Even Further in the Middle of Nowhere...

Not actually...I'm in New Zealand! Christchurch to be specific. I just realized that I'm ten days behind on my blogging, so you must all be on the edges of your seats. The first two days we were in Cairns it poured rain, but then it was true Cairn weather: hot and steamy. Cairns is part of the area they call Tropical North Queensland, northern Australia is close to the equator and largely tropical. I am not genetically made for the tropics. I sweated my brains out for roughly the whole week. There are new pictures here.

We went up to Cape Tribulation, named back in the day by Captain James Cook, who apparently didn't love it there. It was very beautiful being in the rainforest and Cape Trib is still mostly undeveloped, just a few hotels and a grocery store. It's significant as the one place in the world where two World Heritage sites meet up, the rainforest (the one around Cape Trib is the oldest in the world) and the Great Barrier Reef. Mostly we just walked around, went to a lovely swimming hole, spent time in the hostel pool and took a night walk through the rainforest with a guide. You get to see the nocturnal animals come out, like enormous spiders, saw one snake and a few lizards. And sweated. It was a great trip.

Back in Cairns, we got to hang out again with some of the people we had met on the Fraser Island 4WD tour. It's nice to be in a new place but still get to see some familiar faces, even if they are people we only met recently. There was drinking, there was dancing, there was swimming in the Cairns saltwater lagoon (Cairns has no actual beach). I stopped by the Regional Gallery, obviously. Oh! and I bought a new camera. I was really sad that the screen was broken on my old one so I took the plunge and bought the one I had been looking at at home. (This is really only for Dad, who cares about these things. I got the Canon A590, and of course a proper case to put it in. I'll try not to break this one.) We met a fellow American, Gayle, in Cape Tribulation (there were so many Americans there, it was really strange) and she had the idea to rent a car and do a day tour of the area south of Cairns called the Atherton Tablelands. There are lots of little towns and waterfalls to look at, and a place called Paronella Park where a Spanish emigrant to Australia built a castle for his wife in the 1930's. Its a whole compound really with the main castle, picnic areas, a hydro-electric dam and a lover's lane. Unfortunately I spent a chunk of the day passed out in the car with heat exhaustion.

The day before we left we took a day trip out to the reef to snorkel one more time, it was lovely. It was a great day to go, very sunny so the colors of the water and the fish were so vibrant. I bought a disposable waterproof camera so once I get the photos developed I'll scan them and put them up. Lauren scuba dived (dove?) for the first time and was not a huge fan. That night, we had a Thanksgiving dinner at our hostel that was quite lovely for a makeshift holiday, we made some veggie chilli, mashed potatoes, stuffing and had traditional Australian Tim Tams for desert. Then of course, the next day we flew out....It was a little sad to leave Australia because it's always strange to go to a new place where you don't know anyone, but the adventure continues. And we're going back to Melbourne. So thats it for now, check out the new pics and hoping everyone has a lovely Thanksgiving weekend!

Whitsunday Sailing

Pictures from the Whitsunday Islands here
And see our debut on Aussie television! Click here to see the show we were in the audience for in Sydney...it's not really that interesting, I look SO bored the whole time! Its the video called "Sex and Sin"

So I'm a bit behind...and lazy....so we went on a sailing trip through the Whitsunday Islands a few days ago, and it was amazing. They leave from Airlie Beach, and the trips are another of the must-dos for backpackers. Our boat was called the Condor, a former racing sailboat that apparently has won all the possible sailing races in the world at least once. The first day we sailed out to Hook Island and did our first snorkeling, complete with full suits that keep you warm but also protect you from jellyfish stings. Eek! Then at night we dropped anchor and slept in the boat, the "sleeping quarters" were hilarious. It was like what I imagine it would be like to be in prison at sea! There were "double beds" above benches and above those beds were like mini hammocks another person would sleep in (please see photos). I told Lauren she could always have the bottom bunk in any hostel we stayed in if I could avoid sleeping under that hammock.

