. I especially enjoyed the driving this day as we got to do a lot of driving down 75 mile beach and we saw 3 dingos today! They are sooo cool. They do look very much like a domestic dog but they actually run wild on the island. There are said to be between 150 and 250 of them running around. They are currently experiencing problems because people feed them and they are slowly becoming more and more reliant on people, as well as more agressive as well. They have been known to pick off small unattended children if they are desperate enough for food. There aren't many other big animals on the island for them to eat so sometimes desperate times call for desperate measures. Ashton and I checked out the sunset over the ocean as we strolled the beach and played with the crabs that call the beach their home. They would run around in groups of hundreds of them and as we grew closer they would burrow down into their holes. They were awesome to watch!

Saturday was another busy day! We started the day at the lookout over Lake Wabby which was a stunning view. The lake is in the middle of a sandblow (a HUGE pile of sand that makes you feel like you are in the middle of the desert). You look around and all you see is sand and then all of a sudden there is this gorgeous green lake and then the rainforest. We walked down to the lake and hung out there for awhile. This lake is much greener as it is nutrient rich and there is a lot of algae in it that sustain the catfish population also present. We walked across the sandblow and out to the beach by the ocean where we met our guide again. We got back on the bus and started driving and saw ANOTHER dingo! It was so exciting! We had a wonderful buffet lunch at the other resort and then headed off to Lake Birrabeen. Unfortunately it was super cold this day so I didn't do any swimming. It was cold to the point where I wore a fleece almost all day! We got back to the resort, hung out for a bit, and boarded the ferry back to Hervey Bay. We stayed in Hervey Bay again for the night.

Sunday was a travel day. Our flight went out of Hervey Bay around 9:45 and we got back into Sydney around noon. I spent the day catching up with life on the computer, going to the market to re-stock my fridge, and grabbing some school supplies as school started Monday. I then had dinner with my friend Claudia and just hung out for the rest of the night. It was a very relaxing day after such a busy, long trip!

I will post pictures as soon as I can (I'll probably start now) so some of this stuff makes more sense. Next time on Val's blog: A lesson in Aussie lingo! Get excited!

Thanks for bearing with me on that super long post!

Val :)