Urge for Going

Butterflies in Thailand

2012-02-16T11:55:00.000-08:00

When we woke up in the morning, it was cold out, and mist shrouded the mountains. We sat by a small fire, where water for lemongrass tea was boiling in a large black kettle. We ate chunks of pineapple, papaya, mango, and watermelon, then rice with milk and honey. Albert ate with us, though Susanan didn’t.

Once breakfast was finished, Albert’s neighbor came over to give us a traditional weaving lesson. I never got the woman’s name, and she didn’t speak any English; she just showed us what to do with hand motions and shaking of her head. She set up the backstrap loom for us. I could never recreate the maze of strings she set up for the loom, but once it was ready, we sat on the kitchen porch for at least two hours, weaving colorful belts. It was fun and a cool project to do, but my back was killing me as I sat there, strapped into my project. I couldn’t get up until it was finished, because Albert’s neighbor was there to help and supervise, and I couldn’t explain to her that my back hurt. So it was a painful couple of hours until I finished my weaving. When it was finished, lunch was a welcome and delicious break: rice, scrambled eggs, and mixed vegetables. That description doesn’t do the food justice. If I knew the spices involved in this meal, I would be an amazing cook.

Knowing that we didn’t want to spend another afternoon sitting around, Malone and I took a walk to the river. We walked all the way down the steep hill that the motorbike taxis had taken us up, to the main road, then down to the river. The water was cold, so I wasn’t tempted to go in, but it was nice to sit on the sandy beach to absorb some sunlight. There were a few Lisu women in the river, fully-clothed, catching crawfish. I read amidst the many butterflies fluttering around my head—the whole time I was in northern Thailand, I was always thinking about Andrew Bird’s song “Skin is, My,” which has a line about butterflies in Thailand. Eventually, when I got hot enough, I went in the water. It was difficult to make the final plunge under the water because it was so cold, but it was certainly refreshing, especially since the running water at Albert’s had stopped working. It was a peaceful afternoon with flowers, the buzzing of insects, bright sunlight, cold water, and cool shade. It was a long, hot walk back up the hill to Albert’s, but a dinner of dill soup and mashed potatoes with chilis was filling (and spicy).

As it got dark, we walked back down the hill with another guest from India to look for an open bar or anything else to do, but we found nothing. Walking back up the steep hill in the cool night was much easier, and we were treated with a dessert of black beans and rice with coconut milk before bed. An older Australian couple had arrived to stay at Albert’s, and their guide was entertaining. In the morning, we all had breakfast together before walking back down the hill for the last time to catch the bus from Soppong back to Pai. The homestay wasn’t everything we had hoped; it mainly consisted of good food and some peaceful down-time—not quite the cultural experience we were looking for—so we were ready to return to Pai, that magical place that stole our hearts. If I could choose any place in Thailand to return to, it would be Pai.

Dust and Celebration

2012-02-11T12:39:00.000-08:00

The bus ride to Soppong was incredibly crowded, and Malone and I couldn’t sit together. I sat behind the driver, right next to the engine, which felt like it was going to burn my feet off, it was so hot. We drove up and down winding mountain roads for about an hour. A Coke bottle was rolling up and down the aisle, and the driver asked somebody to pick it up. I was surprised to see the woman who picked it up throw it straight out the window onto the roadside. This was the first example of littering, the effects of which I would see nearly every day for the rest of the trip. Traditionally, people in Southeast Asia used natural materials, such as banana leaf, to wrap their food or package their goods. It would make sense to simply toss the banana leaf back into the forest, where it came from. The problem is that people there do the same thing with all of the plastic they use—they just throw it out the window. And they use plastic bags for everything. For example, if I bought a can of soda, they would put it in a mini plastic bag and throw a plastic straw in for good measure. I tried to avoid collecting so many plastic bags, knowing they might end up on the roadsides eventually.

When we got to Soppong, it didn’t really look like we had arrived anywhere. The street was dusty. There was something like a flea market along the side of the road, but it didn’t really seem like anyone was around. We spent a few frustrated minutes trying to figure out how the pay phone worked. Finally, it did, and we called Albert, the man in charge of the Lisu Hill Tribe homestay we had arranged. He directed us to the motor taxis that were parked a little ways down the road. If you’ve ever ridden on the back of a motorbike with a 45 pound pack on your back up a very steep hill, then I don’t need to tell you how terrifying it was. For those of you who haven’t—it was terrifying. But we made it to the top and were dropped off at a wooden gate. We tentatively walked inside the fenced area. There was nobody around. All we could see were roosters and chickens, a pig pen, and a lot of dirt. We hesitantly walked around until Albert finally emerged and gave us a tour of the place. Albert was a tall, hunched over man in his fifties or sixties. He was a former psychologist from Chicago. He had moved to Thailand about seven years ago and married Susanan, a Lisu woman. What I found most strange about this relationship was that Albert had been living in this community for several years and had learned barely a word of Lisu or Thai. Susanan spoke some English, but the whole thing seemed very strange from the beginning.

In any case, we dropped our bags off in our room. There were shutters on the windows, but they didn’t keep out any bugs. There was nothing but a mattress on the floor. We went with Albert up the street, where the community was gathered for the last day of the week-long New Year’s festival. The Lisu women were dressed in traditional costume, as they dressed most days, but the men, who typically didn’t dress in their traditional clothing, were also festively dressed. We sat around a long table, and women who had been cooking all day served us food. Most of it had meat in it, so I couldn’t eat much other than some rice and cabbage. People from five neighboring villages were there, and Albert explained that it was “courting time” for the young men and women and that they were all looking their best. He also told us that the women wearing black hats were already married. A hundred feet or so from where people were gathered to eat was the dancing floor. Albert explained that some tribes only dance in a circle, while others only dance in a wheel-spoke formation. The man leading the dance was in the center, playing a string instrument and choosing the footwork. We watched the dance for a while before going back to our accommodations, where I took a nap, then sat on our porch and read.

Our first afternoon in Soppong was a little disorienting. We soon realized that we were not there to be entertained in any way and that we had to find things to do for ourselves. The community received us with what seemed to be indifference. After a somewhat boring afternoon sitting up on our porch, Albert invited us down to cook dinner. The kitchen was a separate structure with dirt floors and tarps hanging for walls. We sat on small stools on the floor, cutting up vegetables to make a soup: onion, tomato, mushrooms, cauliflower, aubergines, cilantro, parsley, dill, garlic, soy sauce, and coconut milk. We ate it with rice, and it was actually delicious. If nothing else knocked my socks off about Soppong, the food we ate was wonderful and filling. Despite the cold mountain air and numerous wake-up calls by roosters, we managed to sleep through the night.

I Heart Pai

2012-02-10T12:38:00.000-08:00

It’s been just over a year since the next part of my story. On February 7, 2011, we left early in the morning and boarded a bus from Chiang Mai to Pai. This bus trip was nothing like the last—this was no double-decker coach bus with snacks included. The bus was sort of like an old school bus in the US. Instead of AC, actual fans hung from the ceiling, and they were much needed—it was hot! The seats were hard and uncomfortable and the bus was crowded. Since we were heading further north and a little bit to the west, close to the Myanmar border, the bus stopped at a checkpoint and Thai military officials came on board to check passports. I was nervous at first, but they barely even looked at ours—it was enough that we were white and clearly tourists. They weren’t concerned about us.

When we arrived in Pai, I didn’t immediately recognize its charm. It was a very small town—the bus station was merely a parking lot squeezed between two buildings. It wasn’t clear where our hostel was, and some men on motor-taxis were busy trying to convince us that it was too far away to walk. Eventually, we figured it out, and headed across a rickety bamboo bridge and up a hill to the Darling View Guesthouse. Looking back on the trip, this was one of my favorite places. The Guesthouse was amazing. Up on a hill, it overlooked the valley and mountains beyond. It was facing the west, and each evening we were privy to amazing sunsets. As hot as it was during the day, it cooled down beautifully at night—it was one of the only times that we needed long pants and sweatshirts.

Our first night in Pai, we stayed in a dorm-style bedroom, with large, comfy mattresses on the floor. It felt so good to sleep in those beds, with the cool mountain air coming in through the window. The porch outside of our room was filled with hammocks and lounge chairs. We sat on the porch in the afternoon sun, relaxing and reading, and eating lunch. We took time to explore the town, then raced back up the hill to watch the sunset from the porch, and in the darkening night, headed back down the hill to town to eat dinner at what would become our favorite restaurant. I ordered the same meal nearly every time we went there: a Mango Delight fruit shake—made from mango, the reddest strawberries you’ve ever seen, and lime—and a sandwich of roasted eggplant, red peppers, and other vegetables with fresh greens and feta cheese. I would go back to Pai just to eat at that restaurant again!

Pai was a very hippie, very touristy town, and I’m not surprised that people traveled there to stay for long periods of time. There were many white people around, and many local businesses catered to tourists, which probably helped me ease into the completely different culture. That night, we walked around the night market, where Lisu Hill Tribe women sold handmade change purses and a local artist sold hand-painted postcards. Of course, there were also the cheap, touristy souvenirs, but there were certainly some beautiful handcrafted items.

Our first visit to Pai was brief, but we soon realized that we wanted to return. We left Pai the next morning after a breakfast of crepes with honey, watermelon, scrambled eggs, tomato, and pineapple juice. (I really ate big breakfasts while I was in Asia—it definitely gave me the energy I needed for a full day of traveling/touring/trekking.) Before we caught our bus to Soppong, I walked a mile to the post office to mail my first letter to Scott and a birthday present to my mother. The people at the post office were very helpful, but it was a new experience—I actually tied my package shut with a piece of string! It was my first of many visits to post offices in Asia so that my love letters could travel all the way to Culver Lake, New Jersey…

Huay Tung Thao

2012-01-15T10:11:00.000-08:00

On our second full day in Chiang Mai, I woke up feeling rather sick. Whether it was the ice in the Coke they gave me on the bus ride, the fried veggies I ate at the roadside stand on the way from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, or something else, I don’t know, but it was time for the antibiotics. I tried to nibble on some toast for breakfast, then went back to the hostel to lay down while Malone went off in search of a map.

When she returned, my stomach had started to settle, so we started to walk around town in search of a motorbike to rent. Everybody in Southeast Asia gets around on motorbikes. You’d be surprised how much can fit on one of these bikes that are smaller than a motorcycle but larger than a scooter. We saw whole families of five or more, including the pet dog, riding on them. Once, in Cambodia, I even saw someone transporting a slaughtered pig. They were dirt cheap to rent. The first place we stopped denied us because we told them we had never driven a motorbike before, but at the second place, we lied, and rented an old green Yamaha bike for less than $10. To fill the gas tank was less than $5, and the gauge stayed above the “Full” mark all day.

Malone drove us out of the city, forcing me to hold on tight. As we left the city limits, the drive became nicer, and we began to see some of the mountains and vegetation. We drove to Huay Tung Thao, a beautiful lake surrounded by mountains and lined with small bamboo huts. We chose one for ourselves, and though the sky was blue and it was a beautiful day, I stayed out of the sun because I was still feeling sick. Malone went swimming and attempted play with two Thai children who were swimming in their clothes. Even though I was too sick to partake, the scenery was beautiful. A young girl sold me watermelon in a plastic bag—the first of many such packets of tropical fruit I would buy. The rural surroundings and Thai families enjoying the day made me truly feel I was in a foreign place.

Later that day, we returned the motorbike by traveling down side streets (driving on the actually city streets wasn’t the easiest venture). We went to a smaller night market, closer to our hostel, where I drooled over the colorful bedspreads for sale (I wish I had bought one) and opted for two pillowcases and a mango-wood dish for my mom for her birthday. I went to an internet café after dinner—the first of many where I would spend at least an hour Skyping with Scott—and went to sleep for our last night in Chiang Mai, praying that the antibiotics would be more effective the next day.

This time last year...

2011-12-26T18:33:00.000-08:00

It’s been more than six months since I wrote about my trip to Asia. This time last year, I was in planning mode. I had just received my Lonely Planet guidebook for Christmas and was busy getting vaccinated, buying the right gear, packing, and saying my goodbyes to Scott. Now, I’m sitting at the dining room table with Scott as he grades papers, thinking that I should really be making a greater effort to put my trip into story format, complete with pictures. I think back on my trip so often—the landscapes, the people, the food, the weather, how much I missed Scott, my fears and anxieties, my excitement, what a completely different cultural experience it was. I don’t regret anything. I’d do it again. Sometimes, I want to go back, though when I left, I didn’t think I would miss it—the squat toilets; the impossibility of finding vegetarian food; the homesickness; hauling my 40+ pound pack around, day after day; always being on guard in case somebody was trying to rip us off (some of them succeeded); the long and uncomfortable bus rides… But every time I listen to my soundtrack of those months—the two mix CDs Scott had made me and Kiss Each Other Clean by Iron and Wine—I want to be back on one of those buses, staring out at the dry-season’s forests, the bamboo road-side stands filled with cheap snacks and spicy chicken soup, the stray dogs, and the motorbikes racing down curving highways. Maybe I’ll go back… one day.

Flower Festival

2011-06-05T14:15:00.001-07:00

On the 4th, we left Bangkok early and took a double-decker bus to Chiang Mai. The bus ride was about 10 hours long. Malone and I had the front seats on the upper deck, right behind the windshield. The ride began with an embarrassing incident: Malone and I were looking at our feet, for some reason—perhaps checking out bug bites or something of the like. As she did so, Malone stretched out her legs, inadvertently pointing her feet at a banner across the top of the windshield that read “Long Live the King!” Now, to point your feet at anything in Southeast Asia is comparable to flipping someone the bird. To point your feet at something that has to do with the king is maybe the most insulting thing you could do. The king is completely idolized. It’s even illegal to step on money in Thailand because the king’s image is on the money. An older Thai woman in the seat across from us began yelling at Malone in Thai until she put her feet down. I wonder what she said. Other than that, the bus ride was pretty uneventful. I tried to read, but couldn’t, because Thai pop music was blasting from every speaker. We didn’t pass much amazing scenery. It took us more than an hour to get out of greater Bangkok. We were given artificially flavored snacks and small bottles of fermented milk. (Yuck.) We stopped for lunch at a roadside restaurant, where I couldn’t find much to eat other than rice and a few fried vegetables. It was either that or the ice in the Cokes on the bus that we were given that made me sick for the duration of my time in Chiang Mai. It was also at that restaurant that I came upon my first squat toilet and was too shocked by it to actually relieve myself.

We arrived in Chiang Mai late and checked into the Little Bird Guest House, where we had reserved two beds in a six-person dorm. We had an uneventful evening and went to sleep. In the morning, we had breakfast at a restaurant called “The Wall” (as in Pink Floyd). This was the beginning of a streak of hearty American breakfasts: scrambled eggs, toast with butter and jam, orange juice, tea, and sometimes fruit or baked beans. I normally never eat breakfasts so big, but I suppose they really gave me the energy necessary for a day of traveling or sight-seeing. After we ate, Malone and I briefly visited a wat near our hostel. The wat was beautiful, and different from those we had seen in Bangkok. On the inside of the wat, behind several sitting Buddhas clothed in orange robes, was a beautiful landscape mural with a giant tree behind the central Buddha. When we had finished viewing the wat, we walked toward the center of the old city of Chiang Mai. Across the canal that borders the city, we came upon the parade of the Flower Festival.

A wat near our hostel

The Chiang Mai Flower Festival is an annual festival in February, when the cool season is ending and flowers are in full bloom. Plant and flower vendors set up stalls around the city, but our full attention was on the parade. When we saw the first float, we rushed to take pictures of it as it passed, not knowing that the parade would continue for hours. The float was covered with white, pink, orange, and purple flowers, and on top of it, men and women dressed in elaborate Thai costume, with detailed gold crowns atop their heads, danced. Each float that passed us by seemed more magnificent than the last. This post would be much better if I knew the names of the flowers that covered each float from top to bottom. Floats had flower sculptures of elephants, rabbits (it’s the year of the rabbit), naga (the mythical serpent found on many temples), peacocks, swans, Hindu gods and Buddhas, and detailed, colorful patterns. The floral scent was subtle, but the flowers themselves were so colorful, brilliant, and lively. Beautiful Thai women, with paper parasols to shield them from the hot sun, and men dressed in traditional costume sat on top of each float. Interspersed between the floats walked groups of people in traditional dress, carrying flowers in bowls, vases, or bouquets. There were dancing groups and marching bands in costume. Our favorite marching band, dressed in gray jumpsuits with red converse high-tops, played several Beatles songs. Monks in orange robes watched the parade from balconies or chairs on the sidewalks in front of temples.

Images from the Flower Festival

We walked in the direction from which the parade was coming, in order to see more. The streets were littered with stepped-on flowers, the sidewalks were crowded with both tourists and Thai people, and the sun was hot. We veered onto a side street and entered the fabric district, where colorful fabrics and hippie clothing hung from hangers outside store doors. We shopped a bit, went back to the main road and had lunch as the parade went by, and walked back toward the canal, where a market was set up with colorful bedspreads and pillowcases, jewelry, wooden instruments, shoes, pottery and wooden dishes, and more. After a rest at the hostel, we went back out to the Night Bazaar, where stalls lined the sidewalks. At first as we walked past the stalls, it looked like the goods being sold were original, but as we continued down the street, the same products kept popping up. We had our first experiences bargaining, always asking for a better price than what was offered and then meeting somewhere in the middle. The stalls were filled with clothes, sunglasses, shoes, bags, artwork, lanterns, toys, and other souvenirs. We didn’t buy much this night, but visited the Night Bazaar on another night in Chiang Mai. This night, we opted for massages. It was the only massage I got during my whole trip, though they only cost about $5 for an hour of massaging. I asked for a neck, shoulder, and back massage, but most of the massage was actually a head massage, and I felt like my masseuse was ripping out every single hair in my head. When she finished, she asked, “Do you want anything?” and, not realizing that the hour was up, I thought she was asking if I wanted her to focus on any specific part of my body. I said, “Sure, you can do my lower back for a bit.” She laughed at me and shook her head. It turned out she had only meant to ask if I wanted any water to drink. Embarrassing. We ended our second night in Chiang Mai with a late dinner—vegetarian Pad Thai and iced tea for me—and went back to the hostel to sleep.

