Bottle of red, bottle of white...

Song: "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" by Billy Joel

May 2nd

So I slept for one and a half hours, then woke up, got showered and dressed and ran out the door at 6am. I was supposed to meet the bus in St. Leonard's, and I was early so I bought some chocolate mud pie at 6:30am (I eat dessert for breakfast. Get over it.).

Anyway, from there I found the bus, and essentially passed out on the 1-2 hour drive to the Hunter Valley wine country. My iPod was my best buddy for the long drives. The people on the bus didn't really start talking to each other until we started our first wine tasting.

From Hunter Valley

From

From Hunter Valley

The group was a lot of fun. We had a hen's party (bachelorette party), a guy from California on business, me, a couple from Ireland who had just established residency in Australia, another couple, and a group of three folks who knew each other (I think a couple and a sister/friend). And our tour guide. It was a good group.

We went to about 5 wineries. I drank a lot of wine. You're supposed to dump out what you don't want into a bucket, but the hen's party was not having it, and kept encouraging me to drink all the wine because I paid for it, and it was wasteful, etc. They were hysterical.

We went to wine school to learn about how wine is made and how to properly taste it. Something about washing it around in your mouth. I wasn't really paying attention. 1.5 hours of sleep does that.

From Hunter Valley

We also went to a cheese shop. Definitely a highlight for a cheese addict like myself.

From Hunter Valley

Next door was more wine tasting:

From Hunter Valley

Cute couple and me (I think the bartender took this.)

From Hunter Valley

More wine at the last winery. We were all at our finest.

From Hunter Valley

Gorgeous:

From Hunter Valley

From Hunter Valley

From Hunter Valley

The girls of the hen's party. They were a blast.

From Hunter Valley

Here I saw my first, live kangaroo in the wild. It was awesome.

From Hunter Valley

From Hunter Valley

From Hunter Valley

So cool. My Australian life is pretty complete now.

After our last winery we hit up a chocolate shop, which while a bit of a disappointment, was ok. They had some pretty humorously packaged chocolates:

From Hunter Valley

I got some chocolate caramels, which were not very impressive.

On the way home, we played a celebrity game with the drunk bus full of winos. I found out that I know nothing about Australian pop culture compared to how much Australians know about American pop culture. I'm ok with this.

The bus eventually dropped me at Circular Quay and I grabbed a bus back to Macquarie. I was all pumped to go out again because it was Saturday night, but I slept through my alarm and into the next day. It was probably for the best. :)

In the jungle, there’s lion and monkey and elephant...

Song: "Into the Jungle" by Alphabeat

April 24th

Today was jungle surfing day. We woke up got ready and made our way to the bus to jungle surfing. What is jungle surfing you ask? It's awesome.

Before we left our hostel though, there was this super creepy man carrying a stuffed animal unicorn around and another stuffed animal in his backpack. Terrifying. Becca thought he was a pedophile. She was probably correct.

Anyway, we left there and went to jungle surfing. I loved it. We got harnessed up and swung through the Daintree Rainforest like monkeys. The only thing I was mildly upset about was that I had the SpongeBob Squarepants helmet instead of the cooler ones (Tinkerbell, Stifler's Mom, Smurfette, etc.)

Our guides were from Malta and Australia and were incredibly amusing. The Australian used to be a scuba diving instructor for years before doing this jungle surfing stuff. I found this interesting.

If you look closely you can see the water:

From Cairns

Basket fern:

From Cairns

Rainforest feet:

From Cairns

Me, upside down. Whee!:

From Cairns

I really enjoyed swinging through the rainforest, if you couldn't tell. We did have to leave though, and once we got back, we rushed down to Rainforestation for our meeting with the animals. I took a few pictures on the way.
Cassowary warning signs:

From Cairns

Kangaroo warning signs!

From Cairns

We made it to Rainforestation without hitting any of those things. Once there, we held some koalas. All our Australearn friends from Macquarie did it, and we did too. Someone told me koalas smelled bad, but this one just smelled like eucalyptus. And it grabbed my shirt with its claws. Too cute.


Then we saw the other animals. This was a perfect picture:

From Cairns

So was this:

From Cairns

Yep, that's me feeding a kangaroo. My Australian life is now complete.

After we saw the animals, we did a tour on an army duck boat thing. Um, this:

From Cairns

It was ok. We learned a lot about tropical fruits and saw a few lizards of different varieties.

Once we got back, we bought a variety of tropical fruits and tasted them. Some were much better than others.
The girls picking fruits:

From Cairns

We left there and hurried back to Cairns because we had to hand our rental car back in. We were kind of worried that we had gone over out 2200 km limit, but we were much more worried about cleaning out the car. We took it to fill it up with gas and spent a good 20 minutes getting a car wash, vacuuming the insides, and doing some interior cleaning. We made that thing look spiffy. Bernie had fun with the vacuum.

From Cairns

After cleaning it to our satisfaction, Becca smoothly drove it in to the rental car place, where we were given the ok to head off. We clocked in at exactly 2200 km. Can't even believe that. We caught a taxi back to the hostel and hit up the market that happened right behind where we were staying. I bought an avocado and ate it along with free tomato samples. Delicious. Then we all decided to buy two pineapples and have them cut for us and eat them together. Great decision. They were delicious pineapples.

From Cairns

These things were at the market too. This picture turned out well. I think they're a type of fruit. Rambutan, maybe?

From Cairns

We then got dinner at a sushi place and ran into Erik, from Fraser Island. Our Fraser Island friends kept popping up all over the place. We saw him again that evening at our hostel's bar. We also met up with Barry and Lisa, the awesome couple from Ireland there as well. Barry had been to Cairns before and told us stories of this place called The Woolshed, where people dance on tables. We decided we wanted to go to there. So the four girls and our Irish friends went there.

Barry and Lisa, Ireland's finest representatives:

From Cairns

Dancing on tables. I love my life.

From Cairns

We eventually called it a night. Sort of. It was the night before Anzac Day, which is a major holiday in Australia celebrating the Australia New Zealand Army Corps and a battle they knew they were going to lose but fought together in anyway back a long time ago. Anyway, it's a pretty sacred holiday, so all the bars in Cairns closed at midnight. Sort of. Except the Casino, so we went there...