From Last Night, Will Do Today's Post Tomorrow

Oh goodness, let’s see what has happened since I last updated? A lot, is obviously the answer. I got to drive the boat! It was exciting. Not the big boat, just the little dinghy, but still. I must have not done too terrible a job either, because Jack let me drive it again the next day. While I was driving I saw frigate birds! They are so cool! They weren’t low enough for me to see the red pouch on their necks, but it was still awesome. I also watched a sea eagle hunting (it did not catch any fish while I was watching, but seeing it dive to the water was still really awesome).

I saw two ENORMOUS rays! I may have some decent pictures of them, I haven’t uploaded the pictures off my camera yet. One was bigger than I am, the other was slightly smaller. They were both amazing. I swam with a larger white tip reef shark (this I do not have pictures of), and some more squid (bigger than last time, still adorable). We also saw nudibranchs! I don’t really expect most of you to know what those are, but they are small brightly colored wormy guys with external gills. They’re awesome. I may or may not have pictures of these, too. And a huge blowfish! Not blown up, of course, but still.

Oh! I made a tiny friend! He was a juvenile golden trevally, a kind of pilot fish. Pilot fish are those ones that swim under and around bigger fish and sharks. He was itty bitty and bright yellow with black stripes and he decided I was a good big fish to swim with for a while the other afternoon. I didn’t even notice until someone pointed him out, but he swam under my armpit and in between my legs and under my stomach. Occasionally he would pop up right in front of my face. He was super adorable and I named him Pepito. I wrote and illustrated a children’s story about him in my natural history field notebook, because I’m a nerd.

So now the one really awesome thing that I haven’t swam (swum?) with is a sea turtle. I’ve seen them from the boat but never from up close. I think I might have to wake up super early tomorrow and go down to the beach, I hear they hang out there early in the morning. I think that would be worth it. I also haven’t seen a cuttlefish, which would be sweet but I saw octopi and squid, so I wouldn’t be heartbroken if I left without seeing one. A Nautilus would be awesome too (just to complete the cephalopods) but they are mostly only found much deeper, so I wasn’t really expecting to see one.

In other news: I now have a way to get to Bunbury and a place to stay. This makes me feel a whole lot better, even though I still have a giant list of stuff I have to do within the next week. I’m still a little excited but I’ve mostly moved into the anxious and sad stage. I left all my friends and family at home to come alone to Cairns and then I made eleven amazing friends! And now I have to leave them behind and go be really really alone all the way across the continent! I hope I will make friends there, too.

Okay, well I should go start work on the abovementioned giant list of stuff I have to do. I hope you are all having a wonderful time and I miss you a bunch!

In an Octopus' Garden, in the Shade

TODAY WAS SO COOL! Yesterday the octopus I saw was just hiding in a hole, but today I was just swimming and all of a sudden this dart of maroon shot underneath me. It was an octopus, propelling itself backwards! It proceeded to climb up the piece of coral right under me, changing color and texture faster than I could have imagined. I mean, I've seen a zillion videos of this happening, but watching it in real life is SO MUCH more spectacular! It scuttled across the top of this massive coral right beneath me and then shoved it's body into an impossibly small hole and sat there changing colors. I watched it for a really really long time and probably could have stayed there all day.

We also saw another stingray, this one was in much shallower water so I got a much better look at it.

Yesterday I followed two different sharks around. First a white-tipped, then a black-tipped. The white-tipped was much bigger and faster, I got much closer to the black-tipped. At one point while my snorkel buddy Katherine and I were following the smaller one, it sort of turned around and looked at us and then started swimming straight towards us. It was only a little longer than my arm, but a shark swimming towards you is still a shark swimming towards you. Katherine grabbed my arm and sort of hid behind me (good to know where your snorkel buddy's loyalties lie). The shark came within about ten feet of us and then sort of swam around us and away again.

Did I mention my life is amazing? Cause my life is amazing. And of course, I didn't have my camera for any of this.

I also forgot to mention that one of the adult professory type peoples brought his two daughters, Emmagen and Eliana with him here. They are 7 and 3 I think, and freakishly adorable. Children are way more adorable when they have tiny accents. Note to self: if I ever decide to reproduce, I should do it in a foreign country so that my children will acquire adorable accents.

Okay, lecture is happening now so I should probably stop typing. Have a lovely day!

In Which - Let's Be Honest - I Basically Brag A Lot

So after a very long night of packing (trying to shove everything I needed for ten days into one backpack that would weigh less than 25 lbs), we woke up bright and early and took taxis to a tiny part of the airport called “Reef Watch”. I’d never flown on a tiny plane before, and these were some tiny planes!

