April 2011

Goodbye, Australia!

My last night in Australia was lovely. I had returned to Sydney the evening of April 23rd, and was headed back home on an early flight the next day. After dropping my off my luggage at my hotel (and paying fifty dollars for the cab ride only to discover the train station was literally across […]

Alright, time for an update

First, I want to write about snorkeling in the Whitsundays. It was probably my favourite out of all the amazing experiences I have had here in Australia. It wasn’t on the Great Barrier, this was “fringe reef,” but the clarity was phenomenal, and I was swimming through these giant schools of different kinds of fish, […]

The days are now a blur, but I wrote this on the cruise

(Therefor, please ignore the “today” and other present-tenses.) Since yesterday, until tomorrow, I am on a beautiful cruise around the gorgeous Whitsunday islands. I tried paddle-boarding, which was fun once I passed the learning curve and really “got” it. Unfortunately, that accomplishment did not extend to wind-sailing, which frustrated me to the point of tears. […]

Day 12, Whitsunday islands

Instead of sleeping in the three-person room with the married couple from Germany, I asked if I could sleep outside, on the front of the boat, since it is never warm enough (or free enough of bugs) to do so back home. I have never been to a place so devoid of light. The moon […]

Day 12, Airlie Beach, and some of the deepest parts of my psyche

I’m currently (at the time of writing this in my journal) taking refuge from the sun on a bench made of over 1500 2-litre plastic milk bottles, overlooking the lagoon that sits about a hundred feet from the ocean. THe sun is so bright that everything its light touches looks dull and overexposed like a […]

Day ten, Ayr to Airlie beach

Guys, I’m in paradise. It is stunning here in Airlie beach , there are no words that could come close to describing the immense beauty, no photos could do justice to the intense jewel tones of the water, nothing could compare to actually being here and experiencing it. The closest I can get to telling […]

Day nine, Tully to Ayr

At the start of this day I had every intention of getting up at five to catch the sunrise at Mission Beach, but it didn’t happen. I always have these grandiose ideas that never quite come to fruition, unfortunately. Oh well. Mission Beach was beautiful. The yellow sand was speckled with coral and seashells, and […]

Day eight, Cairns to Tully

Today I allowed myself to sleep until 8:00AM, which was a luxury on this trip. I slowly rose from my bunk bed and gathered up the last of my things as the sun lazily tricked in through the thin curtains. My plan for the day was to drive to Townsville, and make a bunch of […]

Day seven, Cairns

The rest of the day was fantastic, though. The tour van arrived at my hostel at 7:15AM to get an early start on the day of rain forest- and coastal-adventure. Twelve other people were part of the tour, which started at a zoo outside of Port Douglas. It was an open-concept zoo, so a person […]

Day six, Cairns

This morning I woke up early so I could walk down to the marina and catch the Tulsa 5 boat to do some diving on the Great Barrier Reef. I had signed up for a three-dive, full day adventure, and it was something I have been looking forward to for a long time. I decided […]