Afternoon in Bangkok

2011-05-26T18:46:00.000-07:00

We entered the Grand Palace after walking down a dusty street where vendors sold clothing and sunglasses, or rented long pants and skirts so that tourists dressed inappropriately could enter the palace grounds. When we bought our tickets, a staff member made Malone readjust her fisherman pants so that they covered more of her calves. “More pretty!” he said.

Within the palace grounds, we began at Wat Phra Kaew, a large temple with blue, red, and gold mosaic pillars and small, gold, dragon-faced human-like statues lining the wall outside the entrance. We left our shoes with hundreds of others on the shelves outside of the temple and proceeded barefoot. Inside the temple, it was extremely crowded, so it was hard to even see the Emerald Buddha from where we stood at the back of the temple. The Buddha was small, but sat high on a gold throne, with lights shining on it. It was draped in gold robes and wore a gold headpiece, so only its green face revealed that the statue was carved from jasper. The Emerald Buddha, one of the most famous Buddhas in Thailand, was moved from northern Thailand, hidden in a layer of stucco. Lao forced sized the Buddha regardless of its disguise, but the Thais later recaptured it.

Outside of Wat Phra Kaew
We continued to walk around the temple grounds at Wat Phra Kaew—(a “wat” is a temple complex)—where each building was more beautiful and ornate than the last, if such a thing is possible. Murals depicting the Ramakian, the Thai version of the Ramayana, lined the inner temple walls. A model of Angkor Wat, which we would visit a month later in Siem Reap, Cambodia, was also in this temple complex. My favorite building was topped with a stupa that burst with colorful flower carvings, much like the flower-covered floats we would see in Chiang Mai during the flower festival. The intricacy and detail of the architecture inside this temple complex were almost unreal. Gold stupas, mirrored mosaics, gilded statues, and clinquant corners nearly filled my camera’s first memory card.

Stupas in the Wat Phra Kaew temple complex
From the temple grounds, we walked to the Grand Palace. It was hard to tell which building the Grand Palace actually was, but we couldn’t go inside anyway. There were two open rooms: one was a museum of old guns and pistols, and the other contained spears and other weaponry. I didn’t linger here very long, but wandered to a separate building which housed a museum filled with small and large Buddha statues, glassware and ceramics, beautiful teapots, and other artwork.

Next, we walked to Wat Pho. Along the way, we passed rows of people set up on the sidewalks with mats or tables, selling food or drinks or jewelry or trinkets or shoes or sunglasses or books or other odds and ends. Walking past all these vendors, a bird defecated on my left shoulder. Good luck, right? Except for the fact that not a single vendor had any paper napkins, and it took about 5 minutes of walking before I found someone selling tissues. We stopped on a lawn, facing the river, to rest before entering Wat Pho, one of the oldest and largest temples in Bangkok. Wat Pho is home to the reclining Buddha, a giant statue depicting the Buddha in the final stage: entering Nirvana. There aren’t really words to describe how immense this statue is. It’s at least three times the size I imagined it to be after looking at pictures. Though other Buddhas that we saw that day may have been more beautiful, this one was definitely the most impressive.

The Reclining Buddha
There were many other temples, Buddhas, and stupas in the Wat Pho complex. When visiting one temple, a man came up to us near the entrance and said, “Ladies! You need to cover up!” Malone was wearing a tank top, and the man gave her a scarf to cover her shoulders before entering the temple. Not sure if he intended both of us to wear a scarf (I was wearing a t-shirt), I asked if I needed one as well. The man laughed at me before he said, “No! You’re not sexy!” While the exteriors of the buildings in Wat Phra Kaew could not be matched for their beauty and intricacy, the interiors of the temples and the Buddhas at Wat Pho were perhaps more beautiful. Golden Buddhas, more than we could count, simply lined the walls of this temple complex.

Inside the Wat Pho temple grounds
When we left Wat Pho, we bought Cokes and walked to the river boat pier, then took a boat to the pier nearest Chinatown. The riverboats were crowded with tourists, locals, and Buddhist monks in their bright orange robes. It was Chinese New Year, and we hoped that an event would be happening near Chinatown, but we must have missed the parade, because only an award ceremony was taking place. We visited our last wat for the day, Wat Tramit, which houses the 3 meter tall Golden Buddha, which was very shiny and beautiful, but I guess we were a bit Buddha’d out. We headed back to our hostel with sore and dusty feet and dehydrated bodies, but thrilled at our first full day in Thailand.

The Golden Buddha

First Night and Morning in Bangkok

2011-05-24T14:56:00.000-07:00

After a layover in Hong Kong and arriving in Bangkok, Thailand around 8pm on the 2nd, our culture shock was minimal. It was easy to get our visas upon arrival, navigate the airport, find a taxi, and enjoy an amazingly cheap ride through the city to our hostel. The hostel itself—Cozy Bangkok Place—was clean and comfortable, with hot showers and sit-down toilets. (I would see my first squat toilet a few days later and leave without relieving myself—I wasn’t ready for it!) The only difference between this hostel and other hostels I’d been in was that no shoes were allowed past the lobby. Shoe lockers were provided to prevent people from bringing their shoes upstairs. We soon got used to this. Many places, including restaurants, internet cafes, guest houses, museums, and temples all prohibited the wearing of shoes indoors.

After dumping our backpacks in our room, we left the hostel to find some dinner. Our hostel was positioned near an alley-like street, which we walked down to reach a more central part of the city, near the Bangkok train station. Walking down the street, we kept close to the edges to let motorbikes pass. Families had brought folding tables out into the street, where they ate dinner. Potted plants lined the buildings and laundry hung from windows. Reaching a larger street, women sat on mats on the sidewalk, with wicker baskets filled with vegetables, rice, and eggs. We weren’t sure if they were there to prepare food and sell it, or if they were just having night picnics to celebrate the Chinese New Year. Our dinner options were limited to street food—which, throughout the trip, was predominantly meat and rice, usually prepared with chilies, with few vegetables such as bean sprouts or greens, and which I usually tried to avoid—and Hong Kong Noodle, a chain restaurant that we opted for. In the beginning of our trip, we were a little paranoid about food-borne illnesses, so we stuck to restaurants, which seemed safer. It wasn’t long before we became a bit more adventurous, however. At Hong Kong Noodle, we ate noodles with a mildly spicy peanut sauce, and I drank some disgustingly sweet lemongrass juice. We panicked for a little while about the ice in our drinks, but soon gave up our worries, went back to the hostel for much needed showers and much more needed sleep.

We woke up early the following morning, had a cup of tea in the hostel, and then set out. We crossed through the crowded intersection near the train station, where we had walked the night before. It was filled with brightly colored taxis, motorbikes, and tuk-tuks, the infamous 3-wheeled vehicles that transport you from point A to point B. I saw one tuk-tuk nearly tip over as it took a turn too fast, and said to Malone, “I’m definitely not getting in one of those.” Ha! They soon became our most common form of transportation, after buses, at least. A woman offered to help us find our way. We showed her our map out of politeness, because we knew where we were going; I think some people just see foreigners and jump on the chance to practice a little English. We soon walked on quieter streets, looking for breakfast. I had a hard time finding anything—most of it was chicken—but when we reached the pier, where we were to take a river boat to the Grand Palace, we stopped so Malone could eat something. I ended up getting a small plastic bag of sticky rice for 5 baht, which is about 15 cents. I borrowed one of Malone’s utensils to eat it; most people eat sticky rice with their fingers.

The crowded city streets of Bangkok

At the pier, we waited on the shaky dock for a little while before jumping on the Express River Boat. Taking these boats is an easy way to get around the city, avoiding the traffic of the streets. We passed Wat Arun, “Temple of the Dawn” on our left, a tall, intricate temple, then got off the boat a few stops up-river.

View of Wat Arun from the river boat

We found ourselves on a busy street corner, with the white walls enclosing the Grand Palace across the street. Before we could make our way there, however, a well-dressed man stopped us and asked to see our map. Now, the Lonely Planet guidebook warns travelers against well-dressed men asking to see your map. They take the map, circle points of interest, call a tuk-tuk driver to their side, shuffle you in, and then take a cut of pay after the driver brings you to gem outlets and other businesses that want nothing more than to scam you to get ahold of some of your Western money. It also told us to ignore anybody who told us the Grand Palace was closed. They sometimes use this excuse to get you to go to other sites in the city. But when this man told us that the Grand Palace wasn’t going to open til noon, because of the Chinese New Year, we sort of believed him. Maybe he was telling the truth. We couldn’t find out, because we didn’t end up going to the Grand Palace until after noon anyway. Because, as two smart young women, we gave the man our map, enjoyed a friendly conversation as he circled points of interest on our map, and then trusted him when he told us to take the navy blue tuk-tuks, instead of the colored ones, because they are the public tuk-tuks, cheaper than the private ones. Then we got in the tuk-tuk he waved down for us.

Our first tuk-tuk ride

Well, it was only 40 baht for the whole day. That’s about $1.30. And we didn’t really get scammed…we just had to awkwardly walk through a gem store and pretend we were interested before leaving without buying anything, despite the simultaneously angry and disappointed stares of the workers there. But our driver did bring us to some interesting temples. The first temple we went to was small, but its roof was beautiful, with mosaics made out of shiny pieces of glass and gilded edges. Inside this temple was the famous Black Buddha, which was brought to Bangkok more than 200 years ago, when it became the capital of Thailand. About 500 years old, the Black Buddha was once black. Now, it’s completely gold. Also known as the Lucky Buddha, people pray to it to cure ailments of themselves or their loved ones. If someone has a stomach problem, the person will pray to this Buddha, placing a thin, gold leaf on the Buddha’s stomach, pressing it there. At many of the temples we visited throughout our trip, it was possible to obtain a golden leaf, usually with sticks of incense, to make an offering and pray for a cure. But the Black Buddha is best known for this practice.

The Black Buddha

After this stop, we drove through the hot, dusty city streets, passing street vendors on the sidewalks and motorbikes on the streets, gas and diesel fumes everywhere, to the Sapphire and Ruby Emporium. We were expecting something like this; if our tuk-tuk was only 40 baht, there had to be some catch. We tried to tell our driver we didn’t want to go, but, as is often the case, he would receive a gas coupon for bringing tourists, so we went inside for a few minutes. Returning unscathed and with our wallets intact, we explained to him that we only wanted to go to temples. He tried several times to take us to a travel deal/coupon business, but we declined.

Our next stop was Wat Saket, a temple with winding staircases and a giant gold stupa. We began walking up one of the staircases, surrounded by flowers and other plants, before we realized that it was the “down” staircase, so we turned around. At the bottom of the staircase, a beggar squatted, wearing a sarong and with rags wrapped around his ankles and dirty feet. A bowl sat in front of him to collect change. It seemed like an innocent, sad scene, until I noticed that his slightly enlarged penis was completely exposed. Maybe I shouldn’t even use the word “slightly.” I don’t know. I shifted my eyes away from him as quickly as I could. Malone hadn’t noticed, and I hurried to catch up with her before we ascended steps on the other side of the temple. Bells lined the walkway to the top of the temple, and as people walked by, they rang each bell in a row. Other walkways were lined with metal bowls, in which people dropped coin after coin, enjoying the clinking and clattering as they made their offerings. At the top of the temple, pillars of lucky bells stood at the four corners surrounding the stupa, connected by strings where people clipped paper money. Messages were written on the bells, and other Buddhist statues were placed around the stupa. Inside the temple were rich dark green and gold Buddhas. The temple was extremely crowded; probably because it was Chinese New Year. Many people were there to make offerings and prayers for the new year.

Offerings at Wat Saket

When we left Wat Saket (we descended the correct staircase and found that the beggar had covered himself up), we found our tuk-tuk driver, who drove us back to the corner near the entrance of the Grand Palace. We paid our driver and stopped for lunch—I had green curry, which was a little too spicy, and a lime soda—before entering the Grand Palace.

New Places

2011-05-23T18:51:00.001-07:00

Is it strange to blog about my trip to Southeast Asia after it already happened? I never even finished writing about Australia: arriving in Sydney in the cool winter air, spending the day in the sunshine in the gardens and by the harbor, running into Avery near the ferry station in a small suburb of the city, eating fresh spring rolls and grilled cheese on the rooftop of our hostel; or about my trip to New Zealand when Kelly and I left Sydney together: flying over the green islands near Auckland at sunset, visiting volcanic islands and bird sanctuaries, the cliff-hugged coast at Dunedin, and the snow-capped mountains of Queenstown. And there have been so many places in between: a small, Bavarian town in Germany; the extravagant palaces of Austria; the Matterhorn in Switzerland; a small, quiet beach and mangrove-lined river in Jamaica; the cloud forests of Monteverde, Costa Rica; the beaches and Gulf of Mexico in Sarasota; the city sidewalks of London; the white cliffs at Dover; the cobblestone streets of Canterbury; the pebbled beach at Brighton; the craggly mountains of Snowdonia in Wales; the bioluminescent bay in Vieques, Puerto Rico.

I’ve been so lucky to have traveled to so many places, and that’s what I created this blog for: my journeys to new places. So I’ll continue it, just skipping a little bit in between, and write about my most recent trip—my Southeast Asian Odyssey, which has left me $2,000 in debt to my mother and no closer to finding a job, but filled and exhilarated by the experience.

I suppose my adventure began before I arrived. On February 1st, flying some 30,000 feet up in the air, I was conflicted about my feelings. My sadness at leaving Scott had somehow quelled much of my enthusiasm for the trip, and I was waiting for excitement to arrive. As dusk turned into the deep blue that lingers for only moments before night’s blackness arrives, I looked out the jet’s window to see Greenland below me. It felt like I was so low in the sky, but it was just because the mountains were so big. Completely white, and bright amongst the shadowy blues of the night, the snow-covered mountains lined dark rivers and snowy beaches. Icebergs dotted the black water, and icy glaciers filled gorges. Though they move slowly, I could tell from above the patterns in which the masses of snow and ice flowed. It was so peaceful, the night sky and bright stars perfectly matching the dark water and wintery whites.

How lucky I was! On my way to visit a tropical region—rainforests, beaches, reefs, hot cities—I looked down upon a quiet winter landscape, more beautiful than any ice or snow I’d ever seen. There’s something about seeing a new place that makes you realize, at the same time, both how large and how small the world is.

New South Wales

2009-07-30T11:18:00.001-07:00

Well, I never finished my story.

When we left Brisbane, it was cloudy, and it got dark fast. Then it started to rain. Then it started to POUR. Tim called me and told me that there was severe flood warnings for the area, and the roads were pretty dangerous, so we only drive for about two hours before we pulled over in Southport and decided to stay at a hostel for the night instead of camping. The hostel we found was one of the dodgier hostels we’d stayed in, mainly because the sheets were a little gross and the room smelled quite badly of mildew and stinky feet. But we cooked some pasta and ate on the porch with the rain and wind outside, and got a good night of sleep.

In the morning, it was sunny, and Eva drove south through Surfer’s Paradise. The landscape had definitely changed from Queensland. The area was more developed and looked much more Westernized. We didn’t stop. We started driving West to go to Nimbin, a town famous for marijuana and other such substances. Anders had spent a few days there during ISP and was offered to buy drugs three times during his first hour in the town. (He didn’t, of course.) It was a long, windy drive to Nimbin, but it was absolutely beautiful. The landscape was much different from North Queensland, but in some places the vegetation almost reminded me of home. It was very hilly, and there was a lot of forest and many farms. Everything was the wet new green after a rainstorm. Parts of the road were a bit flooded (Nimbin had been evacuated a couple of days prior due to the flooding), and we literally had to ford some streams with the good old station wagon. It was pretty bizarre. When we finally made it to Nimbin, we parked the car and got out to walk around. The town was basically just one main street, lined with hippie shops: hippie clothing stores, spiritual bookstores, organic food and supplies stores, a bong shop, music stores, and arts and crafts galleries. Almost every shop had a colorful mural or painting above it. We all did a little bit of souvenir shopping, checked out the art galleries, and then had veggie sandwiches and pancakes at a little café. We also checked out the Nimbin Museum, as cluttered as it was colorful. The museum was about eight rooms, and everything inside was painted from the floor to the ceiling with murals and quotes. Newspaper clippings covered some walls, artifacts others, and just plain weird shit covered the majority of the museum. We were offered pot several times outside of the museum, as well as pot cookies outside of the public bathrooms, but we declined all offers and got back in the car.

