WHALES, OCTOPUS, AND SHARKS OHH MY!!

Ok well it has been a terribly long time since I have updated this thing so I think I better. At this time I am in an RV on a road trip down the south east coast of Australia and its incredibly bumpy so ignore any typos you jerks.

So Ah yes I left off on Friday the eleventh, which was GROCERY DAY… This is normally not that big of a deal but this trip was particularly special because of our driver….PHIL!!! That’s right the man who knows it all about wildlife, and I do not over exaggerate when I say that. You will be driving with him and he will spot animals and give their scientific name constantly, not to mention he is incredibly awkward which just adds to his awesomeness. So anyway back to the grocery trip. It began with Phil spotting our first wallaby even before we even got on the bus. It was a big one that was just down a dirt road just behind our camp. Everyone got pictures and eventually it hoped away into the bush. We then piled onto the bus and started our venture to the grocery. Once we reached the top of the head, Phil spotted a particular bird that can literally sit/hover in the air. It was ridiculous. The bird would be completely still just sitting in the sky using the air current to keep itself up like a hang glider. Then we spotted whales in the ocean and pulled off to watch a small pod constantly jumping around in the ocean. I don’t know what they were doing exactly but I would like to think they were frolicking. We made it to the grocery and bought food to sustain us for the coming weeks. Phil then took us to a spot where there bats known as flying foxes. We got to the location and there were literally hundreds of giant bats up in the tree. They all started taking off at once and it was absolutely spectacular. Well the next day I went with Piper and Jordan to Byron to go see the movie Inglorious Basterds, which I must say was an awesome movie. I ended up paying about 25 dollars to see it and it was worth every penny. It will however definitely be the only movie I see here in theatre. Then on Sunday I woke up and headed to a local church service with a small group of people. It turns out that on this particular day it was father’s day in Australia. The church service was held outside by Lake Ainsworth (tea tree lake) and there was a free sausage sizzle after words. It was a good service and the sizzle after words was spectacular. The sausage was by far the best I have had here and believe me when I say that there is some bad sausage here. But it was really cool to sit down and talk with a couple Australians after the service because we are pretty secluded back here in the Lake Ainsworth camp. But another positive thing that came out of this was on the walk home the greatest decision ever was made…. Road trip. It turns out the group that went to church didn’t have any idea what they were going to do for the ten day. Someone mentioned the word road trip and it was settled in a heartbeat. After church a medium sized group of people decided that we should all go kayaking in the lake. Well we got there and out on the lake and it turned into a major dunking fest and we all had a good time. Then Me, Kurtis and Jordan decided that we were going to try and snorkel at the lagoon. It was much more successful this time, still freezing but more successful. It was probably the lowest tide that I have seen yet which made it perfect for snorkeling. We snorkeled for about 20 min and that was all we could take. In that time I saw three octopuses, a stingray, a small shark, and a weird giant slug thing. It was a full day so that night I just sat around and talked with people

Well Monday we had another boring class in Australia life and Culture. It was on Australian sports, which was cool the first hour but dragged on the next two. At this point I cant really remember what I did that day because there was no field trip so I had the afternoon off. I most likely did something at the beach. Tuesday I decided to go down to the other head with Kurtis and Carrie. The other head is about two or three miles from our camp and let me just say its 15 times cooler than the closer more popular one. There are giant rock faces to climb, large tide pools that we saw a small octopus in, thousands of crabs, some of the smoothest roundest rocks, and great views. We spent about three or four hours exploring and decided to head back because it was starting to get dark. If you go past the other head you can make it to Byron, which I haven’t done yet but I plan on doing soon. Nothing much happened Wednesday I had Terrorism Class and that’s about it. Thursday however was a good day. For our marine class we got to go out on a boat and watch for whales. I went out with the first group. We didn’t see anything for a long time but then we finally spotted on off in the distance. We rushed over to it and it turned out to be two humpbacks and a small pod of dolphins. We got incredibly close to the whales, which was awesome, so close actually they swam underneath our boat. This was one of the coolest experiences of my life. The whales were absolutely HUGE. I have never seen an animal that large that close. After that we went to a lab and looked at some plankton underneath a microscope which some of them were crazy looking. After that we went back to Lennox and had class. And that was my week four weeks ago at this point…. I am going to try and catch up a week ever day so look for new post daily for about four days straight