Only six people fit, including the pilot:

I was feeling nauseous from the time I woke up, and they took my backpack before I could take my motion sickness pills, so it was not a huge surprise when I got sick on the plane. But that aside, it was a pretty cool flight. It was cloudy and windy so there were a lot of big bumps and stomach-flipping drops, like a roller coaster but way higher up. It was weird because those didn’t make me feel ill, just the general flying. But the best part was the views:

We went into the clouds for a bit and when we came out it was to this:

We all agreed we could practically hear David Attenborough’s voice saying “The Great Barrier Reef…” like in Planet Earth. Then we saw our island home for the next ten days:

We touched down at the beautiful Lizard Island Airport:

And drove over to the research station side of the island. We’ve got a nice beach house with a huge porch and a huge kitchen, etc. etc. My favorite part was that we kicked off our shoes before we climbed up on the porch and I haven’t put them back on yet. All the paths around here are made of soft sand and in front of every entrance to every building is a tub of water to step in which controls the sand in the research facilities and the houses. So far every day (and all the days after this) the schedule goes something like this:

7:00am Breakfast

8:00am Snorkeling – this is the time when we do our individual projects (which we’re still working on designing now) It usually goes until something like 10:30 or 11 (including boat ride to and from the reef)

11:30am Lecture

12:30pm Lunch (although I have missed this the past two days due to internetting)

2:30pm More snorkeling, to see whatever we talked about during lecture, usually until 4:30 or 5.

Then dinner and working on whatever we need to work on. It’s basically amazing. Witness:

Those are just from yesterday! I haven’t uploaded the pictures from today yet, and I didn’t take my camera for part of it. I bought a cheap underwater digital camera, and I love it! The picture quality isn’t that great, and a lot of them are sort of blurry, but it’s much better than the crappy film one I had before.

I haven’t managed to see any cephalopods yet (some other people in my group saw an octopus and a cuttlefish/squid thing. Jealous!) and I also missed the sea turtle people saw, but I have seen: the two rays pictured (the one that looks like a shark is actually a ray-thing…sort of a link between them, they are closely related), plus one today, tons and tons of clams, starfish, brittle stars, plus, you know, coral x a zillion. Oh and a black-tipped reef shark!

Today on the second snorkel trip my partner (Katherine) and I were making up all kinds of ridiculous hand signals so we can talk underwater, mostly for fun. Then, before we started snorkeling we were taking underwater pictures of each other making the hand signals. I had just done the one for shark (I will post this picture when I get it from her) and I looked down, and there one was! It was so cool! No pictures, though.

Darren, the coral reef teacher guy, has been encouraging us to touch things on the reef, which is still a really really foreign concept to me. It’s been pretty much drilled into my head that you never touch things on the reef, but he says you can’t learn if you can’t touch, so I’ve been doing it a little bit, but it still makes me feel awkward – like either I’m going to kill the coral or something is going to kill me. Clams are fun to play with, though, especially the giant ones.

That evening we went for a walk on the beach at sunset:

The weather hasn’t been great, it’s been a bit cloudy, sometimes rainy, and a lot windy. Not great for snorkeling, although it’s pretty cool having the front of your body submersed in water and rain on your back.

Currently we are watching Finding Nemo in the classroom. In the middle of the movie one of the researchers staying here came in and sat in the back, which made me happy. This movie is much more entertaining when we see those things every day, and when I’ve been to Sydney!

In other news: I am going to Western Australia to study dolphins for the month of April! It was finalized and I booked the plane ticket today. I leave in ten days. I am terrified and also really excited. Anyway, the movie is over and everyone is booking it out of here so I have to sign off and I’ll put this online tomorrow. I miss all of you! Especially you, parents, especially after watching that movie! Love you!

P.S. Since I wrote this last night (ie during the snorkel this morning – when the weather was basically perfect) what I have seen has increased dramatically. We saw:

A moray eel:

An octopus!!!! (my life is basically complete now):

And we saw a cleaning station (little cleaning wrasses cleaning huge sweetlips, even inside their mouths and gills), an algal farm (some fish actually farm algae and will tend to it and chase others away from their farm), another ray, and we chased about six squid around the water. I didn’t get pictures of the squid but I got a really really short video. I’ll see if I can upload it. Today was the best day. I saw cephalopods! I am the happiest Karis.

Sorry, I’m done bragging now. Love you!

In Which I Encounter Sir Hiss and Severus Snake, Climb Through a Mystical Bamboo Forest, and Hike Up a Mountain

So, as soon as I turned off my computer after writing (not posting) the last entry, we discovered the snake that we thought was in the bathroom under my bed. Rachel, who is terrified of snakes, freaked out. I jumped away and just watched helplessly as it slithered into my pile of clothes and disappeared among my backpacks and suitcase.

While this was happening, my friend Julie wandered sleepily out of her room and asked what was up. We explained and she looked at the snake.

“Okay, well I’m going to the bathroom, so make sure it doesn’t come in there, okay?” she said, and left. When she came back out Rachel had calmed down a little and we were trying to decide what to do. Julie looked from us to the snake and said, “Well, good luck.” And went back to bed. Sleepy people are not super helpful, it turns out.

So Rachel and I just sat there for a really long time, trying to see where the snake was and weighing whether or not we should go wake up the adults in their cabin (it was now after 1am) and laughing at the ridiculousness of the entire situation. Eventually we grabbed flashlights and huddled together to walk through the pitch black to the main house, jumping at every noise from the possums and flying foxes feeding in the trees.

The adults didn’t wake up. We knocked and knocked and knocked, but they did not come to the door. We stood there laughing helplessly for about ten minutes and then went back to our lodge. Rachel refused to go in until I’d checked it out so I kicked off my shoes and tiptoed in while she watched from the door. About halfway across the kitchen, all senses poised for any sign of the snake, I felt something on my neck. I swung around and freaked out, my stockinged feet slid on the uncarpeted floor, and I slipped and slammed my hip and knee (on the same leg, I have no idea how that happened) on the cement. The moth that had attacked me fluttered away. Rachel had disappeared from the doorway, she was laughing too hard to stand.