I drove out of Nimbin. We found a much easier road to leave the town by, so we didn’t have to cross anymore streams, and those in the backseat weren’t getting carsick anymore. However, I drove in about one million directions because every road we took to try to get back onto the Pacific Highway was closed because of flooding. We wasted so much time trying to get on the closed road that we had to completely bypass the Gold Coast, Byron Bay, and all of the other beaches in that area. (Byron Bay is where the abroad program I originally applied for was held. It’s also the eastern most point on the continent.) I was getting fairly stressed of passing through the same roundabouts one million times to try to find a place to go, so Steve took over. We determined that we had to head West in order to head South to get to Sydney by 3PM the next day. We drove past nightfall and ended up camping in Uralla. It was our last night of camping, and it was COLD. It was late Autumn at this point, and we were heading closer and closer to the South Pole. We could see our breath in the starry night, and we put on as many layers as possible to cook our last campside meal before we headed into our tents. I pulled my sleeping bag completely over my head, but was still shivering all night. I was very happy to wake up in the morning to put away our tents (for the last time) and get in the warm car, with the sun rising over the New South Wales landscape.

Leaving Queensland: Tin Can Bay to Brisbane

2009-07-02T19:55:00.000-07:00

We woke up in Tin Can Bay to an absolutely beautiful sunny morning. We had slept in til almost eight, and we took our time getting ready, hanging out damp clothes and towels on top of our tents and the car to dry in the sun. The people who worked at the caravan park told us about a dock where they feed dolphins every morning at about seven, (which we had clearly missed), but when we left, we drove by in case any dolphins were still there. There weren’t any, but the bay was really pretty in the morning.

From Tin Can Bay, I drove us south to Noosa Head. We were now on the Sunshine Coast. It was a very pretty drive. Noosa is a ritzy town that has more roundabouts than any other city in Queensland, and maybe the whole country, I forget. Maybe even in the world! I navigated us through so many roundabouts we were dizzy. Once we found a place to park at Noosa Head, we got out of the car. The town was really cute, but it looked a bit expensive. We walked down to the beach and walked along the sand to the other side of town. The waves were huge. People were surfing—it was the first surfing we had seen in Australia. (Further north, there aren’t big enough waves on the coast because the GBR blocks them.) Surfers wore wetsuits and carried their boards along a pretty, wooded path alongside the curvy road on their way to the beach. We were walking on the very top of the beach, near the rocks, when a huge wave came in. There was nowhere to escape. I was up to my waist in unexpected ocean water, and absolutely covered in sand. It was an uncomfortable walk back to the car, but we got into dry clothes, and Kelly drove us to another side of town, where we walked along Sunshine Beach, which was absolutely beautiful. We then went to a cute coffee shop where I ate some pretty fancy banana bread before getting back on the road.

The drive from Noosa down to Redcliffe was absolutely the most gorgeous drive. We passed the Glass House Mountains, where I wish we could have stopped. On our right, the sun was setting, and the sky was a brilliant yellow of golden light. It was raining a little bit, and on our left, up the lit-up, dew-dropped greenness of the cane fields, a rainbow shone out of grey clouds. As we drove, the rainbow grew taller and taller. It arched around and reached the ground on both sides. It was the largest rainbow I’ve ever seen. As we drove further, a second rainbow began to double over the first. I was glad Kelly was driving, because I could not stop looking at the scenery and wouldn’t have been paying any attention to the road. We got to Redcliffe past nightfall, where we just stopped for a short walk on the pier before continuing to Brisbane.

We got a little bit lost driving into Brisbane, but after a short detour which actually took us around the perimeter of the city, we made it to Kelly’s friend Dan’s apartment. We went inside, where we met Dan’s cousin Jackie, an immense Maori woman with a beautiful face and long black hair. Soon after, we drove to downtown Brisbane, which was really just like any other city, to have dinner at Bow Thai. Steve paid for my green curry, which he owed me after our sky-diving bet. After dinner, we headed back to the car and waited on the street to meet my friend Tim. Tim came to New Jersey during the summer of 2006 for about two months, and we had spent a fair amount of time together at Culver Lake. I hadn’t seen him since, but he and his friend Matt met me in Brisbane. I said goodbye to Kelly, Steve, and Eva for the night (they were staying at Dan’s), and Tim and Matt and I walked to Tim’s car.

Tim drove the three of us up to Mount Coolth (or something like that), where we could see a view of the city all lit up at night. It was sort of a hilarious drive to get there, because Matt was giving directions from the back seat, but wasn’t really paying attention, and it took much longer than it should have to get up the mountain. But we made it. We ordered coffee at a small café on top of the mountain, a skill I never mastered in Australia; what I wanted was a plain black coffee, and what I got was a luke-warm small puddle of espresso. Yuck. It was a bit chilly on top of the mountain, so we didn’t stay too long, but we did get a good view of Brisbane. When we left, Tim dropped Matt off at his house and we went to Tim’s dad’s house for the night. For the first time since homestay, I had my own room! I stayed in Tim’s brother’s room with a bed all to myself. Before bed, Tim and I talked for almost two hours, just catching up on the past three years of our lives since we had last seen each other. It was really nice.

I definitely slept in the next morning. It was wonderful. I was so warm and comfortable and relaxed. In the morning, Tim, the best host ever, made me a breakfast of orange juice, toast with butter and jam, and instant coffee (the only kind they drink, basically). We ate on the back deck. It was a pleasant, slow morning. Unfortunately, the koalas that Tim had nearly guaranteed would be outside our windows in the trees in the morning were completely absent. Because I had never seen a koala in the wild, Tim was determined to find me one. After showers and packing up, we headed out to Redlands IndigiScapes Centre, an area of restored forest and gardens where koalas could often be found. We walked through some of the walking trails, but all of the koalas must have been hiding from the rain, because we could not find any. When it started to pour, we ran back to the car. Luckily, Tim’s friend Taco, who knew we were on a koala hunt, gave us a call. He had found one in a park near his house. We drove over to Taco’s and walked to the end of his street where I saw my first koala, about one million feet up in the tallest eucalyptus tree in the world. It was nothing but a wet gray blob swaying among wet gray branches. But it was a koala, nonetheless.

Believe it or don't, but there is a koala in that tree.

After our semi-successful koala hunt, Tim and I headed off on an American food hunt, where we obtained bagels and Dr. Pepper. I have no idea why they don’t have bagels in Australia. They don’t have Dr. Pepper because there is a medicine that tastes very similar to it, and the soda went bankrupt there because people associated it with being sick. But Tim knew where to find it, and it was delicious. The bagels were stale, but I got them at a severe discount because I complained. They man at the bakery was like, “Bagels are supposed to be a little bit hard…” and in my head I was thinking, “These are the only five bagels in the entire country. Don’t tell ME what a bagel is supposed to be like.” But I didn’t say that.

Tim drove me back into the city to Dan’s apartment, where I met up with Kelly, Steve, and Eva again. We said our goodbyes to Dan and Tim and Steve drove us into the night, leaving Queensland, the state we had lived in for the past four months.

Fraser Island

2009-06-30T20:30:00.000-07:00

We woke up very early in Hervey Bay and met with the rest of our safari group in the bar of Beaches, the hostel we stayed at. It felt like we were back under restricted supervision again, because we were guided in making tons of decisions, like who would drive and what groceries we would buy, and then we were packed into the 4WD Land Rovers to drive to the 4WD company where we were instructed in all sorts of safety procedures and what not to do on the island. It basically went like this: “If you don’t do exactly what we tell you, you WILL die.” We were taught how to pack the vehicles, given our camping gear, and we drove off to the ferry.

It was a misty morning, and the ferry ride was rather cold and miserable. By the time we got to Fraser Island, it was raining quite heavily, and as we drove through the rainforest on bumpy dirt roads, it began to pour. On our first drive, we were supposed to make several stops: Eli Creek, the shipwreck, and the Pinnacles, but high tide was early, and we had to have the car off the beach (the road) by 1 o’clock. And it was pouring. So we just drove to our campsite at Cathedral Beach. There were eleven people in our car (Group B), and another eleven people in Group A. In addition to me, Steve, Eva, and Kelly, we also had Dilan from Germany; Maggie and Anita from Ireland; Paddy, Tom, and Scott from England; and Rob from Sweden. When we got to our campsite, the rain was bucketing from the sky, and we only had a small pavilion of 4 picnic tables to keep us dry. Tom made a genius comment as we huddled under the pavilion. Something like, “Great. Our group is mostly girls, and it’s going to take forever to pitch a tent with them, and the tents are going to get soaking wet.” So, what happens? Kelly, Eva, and I (with the help of Steve) pitch two of the 6-person tents in HALF the time that Tom, Scott, and Rob pitch the third. I put Tom in his place after THAT incident.

Basically we were soaking wet all afternoon, and as there was nothing to do other than hang out under a pavilion, everyone began drinking by about 3 in the afternoon. I was a little bummed about the situation, but after dinner, we discovered that three of the guys who had stayed in our hostel at Cairns were in the other group of 22 people who had arrived the night before, so we got to spend some unexpected time with them. A couple of dingoes came right up to our campsite, too, so it was cool to see them. We’d only ever seen them on the roadside as we drove past before. We were all really tired from waking up so early and from driving for so long the day before, so we went to bed early in our wet tents.

We woke up early, too. Day Two on Fraser was a bit more exciting. The sun actually peeped through the clouds, and we filled our day with seeing everything we were supposed to see that day, and everything we had missed the day before. We began by walking up Indian Head, a cliff jutting out into the ocean. The view was beautiful both from the beach and from the top of the cliff, looking out to sea. The sun came out and was shining on the wet grass, and everything was so bright and sun-warmed. After Indian Head, we drove to the Rock Pools. Lumps of rock broke the incoming waves enough that they protected the beach, but water from huge waves slid over the rocks and formed cold pools in the sand. I didn’t go swimming, but others did. I just laid on the rocks and let the sun warm me up.

After the Rock Pools, we made up for what we missed the day before. We stopped at the shipwreck (a steamship from the 1930s that crashed onto the sand island) to take pictures; walked through the freezing cold water of Eli Creek, past walking palms with aerial roots; and walked through the sand in front of the red-rock Pinnacles. We had to get our car off the beach again for high tide, so we drove back to the campsite, but I went back down to the beach with some of our group. We tried playing Frisbee, but it was very windy, so Kelly, Steve, Eva, and I went for a walk on the beach. The waves were very strong, and the sky was a mix of cloudy darkness and sunny blue that so much depth to it beyond the waves. It was a gray beach day, but it was beautiful nonetheless. Our night at the campsite was similar to the one before…a group dinner with lots of alcohol before, during, and after. Our tent wasn’t as wet on our second night though, and we got a good night’s sleep.

Day Three on Fraser was mostly spent in the car. We had to drive back the way we came, through the forest to the ferry terminal, but we stopped at three lakes on our way. We only stopped briefly at the first two, to take pictures, but we stayed a while at Lake Mackenzie, the third stop. Lake Mackenzie was probably the most beautiful of the three, with a pure white sand beach and crystal clear water, but it was my least favorite stop because it was so crowded. I walked to the far end of the beach to get away from the noise of all the other people and the smell of cigarette smoke, and a little bit of a Zen moment by myself in the sand. The water was freezing cold, so I only went up to my ankles, but others swam there, because the sun was finally out for good. When we left the lake, we drove to the ferry, and had a much sunnier ferry-ride back to Hervey Bay.

Once we returned to the hostel, we unloaded everything we owned in the parking lot and repacked all our suitcases, cleaned out the car, and packed the car so well that we could actually see out the back window for the very first time. Steve started to drive south, and we ended up pulling into a caravan park at Tin Can Bay after buying groceries for the night. We set up our tents and cooked a Mexican feast in the picnic area, which was lighted AND had two burners. The bathrooms were amazing clean and spacious, and we were full and happy and decided to sleep in the next morning, happy to be in our own dry tents.

Townsville to Hervey Bay

2009-06-22T16:32:00.000-07:00

Well, I wasn’t expecting to spend too much time in Townsville, but when we had stopped in Cardwell, I had tried to make lunch plans with Russ and Ian. Russell wasn’t free for lunch, so we had to do dinner instead, which meant that we spent the whole afternoon in Townsville. Steve drove down the mountain from Wallaman Falls, and then Eva drove into Townsville.

We hung out on the Strand for a little while, as we waited to try to get our car’s headlights fixed, but that was a failure. We looked at a few guidebooks to continue planning the next day or two. Andrew, Janni, and David, my friends from the Reef Lodge, came to hang out with us for a bit. At five, we headed to Flinders Street to listen to some live music at Monsoon’s, the bar that Sam, Geneveve, and I hung out at on our first night in Townsville. Sam’s music business, Humble Pine, was hosting the live music, so I got to see Sam and Ben, and I also got to see Sam perform for the first time. We just relaxed out on the deck, listening to music, watching the sky change colors over the harbor as the sun set.

At about six-thirty, Russ, Ian, and Graeme met us for dinner. It felt to us like our program hadn’t ended yet, but it was strange to be there all together without Tony and the rest of the group. Nevertheless, it was a great treat to spend some more time with Russ and Ian. They are the two people I will always miss the most about Australia and one of the main reasons I would like to return.

I was truly happy to be back in Townsville and to see everyone that I had already said goodbye to. Our whole road trip was like a short transition of saying goodbyes, because we did a few at a time. Saying goodbye to Russ and Ian again was easier this time than it had been the first time, because we weren’t saying goodbye in an emotional group of 14 Americans leaving a country they loved. It was just us, this time. Ian gave me the biggest hug ever; I don’t think I’ve ever had a bigger hug than that. Andrew, Janni, and David also came back to our car to say goodbye to me again. Ian led us out to the highway, with Kelly driving, and pulled over as we got on the highway and waved goodbye. I will always remember his face, waving out his car window, a smile on his face, looking regal in his cowboy hat and perfectly happy with his life.

Kelly and I tag-teamed that night to get us to MacKay, five hours south of Townsville. We got there at about two o’clock in the morning, when we pulled into a caravan park to camp for the night. Steve and Eva slept in the backseat so that we could get up early, at about 6:30 the next morning, to continue driving. We drove through the “horror strip” during the day, a strip of road that Russell had warned us not to traverse during the night. He even told us not to get out of our car while we were driving through this part, because people had left their cars to go pee in the bush before and never returned. We did stop at a bathroom on the way, but there were no casualties, other than the loss of Kelly’s favorite hat.

We drove all day; we were on a mission. We got to Hervey Bay in the evening, where we stayed at a hostel. The next morning, we were going on our 4WD camping safari on Fraser Island for three days.

Road Trip: Sky Diving and Wallaman Falls

2009-06-18T20:44:00.000-07:00

So, Steve drove us to the airport in Tully, where we would be boarding a small plane, only to jump out of it once it reached 14,000 feet in the air. We were to sky dive on Mission Beach: we would jump out over the ocean, overlooking the reef, and land on the beach. When we left Eddy Bay, it was a little bit cloudy, and we were nervous about whether the weather would be nice enough to dive or not (after all, Tully is the other “wettest” city of Australia). As we drove, the sky cleared up, and it became a beautiful sunny day.

At the airport, as we signed our lives away, we met Lauren and Avery, as well as Avery’s sister, and another friend, Tom. The eight of us were going to jump out of the plane together. There was a bit of confusion, which involved Kelly, Steve, Eva, and I driving our station wagon about 20 minutes to the landing site at Mission Beach, then taking a bus back to Tully. We were supposed to hang out at the beach and have lunch there, because the rest of our group was taking a bus there to hang out, but we accidentally went right back to the airport and just had to sit around hungry for a few hours, and we didn’t have any food or anything because it was all in our car at Mission Beach.

But finally, we were all harnessed up and sent to board our plane. There were no seats in the plane, so we had to sit in two rows, basically straddling each other. The diver that I was attached to was named Ben, and he was very friendly and laid back. I wasn’t very nervous at all to begin with, but I’m sure Ben’s personality helped with that. When the plane took off, the divers left the door to the plane open! It was a little bit disconcerting. The air coming in was cold. Ben had a watch on his wrist that showed the altitude, and it was crazy to watch how high into the air we climbed. 4,000 feet in the air seemed extremely high, but we went all the way to 14,000! When we finally reached 14,000 feet, the scariest part was watching the first couple of people jump out of the plane. Avery’s sister, Kelsey, was first, and I just remember seeing her face as the pair fell out upside down. I was also amazed at how quickly it all happened: each pair jumped right after the other! I was the fifth person to jump out. Ben and I tumbled out of the plane for a little bit before he pulled the tiny parachute that stabilizes you. I may have had my eyes closed for the first part, or maybe it was just too disconcerting to realize what I was seeing, but I’m sure we were upside down at one point. We then proceeded to fall for a full 60 seconds—from 14,000 to 4,000 feet—before Ben pulled the parachute. I was really calm for the whole fall. I had bet Steve that if I didn’t scream, he would have to buy me dinner. Well, he bought me dinner. I didn’t even have an adrenaline rush! It was just the sea air soaring into my lungs and the ocean coming close and close. I guess it took my breath away a little at first, but as soon as I got used to the falling feeling and began to settle into it, Ben pulled the parachute. He began to make turns with it, but I asked him to stop because I get motion sickness. A benefit of not turning was that we got to be up in the air much longer, just gliding down to earth. (Turning the chute makes you come down faster.) At one point, Kelly sailed by, right below me. It was so strange to be in the middle of the air and close enough to talk to somebody. I felt like I could put my feet down on top of her parachute.

