Koob's New Zealand/Australia Adventures: THE Great Barrier Reef!

I made it! YAY! Needless to say I was/am really excited that I got there since I didn’t know if it was going to happen. I went to the southern end of the reef, off the coast of Agnes Waters and the Town of 1770, because there was no way I was going to make it up to Cairns (which I still eventually want to go to at some point in my life).

I took the Tilt Train from Brisbane to Bundaberg but got stuck on the later train Friday because I didn’t book it when I should have (eventually I’ll learn), so I had to stay in Bundy for the night. Right after I booked it I found out that it has derailed, several times. Great. It was fine this time though, obviously. I usually attract weird people on trains but I was actually seated next to a really cool woman and had great conversations for most of the trip. Also, they are all about onboard entertainment on transportation here. They played Alice in Wonderland on the trip up and Julie & Julia and Invictus on the way back (although they cut off the end of Invictus, the BEST part, ugh).

The backpackers I stayed in was very accommodating with times for checking in and out. I didn’t get there until 9:30pm and had to check out at 6am, which for most other hostels here it wouldn’t fly. Despite that though, it was my first legit creepy hostel experience. I’m glad it was only one night. The building itself was sketchtown at its finest and I was in a room with like 6 other girls that didn’t seem to enjoy talking, at all. But regardless of the sketchiness, I only needed it to sleep in for a few hours, I emphasize the few hours though. People were up at all hours of the night and I didn’t really sleep. Boo. The reef cruise I was did Saturday picked me up at the hostel in the morning and drove to Agnes Water which was cool. I was SO excited.

So I thought I was going to be doing my first scuba dive. I HATE ASTHMA. Just going to throw that out there. I would be ever so slightly more accepting of it if there was a logical reason as to why I have/had it in the first place. But no, no one in my family has it (good thing, I obviously don’t want anyone else to have it) and it’s not like I smoke 3 packs a day or even have smoked at all for that matter. But enough ranting, basically all you need to know is that they wouldn’t let me dive because of my history with asthma, regardless of the fact that I haven’t used my inhaler in like 2 years (maybe once). Note to self, go to the doctors, get a note and carry it around everywhere…

The tour I went on was to Lady Musgrave Island. The ride out was about 1 ½ hrs and the weather was pretty good. Nice and sunny but a little windy/chilly. They gave us morning and afternoon teas which the US really needs to adopt. After morning tea we took a glass bottomed boat out to the island for a guided walk around the island. It was really nice, beautiful beaches and apparently you can camp out there which would be awesome. After the island walk we headed back to the pontoon/boat for a buffet lunch, yummy! On the way back we looked over some other areas of the reef that we wouldn’t be allowed to snorkel by, we saw some impressively large sea turtles getting cleaned by little fishies. So cute.

I basically shoveled food in and B-lined it to the water for snorkeling. I decided to rent a wet suit since it was a little cool and windy, and based on recent snorkeling events, I stay in the water for awhile. I took so many pictures but my battery still died before I left the water. And of course it died before I got to swim with a sea turtle. So cool! He was just like Crush from Nemo. :) The reef was SO AMAZING! It’s not even the best parts of the reef and it was still awesome. So many cool fish and corals (some pictures below). A lot of the fish were really friendly/curious and came right up to me, they were so cute. Oh, so apparently they grow sea cucumbers here to epic proportions. I’ve only ever seen small ones that can fit in one hand, these were HUGE in comparison. At first I didn’t know what it was because it was so big, haha. But yeah, I could go on forever so I’ll make this brief so that this blog won’t be quite as long. I will put a few pictures up here but most will be on facebook.

The water was SO blue, and the shades of blue changed so dramatically. It was intense and really awesome. We went back out on the glassbottomed boat once more before we left and got to see more turtles and cool corals. There was one coral that was literally the size of a truck. Apparently the type of coral it was (I think boulder coral..?) grows 2 mm/year, so for it to be that huge it had to be ridiculously old. Crazy to think about actually. We headed back to shore at 3:30 and got back around 5, in time for sunset.

I stayed at a cool hostel for the next two nights that, in season, would really be hoppin. They named their cabins after countries, I was in Denmark with 3 cool English guys the first night, then 2 German guys and a really nice English girl the second night. The first night I was absolutely exhausted from the day so I was going to crash early but the English guys were really into the soccer game that night, which of course was the England vs USA game. Good thing it tied 1-1, haha. I got free breakfast the next morning (crepes!!) and then went to ‘town’ for a couple hours. I pretty much just went to the beach and got lunch. The English guys said that they had done the scooteroo tour the previous day and that it had been awesome. I didn’t have any way to get to the sunset kayaking place I was going to go to so I decided to do the scooteroo’s…bahahaha. Absolutely ridiculously hysterical. They gave us leather jackets to wear, complete with flames. Let me tell you, if you had any doubt, that riding motorcycles (or morotcycle/scooter hybrids) is not my calling in life. I was really fun though. The first thing they guy said that you need to ride these things were balance and coordination. Um, fail and more of a fail. haha We all looked ridiculous and there were like 55 people, apparently the biggest group they’ve had in awhile. I got off to a slightly rocky start (it’s hard to go slow) but I got a hang of it after a little bit.

We were supposed to see kangaroos but I think we scared them off. :( Owell. We rode around for a couple hours then went to go watch the sunset on the coast of 1770. We got seasoned potato wedges with sweet chili sauce and sour cream, SO GOOD. Literally one of my new favorite things. YUM! Well, that was pretty much the weekend. I had to get up early for the Greyhound Monday and catch the train from Bundy back to Brisbane, then another train to Cleveland. Long day of traveling.

Back to otoliths tomorrow, although maybe some repro work, I guess I’ll see what happens. At least it’s a short week. If I didn’t mention it before, we got Monday off because of the Queen’s birthday, haha. Rock on.

Fun Fact:
Panini’s here don’t have a top piece of bread, just for future reference.