It turned out that the snake was behind the little bookshelf next to Rachel’s bed. We sat there and stared at it for a long time, trying to decide what to do. Finally, we decided to wake up Amanda (I have no idea why this thought occurred, to us, or what we thought she would do about it). Then the three of us together decided that Rachel and I should gather up our sleeping bags and go sleep on the extra two beds in the boys’ lodge. So we grabbed our sleeping bags and didn’t bother to change into pajamas or anything and crept across the grass once more to get to the other lodge. We went into the extra room where we knew there were two unused beds. We walked in to find bare spring frames, no mattresses in sight. So we woke up Cameron and warned him we would be sleeping on the rug in the middle of their room. In the night Nick almost stepped on me and I kept waking up thinking the rustle of someone else moving in their sleep was a snake slithering into my sleeping bag.

In the morning we recounted the entire night to the boys, and it turned out that they were sleeping on the extra mattresses. I had a giant bruise on my hip (it’s still there) and when we showed the picture of the snake to Jack he told us that it wasn’t the snake we thought, it was one that looked almost identical but was not considered dangerous.

I was in a bad mood the whole next day at the time, but now I think it’s hilarious.

The next day we went on another walk and saw an enormous Amythistine Python lying on a log right next to the path. It lay there for a long time while we watched it and learned about pythons. We also saw two huge Kauri pine trees which are almost as big as Red Woods and extremely ancient. I forgot my camera, or I would show you pictures. Then we went to McDonald’s in the nearest town to use their free internet for the rest of the afternoon, mostly to work out ISP stuff but also to talk to people at home, etc.

One of these days (they all run together, I forget which one) we went on another rainforest hike. It was beautiful, like all the others, and long, but we were promised a swim at the end of it. We were walking along on sort of a shelf above a deep ravine with a river running through it. It was beautiful but we didn’t think it was that special until we got to the end. At the end was a deep pool surrounded by sheer cliffs maybe a hundred meters high and a thin but powerful waterfall straight into the pool. It was one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. We swam right up to the waterfall but it was too big for us to go underneath. The water was cool and clear and deep and the whole thing was just spectacular. I left my camera in the bus this day, because it was raining at the beginning of the walk and I am overprotective of that camera (because it is fantastic!) but it cleared up and I was sad I couldn’t take pictures of all the beauty. Other people got some, though, so possibly I will steal theirs and put them up here at some point.

It was really nice all cooking as a group, too. We took turns in groups, cooking and cleaning, and Merrel, the person in charge of our food (who is awesome) would buy us whatever we wanted to make for dinner. The first night was almost catastrophic – it was the first time a lot of us had used a gas stove and someone left a burner on and unlit in front of the one we were using. All of us were just standing around talking when all of a sudden a huge fireball came off of the stove right at us with a “whomp!” noise. It was heart-stopping for a moment and then hilarious (because nothing caught on fire and no one was hurt). I came up with the idea of breakfast for dinner and we made scrambled eggs and pancakes for everyone. It was delicious, if I do say so myself.

We did a group project, too, in the rainforest. Julie, Erika, and I looked at the distribution of Lantana (a very pretty but spiney weed) around the lodge in different areas. This meant walking along the road, through the thickly revegetated area, and – my favorite – into the rainforest and counting plants and measuring percentage of sunlight. For the most part it wasn’t terribly interesting except when we were standing in the rainforest at one point and a huge flock – maybe fifty or a hundred – of sulfur-crested cockatoos flew over head squawking. Julie and I squawked back and they turned around and responded! We stood there for maybe ten minutes calling back and forth with the birds as they circled us overhead, occasionally landing in the trees above us! They never came below the canopy, but it was one of the most amazing things. We even moved and they followed us! We spoke cockatoo! Made my life.

Also during this project we discovered that the property next to ours had an amazing mystical-looking bamboo forest. It was silent and dark in there and I felt like it was the sort of place I would find kami or mushi and possibly develop supernatural powers. I don’t know if the pictures do it justice, but here it is:

About two days after the first snake incident, Erin was going to take a nap and came running back into the room freaking out. She had gone to lay down in her bed and noticed not one, but two snakes writhing in and around her pile of stuff one of them she thought was the snake from our late-night adventure (whom I dubbed “Sir Hiss” after the snake in Disney’s Robin Hood) and the other she was sure was a small-eyed snake (the poisonous one we thought the first one had been). Like good biology students, we all ran into the room with the two snakes (but most of us stood or sat on the beds, feet out of the way of fangs). We managed to get one snake out the door and safely into the night, but it was Sir Hiss. The second snake looked like this:

You can’t tell from that picture, I have another picture that shows it better but it’s blurrier (I wasn’t using flash so as not to anger the venomous snake), but the only real difference in the appearances of these two snakes is that the non-dangerous one has a clearly defined head, whereas this one does not. Once I got a picture of it, Rachel and I once again trekked up to the main house to get the adults. This time it was much earlier and they were still awake and about. We told them what had happened, showed them the picture, and they confirmed it was a small-eyed. They grabbed a broom and headed down.