I was glad that I got to stay up in the air longer. I was the last person to land. When we jumped, I had been told to look toward the horizon instead of straight down so I could see more, but I had completely forgotten to do that. This extra time allowed me to really soak in the view—mostly the ocean, but also the beach and rainforest. It looked like we were going to land in the ocean, but we swung down onto the beach where everyone was waiting. We all hung out on the beach in the sun for an hour or two before we said our goodbyes to Avery, Lauren, and the rest, and hopped back into our station wagon.

When we left Mission Beach, I drove for the first time. It was easier than I thought it would be. The main thing to be careful about is hugging the left side of the road, but we all put on our wipers instead of our signal a couple of times. I drove into Cardwell—the same place I had stopped at to and from Townsville on the Greyhound bus. The sun was setting behind the forest, and the sky was absolutely beautiful over the water and Hitchenbrook Island. I walked out onto the pier to take some photos, and called Russell and Ian to make plans for the next day in Townsville. We bought a few groceries for dinner, and then continued driving to Wallaman Falls.

The roads to Wallaman were long, empty, and dark. Twice while I was driving, the headlights on the car went out completely when I had the brights on. The first time, when I turned the brights off, the headlights went back on immediately, so I decided to just drive with my hand on the signal so I could turn them off immediately if it happened again. However, the second time it happened, the lights remained off for a good six seconds after I had turned the brights off! It was super dangerous, so we decided to just not use them. I had to drive up the windy mountain to the top of Wallaman Falls without them. At one point, Kelly shone her flashlight out of the window, and it shone further ahead than our headlights did!

We set up camp in the dark again. The sky was very starry and absolutely beautiful, but it was cold on top of the tablelands. We cooked pasta in the dark and went to bed. In the morning, there was dew everywhere. The sun began to warm things up when it rose over the trees, and we had breakfast and packed up the car. We did a short walking track through the rainforest to some granite rock pools, then drove to the lookout point for Wallaman Falls, the tallest waterfall in Australia at 268 meters. The gorge was immense. We felt like we were at the Grand Canyon, it was so big. We didn’t have time to walk to the bottom of the falls, which would have been nice, but the view was still amazing. It was nice to just relax and be in nature for a little while after being in Cairns and doing work for so long.

After enjoying the falls, we got back in the station wagon to continue our journey. Next stop: Townsville.

Road Trip: Babinda Boulders and Eddy Bay

2009-06-17T20:14:00.000-07:00

I am posting this entry a little bit after-the-fact, but I decided it wasn’t fair to inform everyone of all my adventures with SIT and not write about my independent adventures.

After the program ended, Steve, Eva, Kelly, Lauren, and I planned to complete a road trip in a camper van from Cairns to Sydney. We planned to pick our Camperman camper up on the 14th (after saying good-bye to the five people who left on the group flight, and others who were leaving on their own travels), and head out that day. We went to pick it up at noon ($20 taxi ride) but it wasn’t yet ready. Kelly and Eva went back at 3:30 to pick it up, only to find that the van was a manual…which none of us knew how to drive. This was frustrating to us because the man who booked it for us, Andy, had promised us an automatic vehicle. It turns out they don’t even manufacture these campers as automatics. (That guy clearly knew what he was doing.) Kelly tried learning to drive it in the parking lot, but decided she was way too uncomfortable to be driving a huge van on the other side of the road in a foreign country in manual.

SO, Plan B. We booked another night at the Greenhouse in Cairns, (which was actually nice, because we got to spend a little bit more time with the people still there: Anders, Avery, Sam, and Geneveve). We booked a station wagon with camping gear to pick up the next day. Lauren decided to back out and get a bus ticket down the coast instead, because the station wagon would be extremely cramped and she has a bad back and didn’t want to camp the entire trip.

On the fifteenth, we went to pick up our vehicle. Now, Andy had told us that this car would NOT have a tape deck, only a CD player. So, we went to the trouble of buying a radio adaptor for our i-pods, even though we already had a tape-deck adaptor. Of course, we get the car and find out that it does indeed have a tape deck, and no CD player to be found. We also went through a lot of trouble filling out the paperwork to rent the car. They would ONLY accept a credit card for some insurance thing, and none of us had one. They wouldn’t take debit, cash, check, anything. So Kelly had to call her parents (even though it was after midnight at home), and they had to scan their passports, driver’s licenses, and credit card number, just so that we could get the car. Kelly was the first to drive on the left side of the road, and we drove our new pal, a red Ford Falcon, back to the hostel to pack it up. The station wagon was COMPLETELY packed. We couldn’t have fit anything else if we tried. At some points in the trip, when we packed it extremely well, we had about three inches to look out the back windshield. Eva went to return the i-pod radio adaptor, we did some food shopping, packed the car, said goodbyes, and left Cairns around 4:00 in the afternoon.

Kelly drove out of the city and we headed south on Route 1, the Bruce Highway. It was a beautiful day, and we drove past the rainforest-covered mountains of the area and the sun-lit sugar cane fields. Our first stop was at Babinda Boulders, a place Tony had recommended. (Babinda competes with Tully for the “wettest” place in Australia… the two cities have the highest rainfall each year.) We walked along a path through the rainforest at dusk. The path ran alongside a heavy-flowing creek, where huge granite boulders caused the water to churn and froth. The boulders formed really pretty rock pools in some places. We were going to camp at the boulders, because it was free, but all of the free campsites were taken and we didn’t want to risk getting caught, so we kept driving south to Eddy Bay.

It was a good thing, too! The caravan park we camped at was right on the beach. We could hear the waves from our tent. We set up camp in the dark, then went down to some picnic tables by the beach to cook our first dinner on our propane stove. It was late, so we didn’t want to get too extravagant; we just made cous-cous with some spices and things, then tea. We went to bed soon after. We woke up in the morning and began to pack away our campsite. It was about 8 o’clock, and we had about a two-hour drive to get to Tully, where we were going to go sky-diving. We had to be there by 11 o’clock. So we’re packing up our tents when out of the bushes pop…

TWO CASSOWARIES! Eva heard a rustling in the grasses, and we all looked up to see a large, brownish bird step out of the bushes. I wasn’t sure what it was at first—it resembled some combination of goose or stork—but then its father stepped out of the grasses behind it: a full grown male cassowary. They approached us slowly. “Keep something between you and the cassowary,” Steve calmly reminded us, and we got behind the car or inside of it to take photos. Now, for those of you who don’t know what a cassowary is, just keep in mind the fact that they have a huge talon that could gut a human being in one swipe. So we’re safe behind our car doors, taking photos. At one point, the father separated from his baby. Each was on the opposite side of our neighbor’s car. I thought the father was panicking because he couldn’t see his baby—he began to jump and attack the car, leaving a foot-long scratch on it—but he probably just saw his reflection in the tinted window.

I was standing behind the car and looking out over the top when I noticed a second father cassowary with a baby further down near the beach! I was super surprised to see a second pair (though we were surprised to see the first! These birds are rare!) because the birds are so territorial. I was right: as the second father approached our part of the campsite, the two began to get very angry with each other. We crouched in our car to watch them fight. Once, one of the babies attacked one of the fathers. He basically ran and jumped on him, and the father ran off. Other times, the baby nearest us would just plop down on the ground to wait. “Come on, Dad, I’m bored. Let’s move on. Get this fight over with already.”

One pair of cassowaries climbed up onto a small ridge while the other pair stayed below. Each patrolled back and forth, neither willing to go up or down, but neither willing to sacrifice their territory. After crouching in the car for so long without the cassowaries leaving, we decided we had to get our tents packed away so we could get on the road. It was an interesting few minutes as we began to take the tent down, then ran back to the car as the cassowaries came nearer, then back to the tent, back to the car… Eva and Kelly were in the middle of the lawn, when they had just finished putting away Eva and Steve’s tent, when one pair of cassowaries charged! I was safe in the car, but shouted “Guys! Look out!” in a most frightened voice. I’ve never seen any two people look more terrified in my life. Luckily, the cassowaries just charged past them, chasing a car up the drive.

Eventually, we made our way out of Eddy Bay and headed toward Tully for our sky-diving adventure. Steve drove this time. Our road trip was off to an excellent start – seeing those cassowaries so closely was probably the coolest wildlife experience we’d had. Their black feathers, fluffed up when they were angry; the large scales on their thick legs; their bright wattles; their prehistoric helmets and large beaks… We were truly lucky to experience those moments. Before, we had only seen a fleeting glimpse of a cassowary, about 100 yards away, on our rainforest trip. This was so much more amazing.

Story Eight: A Night of Tagging

2009-05-25T00:41:00.000-07:00

Helping with Chelonia’s rescue was the first experience Delaney had with a sea turtle. She had taken a year off from her university studies in upstate New York and flown to Queensland to help with Craig’s research and volunteer at the Coral Ocean Aquarium and North Queensland Turtle Hospital. Watching Craig, Emily, and Dr. Bryson work on Chelonia, treating her injuries, giving her medicine, and feeding her, was inspiring. It saddened Delaney that the turtle had been left for dead after the boat ran over her, and that if Chelonia was breeding this year, she wouldn’t be able to lay the rest of her eggs. But Delaney was proud of the volunteer work that she would be doing in the coming months, and she was excited to participate in sea turtle research and conservation.

The evening after the rescue, Delaney met Craig at the aquarium. “Emily’s on her way,” Craig told her. “I got a call this morning from an Aboriginal man. He said he wants to come out tagging with us tonight.”

“Sounds good,” Delaney said. “What got him interested?”

“He just said he wanted to help conserve the species. It’s not uncommon for Indigenous people to want to get involved. They’re in the perfect position to be stewards for the species, and it’s important for them that a stable population of turtles is maintained so they can continue hunting them as they have always done,” Craig explained.

Emily rushed through the aquarium’s automatic doors. “Sorry I’m a bit late,” she said. “My parents kept me at dinner.”

“That’s okay. We’re on Murri time tonight,” Craig smiled. “A bloke who calls himself Blue Eyes is meeting us at the beach. You girls ready?”

The trio got into Craig’s pick-up and headed out to the same beach where Chelonia had been found. The sun had set before they arrived, and a deep violet dusk covered the empty beach. Craig handed each of them a small torch, covered with red cellophane to limit the brightness and glare. He brought his clip-board and data sheet down to the beach, and Delaney and Emily followed.

Blue Eyes was sitting at the top of the beach. He stood when he heard the others approaching.

“How ya goin’?” Craig asked, holding out his hand.

Blue Eyes shook his hand. “Good, thanks.”

“This is Emily and Delaney,” Craig introduced the girls. “Emily is working on her Ph.D. on sea turtles, and Delaney is here volunteering.”

“Nice to meet you,” Blue Eyes said.

“Nice to meet you, too,” the girls both answered.

The group all sat down at the top of the beach to wait. For the most part, Blue Eyes was silent. Craig and Emily chatted a bit, but Delaney was too excited to listen. She sat, hugging her knees to her chest, her eyes focused on the waterline. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness as dusk turned into night. Her eyes never left the breaking waves.

“There’s one!” Delaney squeaked in as much of a whisper as her excitement would allow.

The group quietly stood, but they didn’t move closer to the great turtle lumbering up the beach. Delaney watched, silent and awe-struck, as the turtle chose a spot in the sand and began to dig her nest. She felt that she was the luckiest person in the world to be able to view this process of nature, and she was amazed at the pureness of instinct that led this turtle to the beach to lay her eggs.

The turtle filled her egg chamber with sand and started to conceal the nest. The sand flew all around the turtle; her face and eyes were powdered with it. When the turtle began to make her way back to the sea and had left some distance between herself and her nest, Craig motioned the group toward the turtle.

Craig and Emily showed Delaney and Blue Eyes how to tag the turtle. They measured her while Delaney recorded the numbers on Craig’s data sheet. The process was quick and silent, with minimal disturbance, and they soon let the turtle return her journey to the ocean.

Seventeen turtles came up to the beach that night to lay their eggs. The group silently patrolled the dark beach, and when the turtles finished laying their eggs, quickly collected their data and tagged the reptiles. Two of the turtles had already been tagged, and Delaney recorded their numbers so that Craig could later add their information to his data.

After midnight, Emily and Delaney headed to Craig’s pick-up. Craig lagged behind to talk with Blue Eyes.

“You’re welcome to help out anytime,” he told him.

“Thanks. I’d like to get more involved,” Blue Eyes said. “The turtle numbers are decreasing. I want my children to be able to keep tradition and culture alive, and sea turtles are a part of that. If there are no more sea turtles, a part of our culture is lost.” It was the most Blue Eyes had spoken that night.

“It’s one of many issues facing the species today,” Craig said. “The turtles don’t know how much they contribute socially, economically, culturally… People don’t know it either. If everyone could come out on a night like this and see the turtles for themselves, maybe there wouldn’t be so much plastic in the ocean or ghost nets floating around because of irresponsible people. But these problems do exist, so it’s up to people like us to limit them. When you take your own knowledge back to your community, other people learn. Education and awareness about the species is what will save them.”

Blue Eyes silently agreed. He knew that it wasn’t only the turtles that needed management and monitoring; it was also the people. He planned to do his part: both for the turtles and for his people. The two shook hands and parted, and Craig climbed into his truck.

“Is Blue Eyes going to come out with us again?” Emily asked.

“I think he will,” Craig said.

The ride back to town was silent. As they drove, the sky began to lighten into early dawn. Delaney gazed out her window at the colors passing by, sleepy but exhilarated. She wished she could share how she felt with Emily and Craig, but she knew that they had already had these initial feelings of excitement long ago. She hoped that the way she felt at this moment would last each time she saw a sea turtle. She hoped that she would have many more opportunities to see them. “If we’re careful,” she thought, “they’ll survive the challenges we’ve given them.” She smiled to herself. With conservation and education, the ancient animals would outlive everyone.

Story Seven: The Turtle Hospital

2009-05-25T00:38:00.000-07:00

Craig called Emily from the North Queensland Turtle Hospital. It was getting on late in the evening by the time they got the turtle into the shallow tank used for surgeries. The vet was already on her way.

“Hey Emily, how ya goin’?” Craig asked when Emily answered her mobile.

“Not too bad. I’ve just finished entering my data,” Emily responded.

“Good, good. Listen, we’ve just got an injured turtle here at the hospital. Some blokes were snorkeling over at ¬Thunaroo Bay and found her. She must be a nesting female; she’s lucky the boat motor only hit her shell instead of her head.”

“Oh, geez. Is the vet on her way? I’ll come right over.”

“Yeah, Dr. Bryson is on her way. We need a few stitches on the front right flipper. See you soon,” Craig said, hanging up his mobile and returning to the turtle’s tank. Delaney was standing over the turtle, watching her sulk in the shallow water. “She’ll be okay,” Craig told her. “She must have just been hit today, so there hasn’t been much chance for infection yet.”

“Do you think she laid any of her eggs yet?” Delaney asked.

“I don’t know,” Craig said. “She may have laid a clutch or two. She won’t be able to lay them while she’s here, but she’s got a few breeding seasons left in her.”

“They don’t breed every year?” Delaney asked.

“Greens sometimes take up to eight years between breeding seasons, sometimes less. She’s probably still young. She’ll lay eggs again.”

Emily and Dr. Bryson arrived at the same time. “Let’s see her,” Dr. Bryson said, walking over to the tank. “Doesn’t look too bad. We’ll stitch up her flipper, cover up the shell, and give her a few antibiotics.”

Delaney watched as Dr. Bryson sutured the cut on the turtle’s flipper and Emily and Craig prepared fiberglass to cover the cuts on the turtle’s shell that were made by the spinning propeller. The fiber glass would protect the turtle’s organs while the carapace repaired itself.

“That should be good,” Dr. Bryson said as she finished up. She handed Craig some antibiotics. “I’ve already given her some for today, but make sure you finish the treatment. She won’t be able to get any infections with this. I think she’ll heal fast.”

“Thanks. We’ll be able to release her as soon as the carapace heals. It shouldn’t be more than a few months before she’s healthy again, but she’ll wear the scars from the boat strike forever,” Craig said.

Dr. Bryson left the turtle hospital when her work was finished. “Did you get her blood sample?” Emily asked Craig.

“Na, we’ll wait until she’s looking a bit better. We’ll be sure to tag her and take a sample before we release her. How’s the research coming?”

“Oh, it’s going well. I want to head up to Torres Strait next month to teach this one community about tagging and monitoring the nesting turtles. I’m just collecting and analyzing data until then,” Emily said.

“What kind of research are you doing?” Delaney asked.

“I’m looking at the affects of climate change on turtle nesting,” Emily explained. “The sex of turtles is largely determined by the temperature of the sand that incubates them. Warmer sand produces more females, so as the beaches become warmer, they produce more females than males, throwing off the sex ratio. Many nesting beaches are also being washed away because of more extreme storms and rising water levels. It’s going to be a long project; I only started it about a year ago.”

“That sounds really cool. And you also do tagging and monitoring at Torres Strait?”

“Yeah, I just do that when I have time to take a break from my project. It’s really interesting to talk to the Indigenous people there. They have this amazing cultural knowledge of the environment. There’s always a great exchange of scientific information for cultural information. They love helping out with the tagging.”

“That’s really great,” Delaney said.

“Delaney is helping us tag some turtles this week,” Craig interjected.

“Oh, really? How did you come by the turtle hospital?” Emily asked.

“I just wanted to do some volunteer work with turtles,” Delaney answered. “Just want to learn about them. I found out about Craig’s work online and contacted him.”

“Great,” Emily said. “You should give the turtle a name,” she told Delaney as Craig threw some lettuce in the tank for the turtle to eat.