Basically all you do on the boat is chill on the deck (I managed not only to not burn but I have a tan! A real one! Well, a Mara tan) and get off to go snorkeling. The snorkeling was amazing, the Whitsunday Islands have fringing reefs off the Great Barrier Reef so there are some pretty amazing things to see. There were so many fish and one really large fish that was biting the coral and I could hear it underwater. They also take you to Whitehaven Beach, which is one of the most photographed places in Australia. This beach is unreal, pure white sand and the water is in like ten different shades of turquoise. We snorkeled again twice including an area called Blue Pearl Bay that is nicknamed "The Aquarium." I think I could snorkel all day. And the best part is that every time they hauled us out of the water, the crew had prepared tea and cookies! I loved being out on the boat all day, it was just so nice and peaceful. Definitely my favorite thing we've done so far.

So now we're in Cairns after another overnight bus, planning on snorkeling some more and getting up to the rain forests of Cape Tribulation. We bought tickets to New Zealand for November the 27th, which is only about a week away! The rough plan is to go to New Zealand then come back into Melbourne and visit Tasmania as well. Also, our friend Manessah who we met in Byron Bay is coming to visit us before we go which is very exciting!

A dingo took my veggie burgers!

Hello again! I know I haven't written in a bit, I apologize. It's hard to get internet sometimes, and I read in the newspaper that Australia has some of the slowest internet for the developed world. So it's not just my imagination!

Anyways, Fraser Island was awesome. I ended up not driving at all cause the "roads" were just dirt ruts and I thought I'd probably end up killing us all if I attempted it? One guy Tobey ended up doing all the driving and even though he's experienced there were some hairy moments; it's really fun though, bouncing up and down and getting stuck in the sand in the beach. You have to wade through water channels on the beach to make sure they're not too deep for the van to get through. We took a ferry with everyone's vans across to the island in the morning. It's interesting to think about how many vehicles are on the island, you can access it any day of the week, yet it's a World Heritage site. It's protected but it still seems pretty bad too let so many people visit, although there are restricted areas for regeneration. When we got there (we were two vans of 8 people and 10 people from the same hostel) we drove to Lake McKenzie, a gorgeous freshwater lake with white sand and the water is in several shades of turqoise. It was really beautiful, and I love lakes so much more than the ocean. We camped that night in a fenced area because of dingoes (wild Australian dogs) and I saw a dingo try to steal a pack of toilet paper from some guy's car! I didn't know dingoes used TP.

The next day we drove all the way up the eastern beaches (and got stuck in the sand), and saw an awesome shipwreck from 1935. My group was really good, as was the second group although at the end of the second day there was a big argument about where to stay and very funny yelling: "God, I'm sick of you wingeing all the time! Wingeing is Australian/British for bitching. That night we all hung out around a fire and actually played Truth or Dare, which I don't think I've done since I was age 16? It was very funny. Some people even went in the ocean a little even though you're not supposed to because it's a breeding ground for SHARKS! I put my feet in but was crapping my pants. We left one of our coolers out overnight--with the lid locked in place--but somehow dingoes managed to get in and took all the leftover meat plus all our veggie burgers and like 5 packs of stirfry mix! They are crafty little bastards.

When we got back to the hostel that night everyone was still hanging out and reminiscing about the trip, it was really nice. We saw a bunch of people from our trip when we got to the Town of 1770 because we had to make an important exchange: Lauren forgot her passport in Hervey Bay and we accidentally took the Swedish girls' entire pack of travel vouchers! I wish I could laugh, but is absolutely only a matter of time before I leave my passport somewhere...you know it's true. 1770 was beautiful, a little farm town that apparently only got electricity in 1998! It's becoming a more popular tourist spot for surfing and diving. We did the scooter tour that some Israelis told us a while was a must, and it was so much fun! I was really scared as a result of a bad burning incident on a motorbike in Thailand, but I got back on and it was so awesome to cruise through beautiful country on my own little scooter. (See above "sexy scooter" pic Lauren made me take). Lauren unfortunately had an accident and has colorful bruises to prove it, so near the end of the ride we rode together on my bike and I managed not to kill us! Yay! Although at one point I was on the totally wrong side of the road. Part of the tour is watching the sunset at the marina which was lovely.

Now we're in Airlie Beach after a 10 hour overnight bus ride, we get on a boat this afternoon at 2 to sail the Whitsunday Islands, should be fun! Lot's of love to all!

i'm back

There's a few more photos from the koala sanctuary on the last page here...
And photos from Fraser Island are here
The trip was pretty awesome, I'll come back and describe it later, the internet here is soooo slow and we have to catch a bus soon. Today we're heading to the Town of 1770. Yes, that's its name. Enjoy pictures!

i might get kicked off the island...or instead i'll kick the two german girls off instead...