For the next ten minutes most of us piled onto beds and watched and took pictures as a couple of people helped John try to get the snake out from behind the wardrobe, where it had gone since we left. With the aid of the broom and a couple of unfolded coat hangers, eventually John got the new snake (whom we named Severus Snake) out and demonstrated exactly what you are never supposed to do with a venomous snake:

He ran with it a ways away from the house and tossed it – unharmed, I’m sure – into the grass away from where we were. Somehow he managed to escape unscathed, but Julie was not so lucky. While we were all running after him trying to take pictures and see the snake, somehow Julie managed to step on some sort of crazy nocturnal wasp which stung her toe. I swear, it was the House of Near Death or something like that! I feel like I was in a very very tamed, perhaps G-rated version of Final Destination!

Luckily, that was the second to last night. The next day we were supposed to wake up at four in the morning or something ridiculous to hike up Mount Bartle-Frere, Queensland’s highest mountain. Unfortunately, there was a cyclone warning and it was pouring rain (it had been pouring for a few days – to tell the truth I was sort of relieved. I know I freaked out about all the rain but so far the weather has been GORGEOUS and I’ve been a little worried. Isn’t it supposed to rain in the rainy season in the rainforest?) so instead we woke up at the much more reasonable hour of 8:00 and drove an hour away over the tops of the mountains to an area covered by the rainshadow effect. There it was dry and sunny. So instead of hiking up a path to the tallest peak, we went on a bush walk up The Bluff (it was literally called that on the map, Australians are not super-creative). It was much lower in elevation but there was no path, so we practiced our orienteering and navigational skills (with a GPS for back up). It is astonishing to me that we can drive for one hour and go from this:

To this:

I am in a spectacular part of the world!

I think it would have been awesome to get to claim to have climbed the highest peak in Queensland, but I think in practice this was probably more fun. I wasn’t very good at using the topographical map or the compass but I had fun trying! We all took turns and eventually we found the top:

It wasn’t very spectacular, you couldn’t really see anything. Afterwards we went to eat lunch on the top of the cliff face, which was much more impressive-looking:

I may not have been very good at navigating with the map, but on the way back we tried to find our way back based on the directions we went on the way back and I was much much better at that. I managed to find the exact rocks we had stopped at on the first ridge! I was very proud. (a slight aside: I used to think that I had terrible direction sense, mostly because I compared myself to my mother who I am pretty positive has supernatural directional abilities. It turns out that since I’ve been here I am the only one who can reliably navigate my way around the small area of Cairns we generally hang out in! I am very proud of this, and being able to navigate through the bush with not even a path made me even prouder!)

Also I was the only one who found wildlife while I was leading the group. I think maybe it is my calling to be a bush ranger (not like Ned Kelly, like a forest ranger but in the bush). I found a goanna (monitor lizard) scampering up a tree:

So obviously we made it. The next day we came back to Cairns. The last few days of the trip and since we’ve been back my throat has been really hurting. At first I thought it was allergies to something on the Tablelands (that happened to Julie last time we were up there) but it’s been getting worse. Today I had no voice when I woke up and it’s been going in and out all day. I don’t feel sick in any other way, though, and I’m getting really frustrated. People have been really sweet, though. The other night Amanda and Julie gave me tea and Amanda has been giving me her Sudafed (one thing I forgot in my First Aid kit). I’m worried it won’t go away by the time I go to Lizard Island. I hope it’s nothing too bad.

I’ve been having fun anyway, though. Last night we all got really excited about having our stinger suits for Lizard Island so we all went down to the hostel bar dressed in them and had a stinger suit party. We even got Karl the bartender to wear one! It was a lot of fun.

I haven’t really talked a lot in here about the people on the trip with me. I don’t really feel like going through and describing them all individually, and I think you might think that was boring. Suffice it to say that this trip I felt was where we really all came together as a group, or most of us, anyway – especially the girls. Before I came I was intensely worried that I wouldn’t be close to anyone on the program and we wouldn’t get along and everything would be horrible, but I’ve been ridiculously lucky. There are only 2-3 people who ever really bother me, and they’re all tolerable, and really I feel close to nine, maybe ten of the people out of twelve. I really really like everyone – a couple of people get to be a bit much at times but overall, this group is fantastic and I’m really sad that I’m going to have to leave them at the end of March to go on ISP alone, and then we won’t have much time together at the end at all. I really love most of these people and I sincerely hope that sometime in the next couple of years I can do a roadtrip around the US and visit all of them. And/or that we can have a reunion, like we were talking about. I am insanely lucky, you guys. My life is amazing.

The day after tomorrow we are leaving to spend ten days on Lizard Island. It’s an island in the Great Barrier Reef and the reefs there are supposed to be so amazing they put the other reefs we went to (one of the greatest experiences of my life) to shame. Let me explain to you how amazing this place is: besides the research station, there is only one other thing on the island. It is an exclusive resort which costs at the very least $1200 per night. That is how much people want to snorkel where I’m going to be snorkeling for the next ten days.

I’m slightly worried for this cyclone, though. There is an ENORMOUS cyclone hovering off the coast right now, it’s a category five and is heading for land. Right now they are saying it will go to the south of us, and apparently if it does it will mean beautiful weather on the island, but I am still a little worried. Partly because I’ve never been this close to this big of a storm/natural disaster and partly because even if it does go south of us I know someone studying in Brisbane right now, and it might hit closer to there.