“Yeah, don’t let Emily name her. She calls every turtle ‘Wayamba,’” Craig laughed.

“Oh, be quiet,” Emily smirked. “Wayamba was the first turtle I saw, and he made me interested in studying turtles.” She laughed.

“Let’s call her Chelonia, after her scientific name,” Delaney suggested.

“Chelonia it is,” Craig said, smiling.

Story Six: Rescue

2009-05-18T05:36:00.000-07:00

In November, when the waters were a bit warmer than they had been, Carl decided to go snorkeling. He would often scuba dive on the Great Barrier Reef, and he never tired of the diversity of life he saw there. His favorite dive was a night dive beneath a full moon. The night was so bright that Carl could see almost everything with only a small torch in the dark water. There were white-tip reef sharks everywhere. A hawksbill sea turtle swam up to Carl and his mates. The turtle swam in circles around the group and stayed with them for nearly twenty minutes. The hawksbill was just as curious about Carl and his friends as they were about him.

Instead of diving, today Carl chose to snorkel in the shallower waters near the shore. It was sea turtle nesting season, and he hoped to see a few during the day before they made their journey up the beach at night. If he was lucky, he would see very large female green turtles.

Carl and his best mate James put on their stinger suits after lunch and walked down the beach to the edge of the water, looking for turtle tracks as they went. They put on their fins, masks, and snorkels at the edge of the water, and entered the ocean backwards so they would not trip.

The water still had some bite to it, but the pair snorkeled in the early afternoon despite the chill. They saw several sharks, plenty of fish, and many bottom-dwelling sea cucumbers and sea stars. They didn’t see many sea turtles until they began to swim closer to shore as the sun began to sink in the western sky. There were several large green sea turtles, swimming leisurely through the water, calmly coming to the top of the water to take a breath of air.

Carl and James watched the turtles they found until they swam away. They did not wish to disturb them, so they did not follow them. Carl was very adamant about not disturbing the sea life. He never touched anything he encountered. He would simply watch it, take a picture, and be on his way. When James was with him, he made sure that James did the same.

The pair took several pictures of the turtles they found with the underwater camera that Carl invested in shortly after he got his SCUBA diving license. They stayed with the turtles for so long that there was no longer enough light to take good photos under the water. When the sun had only an hour left in the sky, Carl called to James and the two began to swim toward shore.

Near the beach, Carl snorkeled past a turtle at the surface of the water. The turtle wasn’t swimming, just floating still. Looking closer, Carl saw that the turtle’s front right fin was cut open, and her shell had clearly been damaged. “Oy!” Carl called to James, after raising his head above the water and taking his snorkel out of his mouth. “There’s an injured turtle over here!”

James swam over to have a look. “Is it still alive?” James asked.

“I think she is,” Carl said. “She just must be very tired.”

“What should we do?”

“Go up to the beach and find my mobile phone,” Carl said. “There’s a number for the North Queensland Turtle Hospital there. Call them and tell them where we are. I’ll stay with the turtle.” Carl put his snorkel back on and put his face back in the water while James swam to shore.

The North Queensland Turtle Hospital was attached to the Coral Ocean Aquarium. Carl had their number because of the many dive trips he had been on. He had never rescued a turtle before, but he knew the problems that faced the species. Most of the problems were caused by humans.

From the water, Carl watched James reach the shore, take off his fins, and run up the beach. The turtle didn’t try to move away from him. James ran back into the water, doing dolphin dives and then swimming Tarzan-style until he reached Carl.

“Craig’s on his way,” James said.

“Good,” Carl said.

The two watched the turtle floating, occasionally swimming slowly across the surface, her wounded flipper limp at her side. They continued to watch her in the fading afternoon light. For the most part, she was motionless. “It’s like she has her own personality,” James said, in awe of the calm bravery of the wounded turtle.

Soon, Craig arrived. Craig was the director of the sea turtle hospital. He brought a volunteer, Delaney, with him. “Oy! We’ve got her over here!” Carl shouted, waving his arm at the top of the beach where the two stood.

Together, the group carried the sea turtle out of the water and onto a rescue stretcher specifically designed for carrying turtles. They carefully and laboriously carried the stretcher to Craig’s pick-up truck and put the great green turtle in the padded tray in the back.

“Thanks for the call, mate,” Craig said, shaking James’ hand and then Carl’s. “We’ll fix this girl up and she’ll be right soon enough.”

Craig and Delaney got back into the pick-up and headed toward the aquarium and turtle hospital. Carl and James peeled off their wet and salty stinger suits, gathered their snorkeling gear, and began to walk home, saddened by the injured turtle but happy that they had done something to help.

Story Five: Blue Eyes and the Small Green Turtle

2009-05-18T05:35:00.000-07:00

On one of the few sunny days in early summer, before the storms of the Wet began, Blue Eyes took his boat out onto the water. His daughter was getting married, and Blue Eyes was hoping to get a sea turtle for the occasion. It was at his grandmother’s funeral, many years ago, that he learned that sea turtle meat was only eaten at very special occasions and ceremonies. Blue Eyes wasn’t sure how easily he would find one. There were many more jellyfish in the water in recent years, so he knew there were less turtles than there used to be.

There were two other people in the boat. Blue Eyes had invited his son and his nephew along to help him hunt the dhalwatpu, or green sea turtle. The green turtles were always hunted for their meat: because they are herbivores, their meat tasted much better than garun, the loggerhead, or guwarrtji, the hawksbill. Even though the miyapuna were endangered, Blue Eyes still felt it was okay to hunt them, because he respected the marine turtles. It was his right to supply his family with turtle meat on special occasions, just as his ancestors had done. Whenever Blue Eyes hunted, he used every part of the animal he killed. Nothing went to waste. Today, he would catch only a small green sea turtle. He would leave the larger ones be so that they could breed and lay eggs. The small dhalwatpu would feed all of the guests at the wedding. One turtle was all that was needed.

Blue Eyes drove his boat slowly around the bay. It was turtle nesting season, so he knew to be careful and not to disturb any egg-laying female turtles. The tide was low, and the water was clear. The three men looked across the water, watching for turtles surfacing to breathe the air.

“There’s a small one,” Blue Eyes’ son said, pointing. Blue Eyes steered the boat in the direction of his son’s outstretched arm. Keeping his eye on the small turtle, Blue Eyes reached for his wap, or harpoon. The wap was made of thick, heavy wood, but it was still light enough to float in the water. The tip of the wap was made from the gidu tree. String from the bark of the fig tree was hooked onto two barbs carved into the harpoon.

Blue Eyes’ son took over steering the boat as the group got closer to the turtle they had chosen. The turtle swam gracefully away from the boat, but she was diligently and patiently followed. When the moment was right, Blue Eyes threw the wap with speed and accuracy. The tip landed in the shell of the turtle, exactly where Blue Eyes had aimed. Never taking his eyes off the turtle, he tied the string from the fig tree bark to the side of the boat and watched as the turtle continued swimming, more and more slowly as the weight of the boat tired her.

The dhalwatpu swam less than one hundred meters before she was completely tired. Blue Eyes’ son jumped into the water and flipped the turtle onto its back, then brought it close to the side of the boat. Blue Eyes and his nephew pulled it up onto the boat by its rear legs. The turtle was small; Blue Eyes was positive that it was not yet nesting. The turtle would provide a great meal for the wedding, and Blue Eyes was satisfied with the hunt.

As his son climbed back aboard the boat, Blue Eyes heard the loud sound of a boat propeller hitting something. He looked up to see a trawler speeding across the bay. “Shit!” Blue Eyes heard someone yell. “It was a turtle. Should we go back and see if it’s okay?”

But Blue Eyes watched as the boat simply increased its speed across the water. Looking closely, he saw the name painted across the site of the boat in thick black letters: Humble Pine. Whoever was driving the trawler had no concern for the beautiful, endangered animals that had provided for Blue Eyes’ ancestors for generations.

Blue Eyes looked down at the small green turtle he had just caught and then looked out across the water where a turtle had just been hit by the boat motor. Blue Eyes remembered the story his grandfather had told him about the Rainbow Serpent, so many years ago. He wondered where the Rainbow Serpent was now, when a man had just killed a turtle for no reason. The turtle would go to waste; it would not provide for anybody. Blue Eyes had made sure that he chose a small turtle to hunt: one that would feed all his relatives and not go to waste.

But now Blue Eyes understood why the animals were so threatened, not only by Indigenous hunting, but by other human threats. He knew that global climate change was threatening the sea turtles as beaches were being washed away by more extreme tides and storms. But he had never seen the direct impact of a human killing a turtle with no concern for the animal’s numbers in the oceans.

At that moment, Blue Eyes understood that the sea country was not limitless. He had worried before about young Indigenous hunters taking more than they needed or not using traditional methods to hunt the dhalwatpu. But Blue Eyes was disgusted with the fishermen of the Humble Pine, who passed over the turtle as if it were as abundant as cane toads.

As Blue Eyes drove his boat home over the water in the late afternoon sunlight, he thought about ways that he could protect the endangered miyapuna. He wanted his grandchildren to have the same opportunities as he did to hunt the sea turtles for important occasions and celebrations, and he knew that he must play a role in sustainable community management of the species in order to conserve them for the future of his people.

a huge problem

2009-05-18T05:34:00.000-07:00

People in Australia don't know who the Grateful Dead are.

Story Four: Crash

2009-05-14T04:33:00.002-07:00

Sam was in a hurry. He had recently begun to realize that more than half of his life was over, and lately, he was always in a rush to get things done. He was frustrated with himself because he had overslept again this morning. Day after day, it was becoming harder for him to get out of bed. His joints always ached and he never felt as if he had slept enough. The salty smell of the ocean air was all it took to wake him up and get him moving, but it was difficult to make it down to the docks before sunrise as he used to.

It was late in November, and Sam had spent the day out on the water, trawling for prawns. By the time his crew had pulled in the third net of the day, the sun was already beginning to sink in the sky. Sam was watching the sun’s reflection on the water. His hair was mostly gray, but strands of copper still shone in the afternoon sunlight. His face was weathered, almost permanently red from being out in the sun and wind continually. These days, his face was usually contorted into a scowl or frown, adding to the wrinkles that had formed over the years. With his hands on his hips, his feet steady on the rocking Humble Pine, he gazed out over the water.

“Captain?” Al asked. “Are we going to set out the last net?” Al was the newest member of the trawling crew, and he was always hoping to catch as many prawns as possible in a day. He was ambitious and a good worker, but often found it difficult to work with Sam. He had been waiting at the dock for an hour this morning before Sam ambled down.

Sam broke out of his daze. “Yeah. Let’s get over to another bay.” Sam started the motor on the small trawler and began to increase speed as the boat bumped over the waves. It was the end of the tiger prawn trawling season, just as it was the end of the day, and Sam, like Al, wanted the largest catch possible.

The tide had gone out while Sam was slowly moving about his day, and the Humble Pine was now closer to the shore than he had realized. He increased the speed of the boat once more. He had no idea that he was taking his boat across the waters off the shore of a green sea turtle nesting site. He didn’t notice their heads poking out of the water as they took their breath and looked towards the beach; he was focused only on the setting sun on the horizon.

The boat jumped and the motor sputtered as the propeller smacked into something.
“Shit,” Al said, looking over the back of the boat. The water was churning in the wake of the boat, but Al could see a large green sea turtle gasp for air and go under, her shell broken by the collision. “It was a turtle. Should we go back and see if it’s okay?”

Sam wasn’t concerned. He stared straight ahead and never looked behind him or slowed the boat down. He didn’t answer Al.

“You know those blokes are endangered, right?” Al asked, hoping Sam would turn around.

“No way they’re endangered,” Sam said. “There are hundreds of them out here every day.” Sam had caught hundreds of turtles in his trawling nets over the years, mostly flatbacks and olive ridleys, but often loggerheads or green turtles. Some survived, others drowned. He let them go when he could. He wasn’t hurt when he couldn’t. What was one dead turtle when there were so many more in the ocean? The ocean was limitless. Sam suspected that the turtle populations were limitless as well.

Al shrugged. The turtle was completely out of sight by now, and the Humble Pine was fast on its way to the next trawling ground. Sam stared straight ahead. The day was almost over, and he had more fishing to do before the sun went down.

Story Three: The Aquarium

2009-05-14T04:33:00.001-07:00

For her fifth birthday, Emily’s parents took her to the Coral Ocean Aquarium. The outside of the building was bright blue, like the ocean, and murals of corals, reef fish, sting rays, dolphins, sharks, sea turtles, and octopi were painted on each wall. Emily’s favorite painting was of the butterflyfish. She loved the way its yellow scales stood out so brightly against the blue water.

Inside the aquarium, Emily’s mother paid their admission while the receptionist put a stamp on Emily’s hand. The stamp was of a sea turtle, and Emily pretended that the turtle was swimming up her arm.

The first tank that the family went to held several leopard sharks. Emily wasn’t scared of the sharks; they were young, so they were small. Her pet cat at home was more frightening than these animals. But Emily wondered where all of the reef fish were. She hoped the sharks hadn’t eaten them. At the bottom of the tank, a large red starfish clung to the sandy bottom. The sharks swam over it without noticing it. Emily wondered why they weren’t as excited to see the starfish as she was. She tugged on her father’s hand, pointing her tiny finger against the glass of the tank: “Look!” she told him. Her father didn’t know what she was pointing at, so he just smiled, took Emily’s hand, and walked to the next tank.

This tank held the corals and fishes that Emily had been looking for. She stood, wide-eyed, hands and face pressed against the tank. Her mouth was slightly open, and the wonder in her expression was reflected in the glass. She watched the anemone fish swim in and out of their anemone homes, trying to hide, but she thought their orange bodies were much too bright to ever be completely hidden. The butterflyfish swam regally past all the other fish. Emily thought they were the most beautiful of all, and she wondered if the other fish were jealous.

Emily and her family stopped to look at many tanks. They saw many more reef fishes, freshwater turtles, frogs, sea cucumbers, catfish, sea snakes, an octopus, sting rays, and much larger sharks.

The tank with the large sharks held adult leopard sharks, shovel-nosed rays, freshwater sawfish, and a tawny nurse shark. Emily still wasn’t scared of these sharks, though they were much larger, but she was happy that they were on one side of the glass and she was on the other. She and her parents watched the sharks being fed. The tawny nurse shark, who was sleeping on the sand when they arrived, was suddenly awake and active, finding food to eat. Emily heard the aquarium guide talking about the predators and their behavior, but she wasn’t listening, because she had noticed something much more exciting.

There, at the surface of the water, was a green sea turtle. The turtle must have been very hungry, because he was eating everything he saw. He even grabbed a squid right out from under a shark’s nose! Emily watched his feeding frenzy. The turtle could swim very quickly with is strong, fin-shaped flippers, and he probably ate more than his fair share of the food being thrown into the tank. This turtle was much larger than the freshwater turtles Emily had seen in a smaller tank earlier, and he was a much better swimmer. His shell was a beautiful mottled-brown and gold. Emily compared the stamp on her hand to the turtle swimming above, and she was happy that she had a chance to watch the sea turtle.

The aquarium guide pointed at the sea turtle and began to speak about it. Emily listened to the guide, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the turtle.

“This green sea turtle is four years old. He’s much larger than many turtles his age, because he is fed so well here,” the guide said. “He was found at Palm Island and brought to us just about a year ago. Right now, he will eat almost anything—he’ll even try to eat the hair of the scuba divers when they go in the tank!—but as he gets older, he’ll become a vegetarian and start to eat what’s good for him: mainly sea grasses and algae.”

Emily continued to watch the turtle swimming at the surface, eating whatever he could find. Many damselfish crowded around him to eat the debris that was shed from the food as he bit into it.

When the aquarium guide was finished speaking, Emily dragged her parents to her by the hands.

“What is the turtle’s name?” she asked, quietly but determinedly, pointing to the sea turtle and looking expectantly at the guide.

The aquarium guide smiled down at Emily. “His name is Wayamba,” she told her. “It’s an Aboriginal word for ‘turtle.’”

“Wayamba,” Emily repeated, satisfied.

When Emily and her parents left the aquarium, Emily waved goodbye to Wayamba. She thought she saw him wave his flipper back at her, and she hoped to see him again.

Emily’s parents bought her an ice cream on the way to the car. She ate it greedily, almost as quickly as the sea turtle gobbled up the food thrown to him. “What was your favorite animal to see?” her mother asked, wiping the chocolate from Emily’s face with a napkin.

“Wayamba, the sea turtle,” Emily said decisively, looking down at the stamp on her hand and smiling.

Story Two: Long Ago, in the Dreamtime

2009-05-08T04:06:00.000-07:00

Tears slid down the dark skin of Charlie’s face. The day of the funeral had come, and family and friends had gathered to commemorate the life of Charlie’s late wife, whose name they would not speak. She had lived her life well, passing on her culture to her children and grandchildren and keeping close to the land where her ancestors had lived for generations. Her people had seen the sea levels rise and fall along the coast of Australia, but despite the changes in environment, they had always maintained a respect and understanding of the land they inhabited.

Charlie had learned from her. He himself had lost some of his culture when his father was sent to the reserve on Palm Island. He regained cultural knowledge through his wife, and he did his best to raise his children so that they would be proud of their heritage and continue to pass it on.

His wife had died, but Charlie still had other family members to love. He sat, thinking about the years that had passed, though he had never been concerned with the time that flew by him. He watched two of his grandsons running around, laughing and shouting, unaware of the sadness in his heart.

