The underground drip, it's just like her scuba days

Song: "Stella Was A Diver and She Was Always Down" by Interpol

April 22nd

We made it to Cairns at the end of the last post. Here's where we stayed.
I found it appropriate that the "el" from "Hotel" didn't work.

From Cairns

This morning we had our scuba diving trip. I would just like to say in advance that all I did the night before was stay awake to be on the lookout while Bernie drove; nothing else.

That being said, this entire boat trip I was incredibly seasick.

I've never been an ocean person, but I had a rotten time on our scuba boat. It was terribly choppy water, and I was rocking all sorts of back and forth, and even after taking the seasickness pills, I still felt terrible. However, that did not stop me from scuba diving. At least not the first time.

Scuba diving was actually pretty cool, and once I figured out the breathing it was ok. I got to see Nemo and this giant blue fish that was bigger than Becca. So the first trip, which was about 20 minutes underwater, went well enough. Then I came back onto the boat, felt terrible, barely ate lunch, and then passed out on the top deck of the boat because sleeping was the only thing that made the nausea go away.

I have a few pictures with the underwater camera from dive #1 and my Whitsundays snorkeling, but they're not developed yet. Hopefully soon.

Here's one of Becca and Vilde's pictures:


I can proudly say I did not throw up once, although that might have helped.

The second dive, I got suited up, got in the water, and later was told that I looked blue by several people. Anyway, that didn't stop me from attempting to go diving. About a meter down, I choked on some water, and came up. Our dive instructor Mike asked me if I was ok. I was not ok. I gave up being stubborn and went back on the boat and fell asleep. Luckily, I slept the rest of the trip and didn't have to endure the rocking back and forth when we were anchored, or the infinitely worst rocking back and forth faster while traveling at warp speeds.

When we got back, I wanted to kiss the ground. I restrained myself. Also cool was that we saw Olivia from our Fraser Island trip on our scuba boat. She was really cool, and gave me a much better seasickness pill after my second dive. It really helped so much; I still can't thank her enough. We also met this really cool Irish couple on board who we kept running into in Cairns. Lisa and Barry were a lot of fun, and on the boat, Lisa was really nice to me when I looked blue and like I was going to blow chunks. She didn't have the easiest time with the scuba diving either.

Anyway, finally on land, loving life, we got in the car and head back to Gilligan's. We had a trip meeting with us girls and we plotted out how to best arrange the remaining days of our trip for maximum happiness and fun-having. We drink a little and grab a little food, and I pull a major nerd move and go watch Lost upstairs in the common room. They pushed it back a half hour so I also got to watch Russell Brand's Ponderland with some British girls. Then some Canadian guy (I always find the Canadians) and I watched Lost. I then went to sleep.

Everybody look at me 'cause I'm sailing on a boat!

Song: "I'm On A Boat" by Incredibad (The Lonely Island) feat. T. Pain

April 20th

Woke up on a boat. Crazy talk. I couldn't really sleep when I woke up from the hull of the boat, so I listened to my iPod for a bit.

From Whitsundays Sailing Trip

The other boat from our boat:

From Whitsundays Sailing Trip

We had breakfast and then got off the boat to go look out over Whitehaven Beach, the number three beach in the world.

It was gorgeous. The sand was so white and everything was picturesque.

From Whitsundays Sailing Trip

From Whitsundays Sailing Trip

From Whitsundays Sailing Trip

From Whitsundays Sailing Trip

Anyway, gorgeous. We left the lookout and played on the island itself and it's 99.6% pure silica (quartz) sand due to a volcano nearby. We learned we could use the sand to brush our teeth, which was an interesting experiment. We had to swim in the water with our stinger suits on so we wouldn't get stung by any terrible Australian wildlife.