But first things first. I also thought until today that we were leaving on Friday. Apparently, we are leaving on Thursday instead. This gives me one less day to do the enormous pile of things I have to do! So if you will excuse me, I think I have to go check my laundry downstairs and see if my potential advisor for ISP has emailed me back yet (I will inform you what this new project is if I get it, I don’t want to jinx it by talking about it too much too soon, like I did with the turtles). Wish me luck!

I’ll have limited internet access on Lizard, but I’ll try to update when I can. In the meantime, I miss and love all of you. I hope you have a fantastic St. Patrick’s Day (it’s tomorrow here, after all) and all the other days after that, too.

Belated Blog Post: The Beginning of the Rainforest (Beware, spider and snake pictures follow)

Here is the entry I wrote on the 8th but haven't been able to update since. I will fill you in on the rest later (limited internet + uploading pictures = slow to update blog):

So I’m in the rainforest! It didn’t start out so well. I underestimated the time/space it would take for me to pack up all my stuff and so I was late to the bus and ended up taking way more than I had planned. I finally got to the bus and our new teacher John informed me that I was giving my flying fox presentation in five minutes (we all had to research and memorize information about one flora and one fauna to be given on demand without notes anytime over this trip). Stressful. But I love flying foxes and was nerdily happy to learn things about them and teach other people. Plus it was nice to not have to worry about it.

I love long bus trips. I listened to my music (I’ve become re-obsessed with Great Big Sea lately, it’s really great to listen to while watching the countryside whiz past). This part of Australia really looks nothing like what you would think of when you think of Australia. Not just the rainforest, but the huge areas cleared for agriculture. It’s most striking on the Atherton Tablelands (where we are now). Observe:

But I am getting ahead of myself. So far there has been a lot of walking/hiking. We are learning about the different types of rainforest which is interesting. We have been unlucky with animals, so far, though. We’ve barely seen any. That’s the weirdest part about the rainforest here, I think. It took me a while to realize that they’re just too quiet! There need to be monkeys. Not that I’ve ever been to a rainforest before, but just from everything I’ve ever seen it seems weird to have a rainforest without monkeys. Someday I will go to the Amazon and Indonesia and Africa. That is something that is also happening right now, all I can think about now is all the adventures I want to have. I want to see all of Australia, I want to roadtrip around the US, I want to go to Canada, I want to go to every continent. I want to keep travelling.

Anyway, we stayed the first two nights in a hostel called The Tree House which was really cool. It was all open and had porches and hammocks and a gorgeous view stretching out to rainforest.

It also had a resident dog and cat. The cat was big and the calmest cat I have ever met. The second night I was petting him and then we snuggled and he just sat there, even when I ended up falling asleep with my head on his back. Adorable. Also! This hostel (like all the others) had a selection of books randomly left behind over the years. One of them was In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson (one of my favorite books ever and a big part of the reason I became obsessed with Australia and wanted to come here) in French! Super exciting! I even managed to read the first paragraph through a combination of rudimentary French skills and memorization of the book.

Only two problems with the place: 1) when everything is open and some people (from our group and the Swedish girls and Dutch guys staying there) decided to stay up way later than everyone else and scream and splash in the pool and play really loud music the rest of us can’t really sleep. 2) when everything is open, bugs come in. Lots and lots and lots of bugs. I was okay with this in general, but then I lay my head down on my pillow, looked up and saw this:

And completely freaked out. I have been seeing enormous spiders literally since day one in this country, but it that is by far the biggest and the scariest and the hairiest. I woke up every hour or so during the night, freaking out that it had repelled down and was on my feet (I switched where my head was, for obvious reasons). Terrifying. In the morning it was gone and we did not see it again, though, so everything is okay. The only good thing about all the bugs inside is that you also get lots of geckos inside. They are adorable and make the craziest noises! Did you know geckos made noises? I didn’t! Also, the Dutch guys called them “checkos” with the hacking noise in the back of the throat like “Chanukah”.

The next morning we hiked up a mountain. It was only an hour or two, and at times it was annoying but overall I think I like hiking. Which is good because we do it a lot and a lot of the other people complain about it, but I am realizing a lot lately how little I have to complain about and appreciating everything more, which is wonderful. Anyway, the view from the top looked like this:

We also saw some skydivers coming down from a plane!

I want to do that! We are talking about all going either skydiving or bungee jumping or something after the program. It depends on how much it costs and everything (because I am going to Uluru afterwards! I am SO excited. It’s not been booked or anything yet, but I HAVE to go. And it’s not terribly expensive but I don’t know how expensive everything else will be yet so I need to make sure I have enough) but I think that would be amazing. I am just crossing things off my life list left and right here!

That night we went to Mission Beach. All of the beaches here are so amazingly beautiful it almost doesn’t matter that you can only swim in the small part that has been blocked off by the stinger net. The sand is softer and whiter than anywhere else I’ve ever been, there are palm trees and mountainous islands covered with rainforest on the horizon, and it’s just beautiful. We were there at sunset, too, which just made it so much more incredible. The ocean here is warm, too, like bathwater, and much saltier than the Atlantic, at least where I’ve swam. I don’t have any pictures of it, but it was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.