People were milling about, talking in low voices, and filling their plates with the food that was spread across the table. Charlie’s nephews had gone hunting the day before and captured a dugong and two green sea turtles for the occasion. The feast was their gift to Charlie, and he appreciated their efforts. The turtles had been baked over hot coals in the ground, and they were served with fried pumpkin and bean sprouts.

As Charlie watched his two young grandsons heaping food on their plates, he thought about the Dreamtime story his wife had shared with him about the sea turtle, Charlie’s own totem.

In the Dreamtime, Budgial, the sea turtle, represented wisdom and love. He loved Gugu, the fish, and he spent his time with her. He brought her food to eat and watched the sun go down with her, sharing pleasant conversation, and holding her when the night arrived and she became cold.

One day, many of the other animals were making fun of Gugu because she lived in the water and could not come onto the land. She asked Budgial to defend her, but when Budgial went to do so, he became friends with the others, and Gugu was upset. She cried and cried in the water that night, and Gunual, the goanna, asked her what was wrong. She explained to Gunual why she was upset with Budgial, so Gunual went to the others and beat them for making fun of Gugu.

Gunual represented strength, power, and greed. He told Gugu about his strength and power, and he explained what he had done to the others. She was glad that Gunual had defended her, so Gugu spent the night with him. Gunual brought her more food than she needed to show her what a wonderful hunter he was, but he would not love her the way Budgial had.

Gugu began to miss Budgial, and Gunual knew. As Gunual began to prepare a spear, Gugu swam away to find Budgial. She told him that Gunual was going to come kill him, but Budgial was brave. He held Gugu and told her everything would be alright.

When Gunual arrived at the scene and saw Budgial holding Gugu, he became furious. He was prepared to kill Budgial for taking Gugu away from him, but Budgial held up two shields, one against his front and one against his back, and jumped into the water. The shields protected Budgial, no matter how many spears Gunual threw at him.

Gunual couldn’t believe that he didn’t have the power to kill Budgial. He ran away from the water to live in the desert, where he remains. Gugu and Budgial maintained their love for each other, and they still live in the water together.
At a young age, Charlie was given the totem of Budgial, the sea turtle, because he had so much common sense and love for his friends and family. He would not eat the sea turtle at the funeral today, because no person can kill or eat his or her totem animal.

Charlie’s two grandsons were sitting on the floor at his feet, eating their meal of sea turtle meat and vegetables. His grandsons were half-caste; their mother, Charlie’s daughter, was Aboriginal, but their father was white. The two boys had light brown skin and soft, curly hair, and their eyes were wide as they looked down at the food on their plates. Their bellies were full, and they didn’t know how they would finish all of the food they had taken.

Charlie watched them contemplating their food, their hands on their bellies. “Did I ever tell you two the story of the Rainbow Serpent?” Charlie asked.

The two boys looked up and shook their heads. Charlie smiled, knowing that sharing a piece of his culture with his grandsons would make him feel better on this sad day. It is what his wife would have done.

“Long ago, in the Dreamtime, there were two young men who were heading down to the river to go fishing for that evening’s meal,” Charlie began. The two boys put their forks down and pushed their plates forward, looking up at their grandfather in interest.

“On their way to the river, the young men stopped to speak to an old man who was sitting beneath a tree. They noticed that the old man looked very weak. ‘We are going fishing,’ one of the young men said. ‘Would you like any fish for your dinner?’

“‘Yes, please,’ the old man said. ‘If you catch five fish for me, I can feed my whole family.’ The two young men agreed to help the old man and his family, and they continued on their walk to the river.

“When they got to the water, the men threw the bark of the Milky Pine into the river. This bark takes all of the oxygen out of the water, and eventually the fish will come to the surface of the water, searching for more oxygen to breathe. The barramundi, the black fin, and all of the other fish were soon floating at the top of the water.

“The two young men were very excited at the number of fish floating in the river, and they began to collect them in their dilly bags. But the Rainbow Serpent, who guarded the water hole, saw this happening and became very angry. The Rainbow Serpent protects the food chain and certifies that it is balanced. He makes sure that nobody takes more than they need and that nobody goes hungry. When he saw the two young men taking many more fish than they needed to feed themselves, he swam through tunnels beneath the ground and waited below the water.

“As the two young men continued to fill their dilly bags with the dead fish, the Rainbow Serpent sprang up from beneath the water and swallowed them whole. With his protruding belly, the Rainbow Serpent swam back down to the underground tunnels.

“The old man, still sitting beneath the tree, heard a large splash, and ran down to the river. He saw all the dead fish lying about and the dilly bags of the young men lying on the shore. The two young men were nowhere to be seen. The old man knew what had happened. He began to dance and shout, stomping holes in the ground. Eventually, the old man fell into the underground tunnel, where he found the Rainbow Serpent. He stabbed the large serpent in the tail, and the Rainbow Serpent screamed and spat the two young men out.

“The old man cleaned off the two young men and brought them back to the river banks. The young men were embarrassed for taking so much and for needing the old man to come and save them. They learned their lesson, to never take more than they needed.”

Charlie finished the Dreamtime story and watched his grandsons. They looked guiltily at the full plates that they could not finish.

“Sea turtle is a very special food,” Charlie explained. “We only eat it at special occasions. It is not to be wasted.”

The two grandsons nodded. They understood. Charlie looked into their blue eyes and was happy that he had the opportunity to share his knowledge of his culture with them. He hoped that the two boys would retain their culture in their changing world.

Story One: Chelonia mydas

2009-05-08T04:05:00.000-07:00

It is late November, and the rising full moon can be seen in the day-lit sky. A newly matured green sea turtle is swimming through the shallow ocean waters off the coast of the beach where she was born. She has not returned to this site since she and her siblings dug their way up through the warm sand of the nest their mother dug for them. The last time she touched land, the hatchling and her siblings had scurried upwards out of the nest, towards the surface, breathing between the sand grains. They reached the surface of the nest with a burst of energy, as a coordinated group, but they dispersed as they clambered toward the surf. It was the last time she saw many of her siblings, as stragglers were taken by beach-dwelling crabs, popping up from their holes to capture the struggling hatchlings by the moonlight. Others were captured by shore-birds, night herons hiding still in the night, long legs poised to run toward their prey at the opportune moment.

Most of the hatchlings made it into the ocean. As soon as they reached the salty water, they swam, frenzied, past the breakers. They put every ounce of their energy into swimming that first night. Fish, small sharks, and cuttlefish took some of the hatchlings for their own meals, but the rest kept swimming. Separated, they swam for days. The residual yolk in their bodies supplied enough energy for them to continue swimming without feeding for several days, and they used this energy until they reached the currents that carried them to the deep, open ocean.

The green turtle hatchling drifted with the ocean currents, eating plankton near the surface of the water, and slowly growing. Her carapace grew from five centimeters to forty centimeters during her life in the open ocean, and when she was large enough to return to shallower waters without risking predation, she swam toward the sea-grass pastures. Here, she continued feeding for many years. As a youth, she was not selective in her diet, feeding on sponges, jellyfish, macroalgae, and even cigarette butts washed out to sea, floating on the surface of the water. But as she grew and matured, she recognized the strength and energy that feeding on the sea-grass beds provided her. With her serrated beak, she could easily seize and break off pieces of sea-grass. She thrived in large sea-grass meadows, where green sea-grass, brown at the tips, covered the shallow banks and sand-bottom channels of the coastal waters. She continued to supplement her diet with small amounts of macroalgae, and her herbivorous meals created the green body fat she is named for.

Now, she is nearly forty years old. After feeding and growing for so many years, she is ready to breed. She migrated hundreds of kilometers from her feeding grounds to the area of the nesting beach where she was born. There, she mated with several male turtles who had also migrated to the breeding grounds. The males, with claws at the tips of their flippers, held on to the female’s carapace as they mated.

Though it is several weeks after her first mating, she still carries the claw marks of the males on her shell. She made her first journey to the beach nearly two weeks ago. After dark, she swam to shore and lumbered up the gradient of the beach. She used her front flippers to drag her body over the sand. With her fore and rear flippers, she excavated her first nest area, and with her rear flippers, she dug her first egg chamber, alternately scooping the sand. When it was deep enough, she laid over one hundred small, round eggs, leathery and white against the tawny sand. She used her rear flippers again to fill and cover the egg chamber. As she laid her eggs, glands near her eyes formed tears, excreting the excess salt from the seawater she drank. Though these tears are constantly sliding down her face, they are most noticeable now that she has left the ocean for the land. She blinked, letting the tears go, turned, and followed the moonlight back to the dark sea.

If the turtle has concealed her nest sufficiently, it will protect the eggs from feral pigs and dogs that come to the beach for a late night snack. After eight weeks, the turtles inside the eggs will begin to pip, breaking their eggshells by rubbing an egg tooth on the tip of their noses against the shells. Each hatchling will pip within a few hours of each another, and they will stay within their broken eggshells for several days as their soft bodies uncurl. Once they have straightened, they will emerge from their nest, the same way their mother did so many years ago. They will race to the ocean, the darkness of their shells protecting their bodies in the dangerous night. Once in the water, their white undersides will protect them from predators below, looking toward the sky for the silhouettes of prey.

Now, the green sea turtle swims through the sea water, parallel to her nesting beach. After the sun goes down, when the moon is bright in the dark sky, she will make her way to the silent beach. She will trudge to the perfect nesting spot and dig an egg chamber, and she will quietly lay her second clutch of eggs. She will have nothing to do with her eggs once they have been laid; she will never see her offspring emerge from the nest or make their way to the ocean. Not all of them will survive. Most will make it safely to the sea, and some of the lucky ones will survive attacks by sharks and other marine predators. The ones that survive and make it to the open ocean will carefully grow over many years, feeding on algae and sea grasses like their mother did. Some will make it to breeding age, joining in the ancient cycle of reproduction, populating the oceans with these prehistoric reptiles that have survived for over one hundred million years.

The turtle glides through the water. Her rear flippers are broad rudders; her toe bones are long, and flexible enough to steer her through the ocean. With her front flippers, she paddles swiftly, moving them upward and backward, then forward and downward, flying through the ocean like a bird on wings. She makes her way to the surface every few minutes, exhaling her breath in a noisy rush above the water and breathing in the salty air, absorbing enough oxygen for her next dive below the water.

With her domed, light shell, stream-lined to maximize buoyancy and agility in the water, she is made for the sea. Her shell is olive green and brown, with darkly mottled splotches, and her eyes are wide, pensive and still. She dives deep in the water, feeding along the bottom, and slowly slopes to the surface. Her ascent is passive and graceful. She is completely unaware of the low-frequency sound of a boat motor approaching.

Her head breaks the surface as the water around her churns and the whirring smack of the propeller slices through her front flipper and crashes into her shell. She gasps the air for broken breath, but is too shocked by impact to see the foreign object speeding away in the sunny afternoon. The stillness of the water has disappeared, and in its place, the sea turtle bobs along the surface of the water. She floats, her flipper hanging limply at her side, not completely separated, but useless. The shock and pain of the accident has blinded the turtle of her earlier purpose, and she can do nothing but move slowly through the water, using the strength of only one flipper to paddle to a comfortable place.

Townsville

2009-04-22T22:14:00.000-07:00

Townsville is a small town. We’ve only been here for about two weeks and we probably know everybody. Examples: On our way to Townsville, we met Sam on the bus. We ran into him several times without planning to meet up. Once, Sam and I were walking to the beach. On the way, he introduced me to his friend Jake, and we kept walking. On our way back, we found Jake and Geneveve hanging out together. Another time I met a man named Will, who dives regularly. I wanted to interview him for my sea turtle project, so we exchanged numbers. The next day, Geneveve saw him, and he said he was looking forward to the interview. His phone was off for the next three days, so I couldn’t get in touch with him. But then, Geneveve and I were having dinner with Russell (from our camping trip), and Will walks by with his family. Will and I started talking to each other, but Will’s parents started chatting with Russ, because Will’s father gulfs with Russ. Last story: Geneveve and I went to the aquarium. We were talking to the director, Fred, but he had to go because he had to meet with another man. I met this same man, Anthony, at a bar about a week later. But it wasn’t until our third meeting, when we randomly crossed paths on the street, that we realized we had seen each other before, at the aquarium. It’s a small town.

Geneveve and I left Cairns for Townsville on April 5th, the first day of ISP. We took a Greyhound bus. It was a six hour bus ride, but we were entertained with books to read and a movie to watch – “Angus, Thongs, and Perfect Snogging.” (Who remembers that book!? (The book actually refers to “Full-frontal” snogging.)) We met Sam on the bus, and he helped Geneveve and I carry our obscene amount of luggage, get a taxi, and find our hostel. After settling into the Globetrotters Hostel (where we stayed for two nights before moving to the Reef Lodge), we met up with Sam for a drink. We soon found out that the main part of Townsville is just one street. Flinders Street has several bars, the “mall” (which includes free wi-fi at McDonald’s), and, well, that’s about it. Parallel to Flinders Street is the Strand. There’s a great view of the ocean, looking out toward Magnetic Island, and there is a beach with two stinger nets to swim in. There’s also an Olympic-size pool for me to swim in; a pier, with a kiosk that has great “chips” (French fries); another pool, sort of like the lagoon at Cairns; a walking track; and some nice shady, grassy spots to sit down and read a book.

I came to Townsville to work on my Independent Study Project. I am doing a research project on green sea turtles. My project involves academic research of the species and interviews with people who have had interactions with turtles: researchers, students, divers, snorkelers, indigenous hunters, tourists, volunteers, aquarium staff, and fishermen. As I collect data from these interviews, I am composing several short stories (which I will probably post in my blog). The stories are going to examine the factors affecting sea turtle endangerment, human interactions and perceptions of sea turtles, and conservation goals. In addition to my short stories, I need to also write a short paper that is more science based. This paper will explore how stories can be used as an educational tool for the non-scientific community; it will also go through my methods of interviewing people, my results, and what it all means. I’m enjoying working on the project. It got off to a slow start, but now that there are only two weeks left in ISP, it is picking up!

When I am not working on my turtle research, I spend a lot of time at the Strand or swimming. It is nice to finally have time to exercise again. I even bought a pair of sneakers to run, which may have been a terrible idea. (I went for my first run last night, and I am definitely feeling it today.)

Geneveve and I have done some more exploring in Townsville when were not doing our research. We’ve hiked up Castle Hill, a great hike up a red-rock mountain right in the center of town. We also went to Magnetic Island for a weekend. We didn’t see any koalas on the island, as we had hoped (there are about 200 living there,) but we did have a great time going to the beach, hiking, and snorkeling. We stayed at a campground with a free tent I obtained in Cairns. We were a three minute walk to the beach at Horseshoe Bay, and we also hiked about an hour to Florence Bay, where we snorkeled. The snorkeling was a little bit disappointing and heart-breaking after snorkeling at Lizard Island. The corals there are almost completely bleached and covered in algae. It was really sad to see, but also eye-opening. If I could, I would show every person in the world the Great Barrier Reef. It makes the threats of climate change SO much more apparent. I wish there were a way to make everybody understand, even though not everyone will be as lucky as I am and have the chance to see this place. Despite the bleaching on this reef, we did see several reef fish, and an eel. We spent two nights on “Maggie” and headed back early Monday morning on the ferry to get back to our research.

The next two weeks should be pretty quiet as I finish up my project. I should head back to Cairns around May 3rd to finish writing my paper. Our papers and presentations are due May 9th, and our program ends May 14th. At that point, I will be traveling down the coast with Eva, Steve, Kelly, and Lauren. Then, I’ll be home! I started to get a little bit homesick the past few days, but I know the rest of my time here will speed by, so I will have to be sure to enjoy every second, despite all the paper-writing that needs to be done.

Stay tuned for turtle tales!

Lizard, Part Two.

2009-04-15T20:50:00.000-07:00

The much-awaited-next-blog-entry! Sorry I haven’t been keeping up, but since I’d given you a taste of Lizard Island, I decided to postpone the blog entries until I got a few things organized! Right now I’m in Townsville, Australia, getting to work on my Independent Study Project on sea turtles.

But first, the rest of Lizard. The end of the trip was much the same as what I described in the previous blog entry. We got up every morning to snorkel. After Darren accidentally ran over a buoy with the large boat and broke the propeller, we had to take three smaller boats out to the various reefs. Every morning, we visited Watson’s Bay, where we collected data for our marine field project. We had to choose two fish species of the same family and observe their abundance among several transects along the reef for the first several days; then we did focal observations on those fish. We were to observe how similar fish species share resources or compete for them within reef ecosystems. Megan (my snorkel buddy) and I observed two species of rabbitfish: Foxface rabbitfish (Siganus vulpinus) and Blue spinefoot (Siganus puellus). The foxface rabbitfish are almost always found in pairs because they mate for life. We collected data on underwater paper, and we wore our stinger suits every day, of course. After our morning snorkel, (and after drying off by lying in the sun on the bottom of the boats), we would go back to the research station for morning tea (bikkies with Nutella and lots of cordial), and then Darren would give us our morning lecture. Darren is currently doing his Ph.D. on how coral bleaching affects reef fish communities.