From Whitsundays Sailing Trip

From Whitsundays Sailing Trip

From Whitsundays Sailing Trip

Unfortunately, we had to leave the beach and get back on the boat. I was content with staying much longer. Our next destination was a spot for snorkeling. I was terrified of this after my kayak snorkeling experience, but I tried again and it was much better this time. I also got cool photos with my underwater camera (I think, I need to develop them). The reefs we looked at here were just amazing. The fish were just as bright and exotic as you would expect. Even the reef, which I knew wasn't going to be as bright as the fake stuff in the Baltimore Aquarium, was still impressive. I was so worried that I might accidentally kick something the first half of the snorkel that I didn't enjoy myself, but toward the end I got a lot better. It was probably my favorite water related part of the trip.

After snorkeling, we went to a sand bar near where we were going to spend the night on the boat. The sand bar disappeared at high tide and we were about two hours away from it disappearing, so I ran to one side of it to take pictures.

From Whitsundays Sailing Trip

From Whitsundays Sailing Trip

I got a funny one of the other girls on the other side when the water was coming up.

From Whitsundays Sailing Trip

Bernie stole my camera for this one:

From Whitsundays Sailing Trip

From Whitsundays Sailing Trip

From Whitsundays Sailing Trip

Ahhhhawfawjefnkwffbaweflkwfet. I love sunsets.

I chose this evening to sleep on the deck of the boat. Greatest idea ever. It was so much less stuffy, and I got to fall asleep with the stars and wake up with the sunrise.
Correction: Ahhhhawfawjefnkwffbaweflkwfet. I love everything about the sky.

We'd truly missed the boat...

Song: "Missed the Boat" by Modest Mouse

February 21st

The main goal of today was to find the group of students from our apartment complex (The Village) who had taken a bus to what we thought was Manly Beach. If you couldn't already tell, they did not go to Manly Beach. But we did!

And when I say "we," I should clarify. Let's start at the beginning; I hear it's a good place to start.

I woke up as early as I had planned and tried to get a hold of Tara because I knew she was part of the group who didn't get on the original beach bus and wanted to meet up with them. Tara had just gotten her phone and was a bit unfamiliar with how it worked, so by the time we were both clear on what was happening, she and the rest of the non-beach bus folk had already gotten onto the bus to Sydney to catch the ferry. Becky missed the bus...

But that didn't stop me of course. :)

I hopped on the next bus to the city and got to the Ferry Wharf by Circular Quay (a little area of Sydney, right by the opera house) and got myself on a ferry. I'm a very resourceful girl.

From Manly Beach Trip

After the ferry landed at Manly Wharf, I walked out of the area and immediately ran into Tara and the gang eating lunch. It was incredibly convenient. Turns out I was only 20 minutes behind. Not too shabby.

I had some great food and when I asked for tap water they gave me this:

From Manly Beach Trip

How cool is that?

It was sunny for a period of time, and then it started sprinkling, and then it started pouring. We played in the little fountains that they had along the boardwalk-like area with all the shops.

From Manly Beach Trip

We went to go look at the beach, but it was just sad and wet.

From Manly Beach Trip

Then we tried to find our friends, the beach bus folks. Thinking back on this makes me laugh. I call Andy and Sean (my roommates, successful beach bus folk) repeatedly to ask where they are, and they give me the name of the establishment and street names, and our group asks all the local vendors nearby for directions to get to this place. We receive many confused stares. Turns out they were at Narrabeen Beach and not Manly. Also turns out that this was advertised on many posters, but everyone thought it was Manly Beach regardless. So it goes.

The group of us who did go to Manly explored around, and when the sun peeked out we swam a bit at West Esplanade Park, an tinier beach next to Manly Cove (not the ocean). Bobby had this amazing ball that bounces on water. I'm still perplexed by the physics of it. For the 40 minutes we spent there, we had a good time. We had to leave earlier than we would have liked because the last ferry on Saturdays leaves at 2:45pm. Fun trip overall.

From Manly Beach Trip

When we got back, several people wanted to go out into town, but I was too tired.

On another note, here's a picture for all you Manly Kebab lovers out there:

From Manly Beach Trip