One thing I have neglected to mention to this point is how many butterflies I’ve been seeing here. They are everywhere! They make me smile and think of Gram every time I see one, and I’ve had several flutter around me and land on me and stuff like that. It makes me really happy. They are so beautiful. This is one of the few I managed to get a good picture of. It’s called a Cairns Birdwing:

That was taken just before the Mamu canopy walk. It is what it sounds like; we walked along a boardwalk suspended in the canopy. It wasn’t as amazing as I was hoping because I was expecting the canopy to be a lot more closed around us but it was still cool.

This was my favorite part:

That last picture is me and my friend Rachel. Rachel is from Minnesota, too, and is super sweet. I have barely any pictures of people, I realized, which is lame and I need to fix. Also, everyone here is shorter than me! It’s ridiculous! Two of the three guys are taller, but I am the tallest girl and am taller even than the professors I think. I am a giantess!

But I digress. After the canopy walk and lunch we had another hike in another different type of rainforest. It was hilly and beautiful on the way but we got to the end and it was probably the most spectacular thing I have ever seen. There was a sheer cliff face hundreds of feet in the air with an enormous waterfall cascading down it and a pool at the bottom. And we got to swim in it! It was clear and cold and absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures because it was raining at the beginning of the walk and I was afraid for my camera’s safety. I will post pictures as soon as someone else puts them up on Facebook/gives them to me. But it was one of the best things ever just to float in the water and look up at a sheer rock face and thousands of gallons of rushing water right above me. I can’t really describe the feeling.

On the way home we drove through the beautiful country from the first picture at the top. I listened to Great Big Sea and watched the scenery and napped a little bit until we got to the Lodge where I am sitting now. It’s way off the beaten path in a clearing surrounded by rainforest surrounded by farm country. We have two houses, one which only sleeps five which the three guys are in, and one with a big bedroom, a small bedroom, and two bedrooms in the living room/kitchen which all the girls are sharing. Rachel and I are in the random beds in the middle of the main room which is actually kind of fun. It’s really cozy and I like it a lot.

Today we hiked a lot again, and failed at seeing wildlife during the day, for the most part. At night, however, we saw some wildlife a little too close for comfort. One of my friends, Katherine, was going outside to get something and stepped on a snake. This snake:

We happen to have a poster of snakes of Northern Queensland hanging in the bathroom area and identified it as a Small-Eyed Snake, which is listed as venomous and dangerous. It slithered over our shoes and hung around the front porch area for a while but did not seem particularly interested in us, even when we were flashing lights at it. Later on, however, someone ran out of the bathroom screaming. Somehow it found its way inside and is currently residing in the shower room, just one door away from where Rachel and I are sleeping. I’m sure it’s fine and is just looking for somewhere warm to spend the night but it is still not the most comfortable feeling in the world sleeping so close to a potentially deadly snake.

We also saw some other wildlife tonight, though! We went out spotlighting around the Lodge and saw a bandicoot scampering, a bunch of possums – most of whom looked like this:

And a couple of pademelons (which are a lot like wallabies but smaller and only live in rainforests):

If you can’t see, the pademelon is in the exact middle of that picture. We were using red light because it is less intense for their eyes and won’t freak them out as much so they won’t run right away (like they do if you shine white light on them). Or, I suppose, hop away. We saw a fair number of them doing that, too, which is always fun to watch.

Anyway, I should have been asleep hours ago. I really wanted to finish this update tonight, though, because it turns out we have no internet at all here, not even dial-up, and tomorrow we are being taken into Atherton to use the internet (mostly to check on our ISP stuff, which is sort of back to the drawing board for me, but I won’t get into that right now) and I wanted to be able to update all of you on my exploits thusfar.

I hope you are all having a fantastic week and I miss you!

So that was from 8 days ago, you will hear plenty more stories once I finish writing them, I'll post them ASAP.

In Which I Forage, Camp, Learn New Weapons, and Discover a Whole New Meaning of "Chinese Food"

Sorry it’s taken me so long to update, I’m back in the land of computers and iPods! And watches. The whole lack of technology thing was not nearly as bad as I was expecting. It was actually really nice, even though I missed hearing about what everyone back home was doing. I didn’t even really miss my watch. It was nice not to know what time it was for a while. Other people were trying to guess and it actually got kind of annoying. It didn’t really matter. It was food time when we were hungry and time to sleep when it got dark and time to wake up when it got light. It was pretty great.

In the morning we had a breakfast barbeque (“brekkie barbie” in Aussie slang) with our host families and then they left and the Aboriginal elders came. Their names are Russell and Ian and they were both really awesome. We loaded up in three huge off-road vehicles with sideways benches in the back (like an army transport) and snorkels (so you can drive through water without flooding the engine). We could pretty much tell it was going to be epic.

