The Chance of a Lifetime...

Animals in OZ

I can't remember if I already said this but Dave and I booked a sweet tour- Brown Dog Tours www.browndogtours.com and we booked both parts- the beef and the beach!! It usually starts in Brisbane but we couldn't wait that long so we're doing the trip backwards...
Friday night we met up with everyone on the tour with us- Chris from LA, Jo and Mitch from Maryland but are all friends, go to UCLA but are studying abroad here; Mirriam from Germany and 4 from Taiwan. Tim and Shanna are the owners of the company and lead the tours... We ate dinner and hung out for a while before calling it a night.
Saturday we got up early, met up with everyone and started driving south. After about 2 hours we were in Mission Beach where we stopped and Tim cracked a couple of fresh coconuts which were yummy!! We continued driving and stopped at Jourama Falls where we had a picnic, did a bush walk and found a place to swim, it was beautiful and pretty amusing. We kept driving, Dave and I were in Tim's car and we lost the other car so we stopped for a beer in a tiny little town before finish up the drive to Airlie Beach. We arrived at Beaches hostel, ate dinner, drank and eventually headed out to some of the bars. We had tons of fun and were all prety drunk..good times...Dave made a new friend and got to ride in a ute (an al camino).
Sunday we reluctantly got up pretty early, ate breakfast and made our way to the dock to go ocean rafting- www.oceanrafting.com this was tons of fun... A decent sized boat with 2 massive engines, it weas rough out and we were taking these massive waves and flying all over the place it was great!! Check out the website for a better idea, its kind of hard to explain. However, within 10mins one of the other dude was puking over the back of the boat- GROSS!! Most of you should know that I can't deal with pukers so needless to say I wasn't impressed and I gave him a prety hard time later on! Lane was our driver and he and his buddy (can't remember his name) thought it was hillarious but I'm sure they deal with it all the time. Anyways we made our way to Daydream Island which is one of the Whitsunday Islands and we picked up a few more people. The weather wasn't great so Lane decided to reverse the trip and we went snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef first. When we stopped the puker said he felt sick again! I looked at him and told him he had to wait b/c we were going snorkellong in the water he wanted to puke in. He wasn't too impressed with my lack of care but that's too bad. Anyways, the snorkelling was amazing!! There were 100s of fish and tons of coral!!! Lane threw some fish food in and they were jumping around everywhere, it was great!! We snorkeled the reef for ages then set off again and went to Whitehaven Beach which has sand a lot like Siesta Key at home, it was beautiful! The water is crystal clear and there were a ton of fish swimming around there too. We ate lunch on the boat and hung out on the beach for a couple of hours before heading home. It was a pretty amusing ride home, 1/2 of the boat got soaked, and we just laughed at them the puker was one of them so that was even better! :).
We went home, showered, napped, ate dinner, Lane was at the bar where we ate- which was also our hostel so he came and hung out with us, the puker was also there but took ages to recognize me- then we laughed about the day and his puking... We had a few rounds there before heading to Morocco's- another bar- where they asked me for ID! Do I look 17?! (That's what I said to the bouncer) haha. Chris sang "Cold Hearted Bitch" on Karaoke, it was pretty good and really funny. We left there and went to Paddy's- an Irish bar, go figure! We ordered this Nashes drink, and used Lane's sweet 40% discount! This drink is 3 shots of vodka, 1/3 can of redbull and fill the rest of the pint glass with cider- YUMMY!! It was soooo good!! We partied there for a long time, I met the owner but no free drinks unfortunately! Ha. We stayed out for a while had a few more Nashes :)
Monday Dave and I slept late, Chris, Jo and Mitch went sailing. Dave and I went and laid out by the freshwater lagoon and pretty much didn't do anything all day, it was great!! We wandered around and looked in the shops etc before going back. I was sitting on our balcony and a Rainbow Lorikeet (parrot type thing) flew over and landed on the edge of the balcony, scared the crap out of me when it screeched, b/c I didn't see it land!! Too funny. The others came home, we hung out, showered etc and went off to eat. We met up later and just hung out- quiet night, no grog! Ha. I don't even remember falling asleep, the lights were still on and everyone was still up...nice.

Here's a list of the animals we've seen so far!
Magpie geese, red and green parrots- rainbow lorakeets, goanna, great egret, black kite, brahman bull cows, lizards/skinks, bush turkey, white breasted sea eagle, jabbaroo! And a couple of kookaburra's!
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posted by Kirby @ 5:49 PM