After morning lecture, we’d have lunch. This was the first time we almost always had left-overs for lunch, which was really a relief, because every day on the rainforest and camping trips we had the same sandwiches. These sandwiches were still an option, of course, but it was very refreshing to have something new to eat. (By new, of course, I mean old, because they were left-overs.) After lunch, we had about two hours to lie in the sun on the beach. It was the most relaxing part of the day, except for the sand flies. We’d meet back on the beach again each afternoon for our second snorkel of the day. These snorkels were more relaxing, because we didn’t need to do any data collection. We were able to explore much more, because we weren’t focused on a single species. We went to reefs along the lagoon, Horseshoe Reef, Clam Gardens, and Mermaid Lagoon. At some places, like Clam Gardens, we could swim to the beach when we finished our snorkel and relax there before we headed back to the station.

We had the rest of the day free to do research on our fish species, work in our Natural History Field Notebooks, and of course, to watch the sunset. I watched them religiously. It was just like at New College, when I would walk down to the bay every evening and spend an hour or more watching the sun go down and the sky change colors. Some of the nights we had barbecues on the beach beneath the stars. We went swimming in the ocean a few times without stinger suits; the water was the perfect temperature.

We saw many more sharks after our first encounter: most were black-tip reef sharks, but we also saw white-tip reef sharks and a tawny nurse shark, which was at least twice the size of me and swam directly beneath us. I saw four green sea turtles. The last one that I saw was just eating some sea grass near the shore. She just sat there eating and didn’t seem to be scared of me at all, even when I touched her shell. Angie and I ended up spending at least twenty minutes with her. We pet her head and held her flippers, and she even ate some sea grass out of my hand! It was the coolest experience ever. We also saw several sting rays, two octopuses (octopi?), an eel, and of course hundreds of different reef fish and corals. There were giant clams that I would have fit inside. We would touch their lips and try to get them to shut, and when they did, they would expel a ton of debris which then would attract many fish to the spot to eat it. If you were swimming above one of the clams when it shut, you could feel a rush of air coming up as it closed. One of the spookiest things we saw were the skeletons of giant clams: just their enormous shells, vacant and covered with algae and corals.

On our last day at Lizard Island, we climbed to the top of Cook’s Look. It’s where James Cook climbed to try to find a way to get his ship past the reef. The top was also an Aboriginal ceremony site for male initiations. It was a great hike, and the view was spectacular. It was nice to be able to hike without worrying about leeches! There wasn’t too much wildlife on the actual island except for a few birds and the goannas. On our last day, we were cleaning out the kitchen and emptying food into the compost bin. We opened the bin to find out that a goanna had tunneled its way into the bottom of the bin! A few goannas kept stealing bananas and avacados, but they would just carry them out, realize they didn’t actually want to eat such things, and leave them lying in the bushes.

It was hard to leave Lizard, because the chances that we’d ever be back are very, very slim. It’s also sad to leave the Great Barrier Reef – because if I ever have the chance to come back down here, it’s quite possible that the reef won’t be there anymore. It’s predicted to be destroyed by 2050 due to climate change.

We were able to take a larger plane back to Cairns instead of three tiny planes. On the way back, we flew over the reef that Steve Irwin died on.

Back in Cairns, we had a day to write up our marine field papers. The rest of the week was spent doing work: our final essay, our ISP proposals, our exams, and our field notebooks. It was an exhausting week of work, and we also had to make our plans for ISP. It was strange to say goodbye to everyone in the group—we’d been together every day for two months, so it was a bit disconcerting to recognize the fact that we’d be apart for the rest of the semester until we meet back in Cairns at the end of ISP.

I’m actually not alone on ISP: Geneveve and I are both in Townsville, about four hours south of Cairns. I am studying sea turtles and Geneveve is studying sharks. It’s nice to be with someone else. Geneveve is also a vegetarian, so it makes cooking dinner fun and easy. We are staying at a backpacker’s hostel right in town. I will write more about Townsville and ISP soon!

LIZARD

2009-03-20T04:31:00.000-07:00

Let me preface the next series of blog entries by stating that it will be extremely difficult and nearly impossible to explain how amazing this place is.

On Thursday morning, we got up early for a 9 o’clock flight from Cairns to Lizard Island. We were taking a small plane that perfectly fit the 17 of us (14 students plus Tony, Meryl, and Darren, our marine trip leader.) There were two pilots for the plane, and some students immediately asked how long they had been flying because they were so nervous about taking such a small plane. We all boarded and got settled and were putting our nerves behind us…

Well, then the left engine wouldn’t start.

We had to get off the plane, so we all convened in the small waiting room (this wasn’t part of the Cairns airport) where we waited… for several hours. Finally, around noon, it was decided that instead of taking one small plane, we would be taking three much smaller planes. By small, I mean that students had to sit in the cock pits because there wasn’t enough seating. My kind pilot was Andy, and Lauren was the lucky one who got to sit up front. Genevieve, Darren, Sam, Melissa, and I were in the five seats behind the cock pit. I was squished in the middle seat. The flight was about an hour long, and Andy (who got his pilot’s license in 1995) did a few tricks. One of them was letting Lauren drive the plane. She wasn’t actually driving it, but as she had her hands on the steering wheel (although it’s not actually a wheel, so I don’t know what you would call it), Andy made the flight a bit rocky. He also flew up in elevation and then swooped down, so the things in my lap literally flew into the air. The coolest part was when we flew over some cool portions of the Great Barrier Reef, he flew down pretty low over it so that we could see. Needless to say, we had a safe landing at Lizard Island.

Lizard Island is named for the goannas that inhabit the island, but I’ve only seen one small one so far. There are plenty of geckos, however, as there are everywhere in Australia. The only things on Lizard Island are the marine research station and facilities, where we are staying, and a resort that costs about $1,500 a night to stay. Only about 10 student groups get to use the research station each year. How lucky am I??

My drive from the air-strip landing to the research station was standing up on the back of a tractor, but only four of us were lucky enough to do that (the rest were in a van). The living conditions here are nice—much nicer than during the rainforest trip! There are two houses that have bedrooms with screen doors and a long veranda. The house I’m staying in also has a kitchen and our dining room, which is a huge table on the porch. We have about a 30 second walk to the beach.

I can’t explain how beautiful it is. Just picture the perfect tropical island in paradise. Imagine the bluest greenest water you could ever want to swim in, then make it five times brighter. Picture another island in the near distance covered in cliffs and rainforest.

Imagine the Great Barrier Reef! The reef was incredibly amazing the first time we saw it during orientation, but the reefs here are so much more amazing. The colors are phenomenal, the fish are everywhere. Purples, blues, yellows, pinks, oranges…the corals are almost neon sometimes. We snorkel twice a day, every day. The first day we simply swam out to the reef. Today we took boats out to different reefs.

Two amazing moments: On the reef this morning, Megan (my snorkel buddy) pointed out a Green Sea Turtle. When I swam up to it, the moment beat even the amazing waterfall we swam under during the rainforest trip. We followed it for a while, swimming over it. At one point, it stopped, turned, and looked at us. I am just amazed by the grace and majesty of sea turtles, and I am even more amazed at the fact that I got to swim with one.

On the reef this afternoon, I was calmly emptying my snorkel of the salt water that snuck in to try to choke me to death. When I put the snorkel back on and looked down, there was a shark about five feet across from me. It looked directly at me. It was as scared of me as I was of it! We both swam in the opposite direction as quickly as possible, but the opposite direction for the shark was DIRECTLY under Megan! Scared by both of us, it swam away very quickly.

Megan and I also had fun picking up creatures (like sea cucumbers, fungi corals, and bright blue starfish) and touching the corals. There is so much to see. I thought I understood the concept of biodiversity before I came here, but there was no way I could have known.

rainforest trip

2009-03-16T19:04:00.001-07:00

Despite the threat of a category 5 cyclone, on Saturday (3/7), we headed into the rainforest—I mean, the leech forest—for ten days. First, let me tell you about these leeches. They resemble little brown inch worms, but gushier. They have 32 suctions on their heads and butts, and to walk, they latch on with their butt, then flip around and latch on with their head. They leech to you with the suctions on their butt and then they suck your blood until they get really fat and full, then they drop off. They are sterile, so there’s really no harm in getting bitten by a leech, besides the fact that they are disgusting. By some miracle, (as well as constant flicking), I managed to not get bitten by a leech, but I probably removed at least 30 from crawling up my limbs. Jack taught us a method of removing crawling leeches. You just pluck it off, then you treat it like a booger: roll it up and throw it away. However, I usually used the pencil method, in which I got it to crawl on my pencil, then wiped it off onto a branch, usually smushing the leech in the process because sometimes they just wouldn’t come off. I didn’t really want to touch them. At least half of the group had leech bites. Steve even got one in his belly button!!! That was the worst. By the end of the week we were all wearing leech gear (pants tucked into our socks, hats and long sleeves in hot and humid weather, and even goggles, if your name is Chelsea McGorry.)

Despite the leeches, the rainforest trip was great. On our first day, we saw a cassowary!! These prehistoric birds, a bit smaller than ostriches, are very endangered and extremely rare to see in the wild. We were driving in some forest down near Mission Beach, and saw one ahead of us on an old dirt road. It was the first time I was really glad I had been lugging my heavy binoculars around for so long. The second time I was really glad I had been lugging my heavy binoculars around for so long was when we saw a Lumholtz Tree Kangaroo, about 20 meters up in a tree, staring down at us with his cute black face.

For the first two nights of the trip, we stayed in a hostel called the Tree House. There was a snake by the pool, a huntsman spider in the bathroom, and we woke up the first morning to a Hercules moth right outside of our door. It was well-named: about the size of my two hands. There was also a pet cat which I was pretty happy about. We had lunch and dinner cooking and clean-up crews for the whole trip, so we all took turns preparing our meals. After staying at the Tree House, we went back up to the Atherton Tablelands (where we were for orientation) and stayed at “The Lodge.” The Lodge was on some rainforest property: there was a fairly nice house (where Tony, Jack, and Meryl stayed); the annex, where 7 students stayed in cots on the floor; and the dairy, where 7 of us slept in beds. The shower and kitchen were at the dairy, and we all got together in the living room every night to do homework or play games. Living conditions were probably on the level of disgustingness as Scribner Village, but maybe a little bit worse, since we found a dead skink rotting under Julia’s bed. Oh, and a python lived in the ceiling. And the septic flooded, so everything smelled like shit and dead skink. But other than that, it was great.

We spent our days going to National Parks and States Forests. One of our assignments for the whole trip was “Car Window Ecology” in which we had to look out the window on our many bus trips and write down how the landforms and vegetation were changing. We examined topographic maps, aerial photos, and soil samples at the sites we stopped at, and took notes about the canopy cover, vegetation characteristics, cyclone damage, and forest type. Each night, we had to write an entry about an “Organism of the Day” in our Natural History Field Notebooks, but we couldn’t write about any of the organisms that students presented on. (Prior to the rainforest trip, we were each assigned a flora and fauna to research. When we came across our flora or fauna in the rainforest, we were to present what we had researched without notes. I was responsible for Ground Ferns and Honeyeaters.)

On the third day of the trip, we went to Henrietta Creek to walk the Nandroya Falls track. It was the first good hike we’d had in a while, but it ended in the most amazing place ever. There was a huge and beautiful waterfall, probably about 80 meters high, tumbling from straight-up cliff face into a pool of water. But it gets better: we went swimming beneath the fall. You look straight up, and you can barely see the sky, the cliffs were so tall! It was one of the happiest and most exhilarating moments of my life.

The next day, we did another hike (this one in the rain—we had good weather, except for a handful of rainy days) at Mount Hypipamee National Park. The walk ended at a huge crater caused by a volcano. It went so far down, we couldn’t even measure its depth. It was partly filled with water, and apparently people have scuba dived there to find out how deep it is, but no one ever reached the bottom.

On day five, we went tree planting! We worked with a local group, TREAT, as well as the School for Field Studies students (a similar abroad program) to plant native tree species along a wildlife corridor. The soils on the Tablelands are basaltic, so we were thickly covered with red dirt. It was so much fun to be down in the dirt though, and to feel like we were giving back to the community. The people running the planting were amazed at how quickly we planted the corridor: they even ran out of seedlings! They’d never had so many people help with a planting before. After the planting, the owner of the property took us around to show us previous plantings and talk about revegetation projects. We then went to Lake Eacham to go for a swim. We had gone to Lake Eacham during orientation as well, and after the waterfall, it’s the best place we’ve swam. The water is extremely clean and the perfect temperature. We got to go into Atherton for the afternoon to use the internet and be in civilization for a few hours before we headed back to the Lodge.

On two nights at the Lodge, we went spotlighting. After dark, we would walk in a single file line. Jack had a spot light, and some students had head lamps or flashlight. You hold the light at eye level and search in the trees for the red eye shine of possums. We saw four Herbert River Ringtail Possums and one Striped Possum, which looks sort of like a skunk, but is very rare.

One morning, we went mistnetting at Jack’s house. Jack lives in a cabin that he built for himself in the rainforest. I guess you could say it resembles a large treehouse. Next to his house, however, is the “house” he lived in for five years before he built the big one. It is the size of a shed. It’s permanent camping. You do what you want to do. Jack had set up five mist nets around his house, which we checked every 45 minutes or so throughout the morning. It was a rainy morning, so we didn’t catch any birds, until we went to collect the mist nets to put them away and found a Spectacled Monarch. It was really tangled in the net, and Tony couldn’t get it out, but Jack came running, and untangled the bird with the most nimble fingers I’ve ever seen. It was amazing to watch. He brought the bird back to his house to band it. Jack is one of about two people in Queensland who bands birds, so ornithologists here don’t know very much about bird migrations in Australia at this point.

On Friday and Saturday, we got into groups to do our rainforest projects. We had to do eight hours of data collection and analysis, and then present our projects on Monday morning. This was the first actual science project I’ve really done so far. I worked with Geneveve and Steve, and we sampled wait-a-whiles, or climbing palms, in the rainforest behind the lodge. The rainforest grows along a ridge that separates a metamorphic soil base from a basaltic soil base, so we sampled the plants on both sides of the ridge, as well as in areas of closed canopy and open canopy, and made comparisons. The data collection for this project is when most of the leech bites occurred. I definitely relied on my group members for the real science-y parts of the project, but all of the small projects we’re doing have really helped us prepare for ISP.

On Sunday, our original plan was to hike Mount Bartle Frer, which is the leechiest rainforest around. We ended up not going, because of the rain, so instead we drove west to hike Mount Baldy. It was a very steep but short hike. I was disappointed with the short amount of time we spent at the summit, but when we climbed down, we drove to Granite Gorge, where we played with wild rock wallabies. A mother with a baby in her pouch literally jumped over my legs while I was sitting down and let me pet her. We also went swimming at the gorge, which was a little bit muddy, but still refreshing. I would take rock wallabies over leeches pretty much any day.

We got back to Cairns yesterday afternoon. I really can’t believe how fast the rainforest trip flew by. We are only here for two days, and then we are heading to Lizard Island to study the Great Barrier Reef for ten days. Then we’re only back in Cairns for a week before ISP starts! I am hoping to study sea turtles, but have yet to finalize anything.

camping trip

2009-03-02T04:48:00.000-08:00

On Sunday morning, (February 22nd), our homestay families dropped us off in Cairns after our two-week stays. We were asked by our advisor to be ready at 9:30 AM, even though we would be spending our camping trip on “Murri time.” Well, our advisor showed up at about 11 o’clock. No worries.

We headed out into the “bush” in three 4WD vehicles. Tony drove one of them with Meryl, the lovely woman who provides us with food on all of our excursions. Russell Butler and Ian Owens, the two Aboriginal men we camped with, drove the other two. Russell drove the vehicle I was in. He is a jolly, laughing man with a big belly and curly white hair. Think of an Aboriginal Santa Claus or a beautiful black Buddha wearing shorts and a T-shirt, flip-flops, and a cowboy hat. We sang one of Russell’s favorite songs on the drive: “G’day g’day! And how ya goin? What do you know, strike a light. G’day G’day! And how ya going? Ya say g’day g’day g’day and you’ll be right!” Ian’s grandson, Graham, also came with us on the trip. He is 18 and “half-caste” with an Aboriginal mother and a white father.

The “bush” ended up being the Lion’s Den Hotel. Well, the campsite behind the hotel. So we did have a bathroom for the first three days of the trip. When we got there, we set up camp: one giant tarp became a tent where we gathered during the day to do homework and have meals. We set up the kitchen there, too (two tables, a grill, and a 3-burner stove with tubs for washing, tea kettles, pots, pans, platters, and three Eskes). We set up our sleeping tents around this community center, two people to a tent. My roomie for the week was Julia.

We spent most of our time at the campsite. Everyone always took part in cooking our meals. I especially had to watch out that the veggies were cooked on the grill before any meat was! I’ve never been in the situation where food had to be cooked for so many people, and it was a bit challenging as a vegetarian. But it was fun preparing meals with everyone, then washing mess kits and pots with river water.

We got together each night at Russell’s feet. Sometimes he played the guitar (my personal favorite was “Me and Bobby McGee”). He told us Dreamtime stories and talked about current Aboriginal issues. He was infinitely happy to share his culture with us, and we listened to his words in the dark, cool breeze flapping the tent and “cuppas” in our hands.

On the first night, I received my Aboriginal name. I was one of the first to receive one, so I guess Russell had me pinned. I am Guyibara, or the curlew. The curlew is a skinny-legged bird with large eyes. Russell named me Guyibara because I am wide-eyed and observant. I’m a loner, watchful, and walk at an unhurried pace. The curlew makes a sound at night that sounds like someone crying. Russell asked me if I cry a lot. Well, I didn’t answer that question. (Laugh if you know what I’m talking about.)

