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.
No comments:
Post a Comment