We stopped for lunch at a beautiful waterhole. It turns out that crocodiles can’t stand cold water, so all the places we swam were crystal clear rivers with freezing cold water in the middle of the tropical rainforest. There is no point at which this becomes less amazing. This particular swimming hole had a rope swing. We started out just jumping off the rocks on the bank, making sure it was deep enough, but soon people in our group were climbing the tree to jump off. Obviously I was not going to pass this up. There was a thick branch, a little wider than a balance beam but gnarled and uneven. You had to clamber up onto it and then use the rope to steady yourself as you walked up and out onto it. All well and good except that by the time I got up there the branch was wet and slippery and sandy from everyone else’s feet and I didn’t entirely trust the rope as a support. I was slow and scared climbing up and at one point my feet slid out from under me. I fell straight down and grabbed the branch as hard as I could with my hands and legs. Thank god for horseback riding, cause being able to cling for dear life on a rearing horse is probably all that saved me from cracking my head open on the rocks under the tree. My legs and hands were scratched, bruised, and stinging, but after all that there was no way I was going to give up and just climb down. So I climbed much more quickly and successfully swung into the river. It was awesome, even though I rope-burned my hand. I probably spent way too long describing that but I was very proud of my accomplishment and it was very fun, so there you go.

Poor Russell has diabetes and had an attack or something on the way to the campground so we had to pull over and switch all the stuff and people into a different truck so Jack’s partner Shell could take him to the hospital. He came back in a few hours though, and said he was fine.

The campsite was actually way less hardcore than I was expecting. It was off the main road and everything but not too far away from the nearby Aboriginal community. It had two permanent structures (really just roofs with pillars, no walls), one for eating and washing up and one for cooking. We had not only a fire pit but a barbeque and a portable stove thing. We even had a bathroom not too far away with flush toilets! It was basically the Hilton as far as camping goes, compared to last summer.

It was also BEAUTIFUL. Surrounded by palm trees with the Murray River on one side and a swimming hole not too far upstream. Past the palm trees were the mountains. The mountains here are absolutely phenomenal because there is no tree line. It’s rainforest right up to the top and on a lot of the days there would be clouds hovering around the tops of the mountains. One morning I woke up around dawn to see a cloud sitting in the field just beyond the palm trees, turning all pink and gold with the rising sun. Every night when we were going to bed the nearly full moon would hang right above the mountains and there were a zillion stars and the whole thing was just more gorgeous than I could describe.

The first day we set up tents and the first night it poured and poured and everyone’s tent leaked at least a little, so the next morning we spent a long time rigging a giant tarp to go over all the tents. It took a lot of maneuvering and teamwork but when it was done we had a nice little tent city under the tarp and we didn’t have any more water problems for the rest of the trip! It was pretty cozy.

After all the work of setting up the tarp in the rain and being bitten by the first round (of many many many rounds) of bugs we were all ready to jump in the water hole. On the Aboriginal walk we did before, Rosie taught us about sarsaparilla or soap tree. It’s a magical tree that makes foamy soap when you crush the leaves in water (it also has a natural sort of bengay in the stem) so Rachel and I decided we should forage for soap tree to wash ourselves. We asked Russell and Ian where to find it and they pointed up a steep, slippery-looking, muddy bank covered in vegetation that looked about perfect for lurking snakes. But we were determined to “live off the land” so we climbed up. The trees were too tall. So we went back to camp and got a rope and climbed up again, getting nice and scratched by twigs in the process and bitten by about 8,000 mosquitoes. Rachel did not believe that we would acquire soap tree and wanted to give up but I had faith! I tied a knot in the rope to make it heavier on one end and then threw it at the tree. I missed the first couple of times but eventually got it around one of the branches. Then I jumped and caught the other side of the rope and pulled and off came one branch with enough leaves for all. Success! I am probably prouder of this than I should be. We did not run into any snakes. Russell seemed surprised and impressed when we brought back our prize and we all washed in the river. It actually worked pretty well, I felt clean and smelled good afterwards, even though I had little bits of leaf stuck in my hair. I am Wilderness Karis!

The days all sort of run together now. We spent a lot of the days relaxing – playing cards or reading (I learned how to play Spades and a game called Squares as well as the regular ones I play and I started reading Lirael which I really like so far). They gave us very rough boomerangs that we sanded to perfection, painted, and learned how to throw. They’re not that hard to throw, really. The hardest part is knowing where to throw them in relation to the wind; that’s what makes them come back. You have to stand with the wind blowing in your face and then throw a little bit out to the right so that there’s a free ride back. We learned about and tried to imitate Aboriginal art on our boomerangs. I’m pretty happy with how mine turned out, actually. I’ll post a picture soon.

We also learned how to throw spears! Aboriginals didn’t just throw their spears, they use what’s called a woomera which fits into the end of the spear. You hold the woomera and use it sort of like a catapult to get more distance with the spear. It’s a little hard to get the hang of. I even managed to break one of the spears just by throwing it (I have no idea how that happened). But by the end I almost hit the cardboard wallaby we were using as a target. It was only about a foot away! Made me proud.

On the third or fourth day we learned how to make jewelry. You strip the bark off of the native hibiscus tree and take the inner bark in long thin strips. You roll it on your leg to make it round and then roll it the opposite way to twist it around to make it sturdy. Russell said the more you wear it in water the stronger it will get. When he finished showing us how to roll it he took my arm to show how to tie the knots. As he was tying the strand around my wrist he said that the name he had given me was Nara which means the beam of sunlight that shines down into the rainforest, usually around when the sun goes down. He said “You are that beam of light. Probably because of your smile.” It made me really really happy.

What else did we learn? So much! He showed us how to make fire with sticks (we never did get it to work, but I got it to smoke!), and we went yamming (we found wild yams and dug them out of the ground). They were very difficult to get and were tough and grainy and didn’t taste like much but it still felt really good to collect and wash and cook our own food.

