We were collected at 6:55AM again (hurray!) and fitted onto a bus for the lengthy ride North. The scenery along the way kind of reminded me of home. For a while, the roads were tiny two lane country roads with farms lining the roads. Different, however, were the miniature scale railways between the fields and the roads. These were sugarcane farms, and the sugarcane would be put into carts on this railway, where it would be pulled by tractors into town to the refinery.
There were also several osprey nests pointed out to us on the way. The nests, and birds, are both GIANT.
Here's the view from Flagstaff Hill, which was one of our stops during the northward journey.
We arrived and took a guided tour through the rainforest. Some nifty views of the ocean included!
We were set loose on a beach to eat the lunch we had packed.
I had a bag of chips and an 8 pack of miniature pancakes I had found. They were delicious, but the lunch was missing something...
Coconuts!
I was a little disappointed that more of this was not documented. It looks so easy here in these three pictures. Climb tree, bash with log, drink milk!
It actually went more like, climb log, curse, fall down, throw things at coconuts, collect coconuts, bash with log, curse, take to beach, beat on pointy rocks, find crack, muscle apart, endure "gorilla man" taunts, success!
After this, we walked back out and took a croc spotting tour in a boat. Kinda dissappointing, but we were reminded that the animals were not there to entertain us. We were there late in the day so the crocs had finished sunning themselves and had retreated into the mangroves for the most part. We did see two, though!
That big dude is apparently named "Scarface".
I'm not sure what this was, but it looked cool.
Just a lil guy!
The funniest part of the afternoon was when we were passing another croc tour boat going in the opposite direction. The operator was on his own PA, telling his own boat "Now that we've seen a croc drag a buffalo into the water and a python strangle a kangaroo, let's check out some birds!". Well played, I laughed.
We returned home without incident. I was pretty tired and headed to bed early. Somewhere in here, I earned the nickname "Hans". *shrugs*
Day 15 - White Water Rafting
I am awakened at 4:30AM by the sound of smashing glass followed by Irish cursing. This is going to be a great day.
One of the giant glass sliding doors leading to our balcony was giving us troubles, not quite opening properly all week. Apparently, it had been off the track, and when one of the Irish dudes had gone out for a cigarette, it completely fell out and shattered a few minutes later. (Irish) lucky for him, he was not sitting in the obvious chair near the door, which had been flattened by the door, but a further, less flattened chair. He informed us that he was going to reception to tell them what happened. I, and the 6 others in the room grunted something in reply and tried to go back to bed.
Five minutes later, I am awakened by the largest, angriest, most Pacific Islander man I have ever seen. His head was the size of my torso. "Pack your stuff and get the hell out. All of you." What? I was asleep! Everyone argues about what happens. Each argument takes a few seconds to process. His brow furrows. He grunts, and generally repeats the last thing he told us. Someone mentions that throwing us out at 4:30 in the morning is ridiculous. He says that we should have thought of that before we kicked the door out. I am about to laugh, but then realize that it might mean a very sleepless morning. I mention that the door was screwed up all week. After the others tell him some other things, he grunts and leaves the room.
At this point, I figure I'm off the hook or he's either coming back with 5 of his friends. I decide to go back to sleep. I am vaguely aware of two people entering the room and then I hear sweeping glass. I fall asleep. Apparently, I am the only one out of the 8.
I wake up again at 6:30, this time to my alarm. I stop by reception on my way out the door to ask what was going to happen. I am informed that nothing will happen until I get back from my day trip.
In order to get pumped up for white water rafting, I would think there should be a better way than a muscular guy with blonde hair and a hoarse voice yelling things at you from the front of a bus. This man will say extreme things and lie to you about the length of the bus ride. I will become agitated when I am on a bus for 2.5 hours instead of "about an hour and a half". Agitated means I get stabby when handed a paddle, not padd-ly.
He asks us to form groups. I am sitting with one person I know and we form a group. We are supposed to form a group of 7. Muscular dude comes over and asks if I have a group. I inform him that I do. He calls us "Nigel no-friends" and says he will come back to us. We wonder who will join Hans and Nigel on their rafting adventure.
Groups are formed, we are handed a helmet, a paddle, and a vest. We walk down from the bus and get into the raft without being told a single thing. Finally our raft instructor (one of the two river medics on duty) gives us a quick briefing. This includes things like, how to sit, how to lock your legs in to hang on, and commands like "over left", "over right", "get down", and "hold on", and most importantly, how to keep everyone's teeth in while executing said commands. He did not, however, teach us how to paddle. With three girls in the boat, this was a problem. My brain was telling me that how fast the boat moves is proportionate to how much water we move, and how much water we move is an equation of the amount of the paddle in the water times the length of the stroke, but I just told the girls to put more of the paddle into the water and move it as far as they could. Problem solved.
The first hour is pretty boring. Everyone goes through the rapids one at a time. Our boat goes through first, and then we "park" and the medic gets out with a line, just in case. Everyone is dumped into the water and taught how to float down the rapids and made to swim against the current, just in case. It was pretty fun.
We stop for lunch, the signature Aussie BBQ. (What's that? Sausages? Of course!)
The next three hours were probably the most fun I've had since I've been in Australia.
The morning training session aside, the rapids were faster and we went down them faster, only really stopping to make sure no boats were left behind. Some of the rapids, we were told to go at full force and paddle all the way through. It was an absolute blast. Between rapids, we were allowed to go for group swims.