Hello! Just wanted to let everyone know that I'll be MIA until Sunday night. I'm going on a camping trip to Fraser Island this weekend. The island is one of the World Heritage sites and basically a place that you can't skip if you want to say you backpacked in Australia. It should be pretty fun, the tour operators group you together with other backpackers and you get a 4WD van and have to buy food. My only concern is that we went with these two bossy German girls to buy food and not only did they lead us all the way out of the way despite there being a supermarket right where we were dropped off, but they kept checking off food from the list because they don't eat it and thus figured we didn't need to buy it. Other things they didn't think were necessities on an uninhabited island: garbage bags and matches? We split up in the store so I don't know what they bought....I might starve. But in all seriousness, I think it's going to be really fun and I'm going to try my hand at driving a 4WD on the other side of the road...oh, and it's manual. This should be funny! Updates and photos to follow!

Ps. Lauren insists that I have to stop joking about how the German girls are dictators in my fake german accent. But it's not like I do it in front of them....and it's FUNNY.

Pps. Fine, what she really objects to is that I joked that they read Mein Kampf to each other at night. Alright! I'll stop. Really, I love the Germans. They're awesome. Just not these two.

Maybe it's been overused....but YES WE DID!

Obama won!

I managed to get a absentee ballot in a few days ago, thanks to overseasvotefoundation.org,
which offers the Federal Write-In Ballot for people who haven't received their absentee ballots in time to vote. I found this out because I was googling for places we could go to find events surrounding coverage of the election, like at a bar or something. I really think there should be more of an effort to make every option known to US citizens so they can vote...regardless though I think the turnout was the greatest in history! It's truly amazing. Lauren and I ended up watching the votes come in from our hostel in Noosa (one girl came by and was like, "Can I change the channel and see if Oprah is on or something?" I think she understood immediately from our faces that we were not changing it!) My faith is renewed that Americans won't keep voting against all logic. I feel like we've redeemed ourselves both nationally and internationally, and that I shouldn't have to feel sheepish anymore whenever I tell fellow travelers that I'm an American. Yay!

It's also really interesting to see how the election was covered here, because the international community truly was invested in this election. Australia is currently undergoing their own financial troubles (as is the rest of the world) and I think the majority is happy with the outcome. Anyways, now to have a drink and celebrate!

Pictures

Pictures from Byron Bay (with a little help from Lauren's pics) here.
My camera still works, but the screen is broken...
We're in Noosa now and there's a long line for computers that close in half an hour! Love!

Oh god, I'm a tourist

So this picture is a bit crap, because it's a picture of a picture...the one I paid 15 dollars for...but the money goes to help koalas! Let's backtrack....Lauren and I left Byron Bay (although I couldn't have stayed for a lot longer, it was so nice) and hopped a bus to Brisbane. This will be the fourth night in Brisbane, we spent two nights on the western side of the city and then we moved into the city center. The Brisbane river meanders right through town like a big squiggly line. It's sad to be in a place where we don't know anyone, although we did make friends with this guy at an Indian place who recently came back from traveling the west coast of the States and Canada. Lauren ran into him today at the state library and we hung out this afternoon, it's pretty cool how that stuff happens.

Anyways, we've been to the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art (obviously), wandered the city and of course the highlight: the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. I swear I didn't know I loved koalas until we got here, but I do! They're just so damn cute. At the sanctuary you can (pay to) hold a koala and feed kangaroos in this huge enclosure. Obviously the kangaroos are used to humans, but it's still exciting. And let's just say we witnessed the potential creation of new kangaroo life. For the dense, we saw kangaroos having sex. I wish I could say I were more mature and didn't giggle, but I did. The koalas were adorable, I pet a few and took lots of pictures. As a side note, it turns out my camera still works, but the screen is completely broken.

We'll be here a few more days and then up to Noosa. We're desperately trying to put together a plan to watch the election results come in--don't forget to vote! By the way, Mom and Dad, I discovered on the internet there's an emergency absentee ballot one can print off if in the event that the original doesn't come soon enough (or you got sunstroke and kept forgetting to tell your parents where to send it). So I'm going to do that. That's all for now, because my internet card is almost done. More to follow, as well as pictures!