Probably my favorite part was story time. At night we would turn all the lights down low and gather around as Russell strummed a guitar or sang a song and then told us about Aboriginals now, when the white people first came, and dreamtime stories. Dreamtime stories are my favorite. We learned about how the crow became black and why owls only come out at night and the Aboriginal story behind the Southern Cross constellation. When I get time I’m going to go hunting for a good book of more of these stories, but it won’t be the same as having an Aboriginal elder tell them to you while you sit outside in the dark. It was amazing.

He also talked a lot about Aboriginal customs from the old days. They were cannibals, which I did not know. He talked about ritual cannibalism and how apparently Chinese was a delicacy, and considered pretty easy to catch because it was always at the end of the wagon train. He told us a couple of ghost stories, too, which I appreciated less but were still cool. I love stories, are you getting that yet?

We travelled around a bit, too. We went to the ocean to look for dugongs but we never saw any, and we went to a river to fish and thought we would see crocodiles but we didn’t. It was sort of disappointing, but I wouldn’t want to see a croc from too close, either. He told us stories about the islands too, which parts were the “women’s areas” where the men were not allowed to go, and he showed us where his grandmother went after she died (it was a certain mountain peak because she was able to control the weather) and we went up to one guy’s house on top of a huge hill where we could see for miles and miles in every direction. Someday I want to live somewhere like that. It was AMAZING! On the way there we thought we saw a cassowary but it was a fake. Not fair! That was really annoying.

We went to a little Aboriginal history museum too! Mostly it had artifacts like shields and baskets and blankets and that kind of stuff. It’s really wonderful to go to a place like that with someone who knows exactly how each one of those things were made and can explain anything and everything on the walls to you, because that culture still exists. It’s dying out now, which is sad. Russell said he thinks it will only be a couple of generations before they lose the knowledge of how to make blankets out of tree bark, but this is why it’s so amazing! It’s the oldest continuous culture on Earth, almost no other culture could actually walk you through their ancient artifacts. Fascinating!

I talked a lot about Russell (did I mention he was movie star? He was in a movie called Nim’s Island. Must remember to buy it when I get home. It’s a kids’ movie with Abigail Breslin and Jodie Foster in it) but I didn’t say much about Ian yet. Ian was really cool. He didn’t know as much about the cultural heritage side, because his tribe’s information has largely been lost. But he was funny and was always the one who pulled out the candy or bickies (biscuits/cookies) right when we needed them most. He also had all the music. He introduced us to Slim Dusty (an Australian staple, apparently, with such classics as “G’day G’day” that get stuck in your head for the rest of your life) and the Pigram Brothers (I think that’s how you spell it. They were much better and also the only Aboriginal group I know of).

On the last day we stopped at a huge waterfall, bigger than any I’d ever been to before. It was called Murray Falls and was absolutely breath-taking. The whole experience was phenomenal and unforgettable.

As soon as we got back to civilization we showered and changed and ran across the street to the theatre to see a new movie before the elders had to go back to Townsville (yes that is the name of a real town. Very creative, these Australians). It was called Bran Nue Dae (I think that’s how it was misspelled, not sure) and is only the second Australian movie I’ve ever seen (the first one was The Castle with my host family which was hilarious and I highly recommend). Anyway, Bran Nue Dae was a musical and is one of the few movies that has ever been made about Aboriginals, especially (somewhat) modern. I recommend it.

Anyway, that night we went out which was a ton of fun and ever since then we have had a ton of work to do which is why I haven’t managed to blog until now. We had to interview people on the street (terrible, I hate talking to random strangers! Surveys are much easier to do on a college campus) and analyze the data and make a powerpoint and do some other research-y type things. Really, it’s not that much work at all compared to what I would be doing if I were at school but it is hard to concentrate on work when I am in a tropical wonderland with eleven crazy Americans. We are all really good at distracting each other so none of us get work done. But I’m almost done with everything now and I wanted to finish blogging about this before I go on the rainforest trip.

That’s right, tomorrow I leave for ten days in the rainforest. We’re staying at a lodge, but it only has one computer and it only has dial-up. I don’t even remember using dial-up! We haven’t had it since…I don’t even remember, fourth grade? Ridiculous! So I will probably not be able to blog and maybe not be able to have very much contact at all, which is too bad. I will miss all of you!

But the trip sounds pretty fun. We are doing some data collection in the field and a canopy walk and going to a lot of different national parks. We are also one day getting up at 4:30 in the morning (around bedtime for me when I am on my natural schedule) and doing a 12 hour hike up Mt. Bartle-Frere, the tallest peak in Queensland. I am both very nervous and very excited about this. I have no idea if I am fit enough to hike for 12 hours (six up, six down) I’m guessing that I am not, but I guess we’ll see. Also, we have been pretty lucky weather-wise up to this point *knocks on wood*. For the most part rainy season has not meant even full days of nothing but rain, which has made me really happy, but apparently during the rainforest trip is usually when the skies open up. So says the academic director, Jack, anyway. After that he says the rainy season usually dies down, though, so overall it probably won’t be nearly as bad as I thought it would that first day *knocks on wood*.

Anyway, I should get the last bit of work done and pack. We’re leaving in less than eight hours. I love you all and hope you have a great ten days!