There was a natural waterslide a few meters tall and very thin. We put everyone in the nose of the boat and went down it. The boat flipped straight up, intentionally dumping everyone except for the instructor. We folded the boat in half between rocks...lengthwise (on purpose) and sideways (on accident)...which was really interesting looking. The person in the front and the back of the boat hit heads.
All the boats stopped at a 4 meter tall rock in the middle of the river. We got out and jumped into the water. Receiving a dare from my instructor, I did a front flip, then swam upstream and got out again and did a backflip. "You're wearing a vest and a helmet and the water is deep, you should feel pretty invincible". Haha.
More rapids. Fun stuff. I am talking to my friend sitting next to me when a rock happens to slide right under him and just pops him out of the boat mid sentence. The instructor informs us that he buys the next round. (I am disappointed later when this does not happen).
We head back to their bar/home base and people who want them buy pictures. The prices were pretty ridiculous and I look silly in a helmet anyways, so no pictures! Had a few beers with the instructors and then got back on the bus and returned home.
My stuff is gone. I was told nothing would happen, but my bag is still stashed in my room, and my other bag and everything on my bed is gone. Shoes, iPod, charger, everything. I go back to reception and it takes them half an hour to find it, but everything seems to be intact. Everyone else in my room has been moved, but the door has been replaced, so I decide to stay there. (Later, when the maids come in, they inform me that the room is out of order, and I am only there by some flaw in the system.) I enjoy having the room to myself.
Day 16 - Jumping out of a perfectly good airplane...
It's raining. It's kinda rained the last three mornings and then cleared up by afternoon...thus is life in a rainforest. I call the skydiving place and they tell me my pickup has been bumped back 30 minutes. Finally, it stops raining, I am picked up on time and driven to the jump office, where I am shown a short video and made to sign forms. I meet my instructor, who is a man half my size. I ask if there are any problems being front heavy, and he just says we're going to fall faster. Haha.
I've been skydiving before. I took a class and did a line jump, by myself at 3500 feet. This is 14,000 feet with a minute of free fall, and with an instructor, all new things to me. We are strapped up and driven to the airport where we are hurried onto a small plane. Last time, it was about 4 or 5 hours from the time arrived to the time I jumped. This time, I was at the airport and back again within 20 minutes. Not much time to think about it! We climb on the plane and strap in. The instructor straps himself to my back. I am first out of the plane. The video instructs us to cross our arms when we get to the door, and the instructor will rock back and forth three times. Looking out, I hesitate just for a second. We're really, really high. The instructor rocks once and then we are falling. They tell you to cross your arms so that you can't grab the plane.
There's literally nothing I can type here to describe the feeling of free fall. It was absolutely nuts. My physics told me that I would reach terminal velocity and then cease to accelerate. Later, I learned this was about 130mph. The wind noise at this level is deafening. The instructor was apparently yelling things in my ears the whole time. I was oblivious. All I got out of it was that by pushing my hands towards the earth, I can steer the both of us. That was really, really cool.
I see something that looks like a target on top of the clouds beneath us. At first, I wondered if it was a spotlight or something from earth, a target...but then my brain processes it. It's a rainbow! Here's an image I found on flickr that was apparently taken from a plane that might help.
The clouds rush towards us. It is suddenly very cold and very humid, just what you would think falling through a cloud would be like. We fall right through the center of the rainbow, an image I will never forget. It's hot and dry again. I feel us slow down, but not stop...something's wrong. The chute is tangled. He pulls at the strings and I kick my feet and the chute pops open completely. Just as I remember...absolute silence, just hanging in the air. I get control of the chute and have some fun, but we don't have that much altitude to play with. Coming in for landing, as he is about a foot shorter than me, I am told to put my legs straight out in front of me and I slide in on my butt. It's hard to believe it was over that fast. My friend lands, and the only phrase he repeats for the next half hour is "That...was....awesome!!!". I was getting annoyed, but not because he wasn't right!
One of my roommates is afraid of heights. She was terrified in the plane and told the instructor she would have to be pushed out. He did, and she loved it, which reinforces what I've been telling people this whole time. Of all the extreme things I've done, skydiving is probably has the best fun:scary ratio. Abseiling/rapelling was fun, but that was definitely very high on the scary:fun ratio. That scared the crap out of me.
Day 17 - Finally going home...
The day was spent in the sun until we grabbed a taxi at 4PM for our 6PM flight. There were four of us on this flight, we split a cab and grabbed some Hungry Jack's in the airport. Security was pretty lax compared to a US airport, the security screening was unobtrusive and I was never even asked for ID! I bought a magazine for the flight and it went by pretty fast. We had an hour before our train...I predicted we would be cutting it close...and we ended up missing it by thirty seconds. Boo. I went to a bar for the 2.5 hours until the next train, the others tried to sleep on the platform.
On the train home, as we were arriving into Newcastle, I had just woken up. I was the first out of the four. Just then, I knew I had no way of getting into my apartment. It's funny how stuff just pops into your head like that. My keys were on my bedside table. I left them there so I wouldn't lose them, assuming one of my roommates would let me in. All of my roommates were coming back the next day. I spent the night at my friend's and the cleaners let me in the next morning.
I could not have had a better two weeks with a better bunch of people. I knew probably about half of the people on the trip at the beginning, but by the end, it seemed like everyone got along great.
Also, I am so pleased to have finally gotten this online! Sorry for the delay! Things have been busy here as well...
No comments:
Post a Comment