Le East Coast

Greetings! I realized I haven’t written in a while besides my little blurb yesterday so this may be a bit long…sorry! Last I left off I was in Melbourne and going to Trivia Night. Anddddd my team won!! I would like to think that my correct answer to the last question (what does poly in latin mean? Many) was the deciding factor but we were way ahead before that…either way, go team! I spent my last day in Melbourne getting things squared away and walking around South Melbourne, then went on a pub crawl that night. I met a ton of people I wish I had found earlier and spent a good part of the night talking to this really fun Canadian girl named Joy. My wake up time of 4:45 came far too early but thankfully I slept the whole time from Melbourne to Cairns. I met Claire and Sean in the airport at Cairns and also a sweet girl from Iowa named Anna who I had met in Melbourne. We went to our hostel and spent the first day just walking around Cairns-it’s a funky little town that reminded me quite a bit of Kauai with the palm trees, beach shops and shoeless people.

Thursday we went out on a boat on the Great Barrier Reef. It was incredible-I got my first taste for scuba diving and am officially hooked. I got to see a shark on my 2nd dive and pet this giant fish that would just hang out near the back of the boat. The Reef is about an hour’s drive offshore so it was incredible to just be in the middle of the ocean but have waves breaking all around us. It was a smaller group and all of the staff were super friendly and helpful and we met up with them later that night at this funny bar called Rhino Bar back in Cairns. We made the mistake of playing Claire’s drinking games back in the hostel before going out and were all rather toasty by the time we got to the bar and it all just went downhill from here. The highlight of the night was daring Claire to go dance with a 65 year old man who was sporting a sparkly top hat and mullet (obviously) for the price of a jagerbomb. She didn’t even hesitate. I think laughed so hard I was crying for a good 10 minutes much to the confusion of everyone around me.

Friday we groggily got up and went on a Jungle Tour! Wheeeeeee. That’s my fake excitement. Due to the previous night’s activities and complete lack of sleep (bed at 3, wake up at 5:45?) we were the least enthusiastic people on this tour. Not to mention our guide would have read the phone book out loud just to hear his own voice…and had terrible, terrible jokes. Either way, we got to go to an Animal Sanctuary and walk amongst wallabies and kangaroos-which was pretty surreal, hangover or not. Then off to the jungle for a little hike and river cruise where we saw 3 crocodiles! We all rallied to the best of our ability but everyone was in bed by 9 pm that night. We stayed at PK’s Jungle Village in Cape Tribulation, which is population 10. Really, PK’s was the center of town and it consisted of this hostel that is an old converted summer camp, a pharmacy and a small convenience store. That’s. It. So none of us felt bad crashing early…got up the next morning and walked down along the beach which was lovely. Then up to a swimming hole where we played on a rope swing and trudged upstream against rocks in search of crawfish, where there were none. After about 1:30 we were done being jungle kids and took to the goon. We were with 2 Canadian surgeons who had coincidentally been on our Reef cruise, Jungle Tour and booked into the same room at PK’s with us. They claimed they could drink anyone under the table-we proved them wrong in literally 20 minutes. The hilarity that ensued will most likely not be funny to anyone who wasn’t there, but we were dying. We had to catch a bus out of PK’s at 4:30 to get to Port Douglas—we spent the last hour in the pool, throwing me over the volleyball net, challenging an old man to play volleyball, and with the boys hitting on every girl that walked by. Solid day I would say. We got to Port Douglas and into yet another hostel, grabbed dinner and again were in bed early. Today we wandered around Port Douglas during the day—it’s a really cool resort-ish type town, reminds me of Palm Springs a lot. Then it was onto a bus to get to Cairns, grab some food, then onto the Greyhound to come down to Mission Beach. I’m sitting in the hostel right now on my laptop and just got asked if I was playing World of Warcraft. Fantastic. There is however a big pool that keeps calling my name, and you know how I hate to disappoint…Hope everyone is doing well, miss you all, I’ll write again soon!

Jen