Russell told us the story of why the curlew cries. There was a family of curlews: a mother, father, and two babies. The mother and father went to the stream one day to gather some water. The owl, watching from above, saw that they had left, and told his pet dingo that he could go eat the baby curlews because he was hungry. The dingo did as the owl suggested, and when the curlew parents came back to find their babies gone, they cried and cried all night. The next day, the father curlew took revenge and killed the dingo. He went up to the owl’s cave, but the owl was too afraid to leave his cave without his pet dingo. The father curlew threatened him, and said that if he ever came out in the light of day, he would kill him. To this day, the owl doesn’t come out during the day. If you see an owl in daylight, it signifies a death in your family.

We spent our second day camping lying in the sun on the rocks by the creek. I also led half our group in a yoga session in the morning! We were on Murri time, so the time was ours. The creek was croc free, but we did see a goanna climbing a tree at our campsite. We also made string out of the bark from a fig tree, and made bracelets and necklaces with beads that Russell brought. We threw spears (aiming for a cereal box) and used the leaves from the soap tree on our bug bites.

On the third day, it was a bit rainy, so instead of hanging around camp under the tent all day, we went to Cooktown. Captain James Cook landed there on June 17, 1770, and spent six weeks there repairing his ship, which had crashed into the Great Barrier Reef. We just spent a few hours there, walking around, then drove up to the look-out peak, which had a beautiful view of the forest-covered mountains and the blue blue ocean.

When we got back to the campsite, Russell took us on a short rainforest walk to show us some plants and their uses. It was Megan’s birthday, so after dinner we headed to the Lion’s Den Pub for some drinks and some delicious banana-chocolate birthday cake. We played darts and pool with Russ and Ian. When else do you drink with your professors? Not bad.

After three nights at the first campsite, we went to Dinden National Park. This campsite was a bit more rugged – no bathrooms this time (although there was an outhouse.) Not washing my face for the next four days did some damage to my skin, but no worries. This campsite was on another beautiful creek, with cold water, but the most comfortable rocks you could ever lay on in your life. We spent a lot of time in the sun at this campsite – I had no idea how tan I was getting until I saw a mirror when we got back to Cairns!

At the Dinden campsite, we painted boomerangs! I painted one of mine with curlew footprints and traditional Aboriginal dot art. They should provide some nice wall decorations for my room next year. =) We were painting the boomerangs on some large boulders on the edge of our campsite, and about five feet from where we were sitting, Graham spotted a death adder (very poisonous snake)! We stood around watching it for a while (they will only bite if they feel threatened, so basically only if you step on it), then Tony and Russell moved it away with a stick.

One of the mornings at Dinden, Megan, Angie, Geneveve and I took a walk. We walked about a half an hour down the road until we reached a circuit trail that wound around the creek and led to the biggest waterfall I think I’ve seen. We were SO high above everything, the sky was brilliant blue, the gum trees were bright green, the granite rocks were immense, and the water of the waterfall was the clearest water in the world. It was beautiful, and it felt so good to see the waterfall after we had earned it by hiking there. (We actually drove to it the second day, which wasn’t as awesome, although still beautiful.) Also, on our walk, we passed a chain of 76 furry white caterpillars! They were just marching along, nose to butt, follow the leader. It was pretty cool.

Overall, the camping trip was like a vacation. We didn’t have a schedule, so there wasn’t pressure to do much academic work. It was great to talk to Russ and Ian and learn about their culture. They were some of the friendliest people I know. We’re back in Cairns now, and the next 5 days are packed with lectures and assignment and ISP preparation before we depart for our rainforest trip. We’ve been here a month already! It’s hard to believe.

murri time

2009-02-19T23:29:00.000-08:00

On Sunday, I'm leaving to go camping for a week. (So I won't have internet, obviously). I actually won't have any technology with me. No cell phones, i-pods, or computers are allowed. We can't even bring books! We are allowed to have 2 designated photographers for the trip, but no one else can bring a camera. I am hoping for one of those two positions! We'll be on Murri time for the camping trip - which means we'll do things when they need to be done. We're not allowed to bring watches. I'm mostly excited that we won't have to deal with money! After two weeks of figuring out bus fares and receiving stipend money for meals, I'll be glad to leave my wallet behind. We'll be camping a bit north of Cairns, at two different sites, with two aboriginal men, Ian and Russell. We'll be swimming every day to keep clean, since there won't be showers, running water, toilets, etc. I'm sure I'll have much to write when I get back from the trip, but I just wanted to post now to let you all know that I won't be in communication until next Saturday or Sunday!

Me having fun in the lagoon! Makes me want to keep my hair long...

more homestay

2009-02-16T00:31:00.000-08:00

Okay, Mom demands more details about the life down under. Honestly, it’s not too much different from home! But people are definitely more environmentally conscious. 5 minute showers are a rule, and we don’t use the dryers for our clothes. We hang them up on the clothesline for a few hours, and then we just throw them in the dryer for 10 minutes or so to get the dampness out of them. The electric sockets everywhere also conserve energy: there are on/off switches on them, so when nothing is plugged in or when you aren’t using an appliance, your turn it off. It’s such an easy habit to get into: why don’t we have them at home!?

Helen, my homestay mom, is a wonderful cook, and very creative, considering she is now cooking for a vegetarian! We’ve had a lot of different foods, and always fresh fruits and vegetables. One of the main roads was flooded earlier this week from all the rain, so the grocery stores were practically empty because the produce trucks couldn’t get through, but I was still very well fed! We’ve had sushi, fried rice, pasta with pesto and sun-dried tomatoes, a potato-egg-cheese pie with veggies, Thai curry with noodles, and I helped with a veggie stir fry. I usually have toast in the morning, and yes, I did try some Vegemite. A very small bit of Vegemite. It’s very salty… and I’ve seriously limited my sodium intake in recent years, so even things that are only a little bit salty are very salty for me. So I won’t be tasting a bigger bite. But Vegemite is just spread lightly on toast, sometimes with melted cheese or butter.

We have air conditioning in the house, but it’s only on when you are in the room taking advantage of it. I usually just turn mine on at night. There are screen doors all over the house, so the other doors are left open to catch any breeze or fresh air. My house has a pool, but the water is probably about 84 degrees or so because the sun has warmed it up so much! It hasn’t rained in a few days to cool it down, but it’s still refreshing when you are sitting in the sun.

Geckos and frogs are welcome visitors in homes because they eat the insects crawling around! There is a really cool native gecko – I am still trying to figure out its name – it’s almost translucent and has really goofy eyes. There were a few on the ceiling of the porch last night.

There are birds everywhere, all day. Everything is really green now, because it’s the rainy season, and summer. It’s quite pretty. Today the clouds finally lifted, even off the mountains in the distance. The sky was so blue. Beautiful.

More questions?

homestay

2009-02-14T21:37:00.001-08:00

I’ve been at my homestay for one week now. I am staying in Freshwater, a suburb of Cairns, which is about a 20 minute bus ride from the city center. I’m staying with Helen Simpson. She has two sons, Hunter (10th grade) and MacLean (7th grade), but this week they are staying at their dad’s house, so I’m getting closer to Helen now. When I first got here, MacLean was very friendly. We played pool, which I am terrible at, and went swimming, and he made me “homemade sherbet” for dessert, which was a combination of sugar and a powdered sports drink. There is also a border collie, Maggie, and a small cat named Tabby, who I think is about half the size of Cassie (my cat).

We’ve had a bit more downtime during our homestay than we did during our first week here, with the weekends off, as well as Fridays and Mondays off. We go into town Tuesday-Thursday for lectures and fieldwork, and we’ve had a lot of reading to do while we’re at our homestays. The work is actually starting to pile up: it is time to start thinking more seriously about our Independent Study Projects; we are currently during a bird-watching assignment to analyze bird activity in suburbs; we have an upcoming “flora and fauna” project, where we will present our research to the group on our rainforest trip (I have honeyeaters and ground ferns – chose the ground ferns in honor of my dad, who loved them); and we have been reading like crazy.

The sun has been coming out almost every day now, which is exciting, and I’m starting to get some color (but wearing lots of sunscreen, of course: this part of Australia is the skin cancer capital of the world!) When we get out of class, we sometimes go down to the lagoon to swim and get some sun and just be outside.

This week we also went to the botanical gardens again. We had been there one of the first days in the pouring rain, so I was happy to go back with my camera (pictures on Facebook). We went on an “Evolutionary Trail” which showed the evolution of plants in Australia, from the first ferns and cycads to the most recently evolved angiosperms (flowering plants). There were SO many mosquitoes (mozzys) on the trail; I put bug spray on twice, but must have missed a small spot on my arm, because I have seven bites in one place!

This coming week we have many more lectures, and we’ll start analyzing our bird-watching data and writing papers for that assignment. When the homestay is over, we leave immediately for our camping trip with the Aborigines! Then we’ll be back to the Northern Greenhouse, our hostel which is sort of like home at this point. I’m enjoying the homestay. It’s strange to be away from the group after having been with them 24/7, but it’s nice to have some quiet time and some time to relax, feel settled in, and get some work done.

orientation week

2009-02-07T00:24:00.001-08:00

Our week of orientation was certainly an adventure. It’s quite possible that I already know much more about the North Queensland environment than I do about Northwest New Jersey. After all, that’s one of the goals of this program.

We left Cairns on Monday. Our first stop was an Aboriginal cultural center. (Aboriginal people actually prefer to be called Murris; they won’t be offended if you call them Aborigines, but they will acknowledge that you are more respectful and culturally aware if you call them Murris.) We entered the building in a room filled with Aboriginal art depicting creation stories and myths. It was the first time I was able to get my camera out, because we weren’t in the rain!
We saw a brief historical film about the European invasion of Australia and the ways they treated the Aborigines, which can be compared to any other area that Westerners conquered. When Europeans first arrived, the Bama people (“Bama” simply means “the people”) thought the white men were spirits of the long dead returning. We also saw a film/play about Aboriginal creation stories: the Aborigines believed that in the beginning, there was a cassowary egg. From the egg, the world was born, and it was shaped by the Wet and the Dry (seasons). We went to the Tjapukai Dance Theater, where we listened to the didgeridoo, watched Aboriginal dances, and learned about rainforest medicines. We also learned to throw boomerangs and spears. The boomerang I wasn’t so hot at, but the spear is actually thrown in a similar way to serving in tennis, so I was a bit better at that skill!

When we left, we hopped on the Skyrail Rainforest Cableway, a 12 km journey to the town of Kuranda. We traveled above the rainforest canopy, where we were able to identify epiphytes, palms, climbing palms, nonnative species, and emergent trees from the sky. It was a really interesting way to apply what we had learned in the rainforest on our hike. There were two places where we could get off the Skyrail and walk around. The first was a short boardwalk trail through the rainforest. It was a fairly sunny day, not raining, and walking through such amazing vegetation made me really think that THIS was why I came to Australia. The second stop was at Barron Falls, a HUGE waterfall that was used for hydroelectric power. The water was very muddy from all the rain, but the falls were absolutely impressive. When we got to Kuranda, we had about an hour to walk around. I ended up at the Australia Venom Zoo with some other people, and while we did not want to pay to go inside, we did discover some Spiny Leaf Insects near the gates. One of the men working at the zoo explained them to us and let us hold them! They were pretty crazy; endemic to Australia, the females grow about a centimeter a month and live for about 16 months. The males are much smaller. They feed on the leaves of fruit trees. We held an almost full grown female, and you could feel the spines on her thorax as she crawled on our hands!

We stayed in another hostel that night, and after we had dinner, a few of us walked down to the beach, where we saw a jellyfish net. At this time of year, you still have to wear a stinger-suit, even when swimming in a jellyfish net, because the Irukandji jellyfish only grow to about 12mm, and they can squeeze through the holes in the jellyfish nets! We only walked on the beach for a little while before heading back to the hostel. We’ve all been falling asleep quite early each night, usually 10:30 at the latest, because our days are so busy!

In the morning on Tuesday, we went to Daintree National Park on a Kuku-Yalanji Tour. Our guide, Harold, led us through the rainforest and told us about different plants and their uses. Notably, he pointed out the tar tree, a tree which secretes a black sap that will give you blisters when you touch it and is used to tip spears in order to paralyze animals; the soap tree, the bark of which can be used to cure muscle pain and the leaves of which foam up like soap and can be used to wash with; the arrow tree, which can be bent to point in a certain direction and will heal and continue to grow with the bent still in it; and the matchbox seed, which was hollow and used to store dry grass to start fires, among many many other plants. We also walked by a 4,000 year old strangler fig tree! The strangler fig begins its life when a bird or other animal drops a seed on a host tree. The fig, a hemiepiphyte, drops its roots to the ground, where they take hold. The roots then begin to strangle and overtake the host tree, eventually killing it. The roots of the strangler fig can stretch for 4-5 km!

When we left Daintree, we went to Mossman Gorge, where we had lunch and swam. The water was very cold, but quite refreshing. The current was strong, so you could swim and swim but stay in the same place! We slid off rocks in the current that carried us down the gorge. We also hiked through the rainforest and learned more about the plants found there. We cooked dinner together at the hostel that night, which was fun, and saved us each a lot of money.

On Wednesday, we left our hostel in Port Douglas and went to the Rainforest Habitat. It was basically a zoo, but referred to as a “semi-natural habitat.” Most of the Habitat was filled with birds, including the cassowary, and I got quite a few neat pictures. We also watched a koala feed (or you could hold one and get your picture taken for $15, which I didn’t do), and we fed kangaroos and wallabies! They eat right out of your palm. Later that day we also walked through the rainforest at Malanda Falls and at Curtain Fig National Park. We stayed that night at another hostel, “On the Wallaby.” We were able to go look for platypus on the creek. It was pouring again, and we walked barefoot through the muddy path beside the creek, but we did get to see a platypus floating down on the current! It was small, less than 2 feet long, but it was worth it!

On Thursday, we had the mysterious “Drop-off.” All SIT programs have a drop-off. We all imagined it would be much more intimidating and difficult than it actually way! We were each dropped off in a random town in the area, by ourselves. We were just to spend about 5 hours in the town, talking to people and immersing ourselves in the culture. I got dropped off in Malanda. Two other SIT students, Megan and Lauren, were also dropped off in Malanda, but we weren’t supposed to get together. I started off at a thrift shop, but the woman there just acted like I was crazy and really had nothing to offer. I then talked to another man with a dog waiting by his car, but then his wife came, and she looked at me like I was crazy, so I left then. About half an hour after I was dropped off, I had pretty much seen the whole town. It was basically only two streets. There was absolutely no Aboriginal culture to be found, and very few people around at all. I had lunch in a small park, and then headed for this Dairy Museum, because it seemed to be the only show in town. The museum was about the size of my bedroom at home, though. There were tours of a dairy farm, but the last one started at 11, and I didn’t get there until about 12:30. Megan, Lauren, and I all ended up at the Dairy Museum at the same time, so we decided to just spend time together. We tried to go to a craft studio that was recommended to us, but it was closed for four weeks, starting about a day before we were there. We also tried going to a movie theater, the first one in Australia, but that was closed too. So we got some drinks in a coffee shop and read for a little while, and then I decided to try to do some research for my ISP. We went to the library, town council, and visitor center asking about local conservation and environmental groups. That part at least was helpful. After the drop-off, we all met Tony at a bar and had a drink, and then went back to the hostel for dinner and bed.

On Friday, we left On the Wallaby and did some bird-watching at Peterson Creek. We then went to Lake Eacham, which was absolutely beautiful. It was a crystal clear lake with rainforest all around, and the water was a perfect temperature. There was a dock that we could dive off of, and I really could have stayed in that water for days or more. We got back to Cairns that afternoon after a very muddy, very buggy, very humid, very wet week. But it was all perfect.

Today we took a boat out to the Great Barrier Reef! I got seasick. Threw up once before I got in the water, felt TERRIBLE while snorkeling at the first stop, got out and threw up again, and then felt fine! I snorkeled once more at our third stop (skipped the second one due to my stomach.) It was really amazing. We saw beautiful corals and tons of reef fish. I got a water-proof casing for my camera, but I couldn’t really see what I was doing underwater…I got a few good pictures though! We’ll be spending another 10 days on the reef (on an island, no boats next time!) so I’m sure I’ll learn much more about it and get some cool pictures and see some great wildlife!

Now, besides all this fun I’ve been having, I’ve also been doing work. Each day, we get a worksheet about local flora and fauna that we have to complete as we learn. We also have readings to do, and a Natural History Field Notebook, in which we can write any information, stories, reflections, or facts we learn, along with drawings or sketches. We all get together as a group in the evenings to do our homework before we fall asleep. It’s a pretty academically driven group, but the work is fun.

There are more pictures that I wanted to post, but my internet is cutting out! So I'll add more later. Hope all is well with everyone!

arrival

2009-02-01T00:03:00.000-08:00

The flight to Australia wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected, although my shoulders and neck are hurting a bit today from sleeping on the plane. I flew into LA as the sun was setting, and by the time we landed it was dark. I was both appalled and amazed at how many lights were in the actual city. I kept thinking we were there, but more and more lights kept appearing! I just can’t believe how many people are crammed into a place with no water. The lights were both beautiful and disgusting.

I met the SIT group about halfway through my layover. We sat on the floor by our gate and played Australia-themed card games. I really like the group so far; everyone is very laid back and easy-going. There are two boys and 12 girls (including myself) in the program. I didn’t sit with anyone on the plane. I watched the movie Australia (ha) and then slept for most of the trip to Brisbane.

Once we landed in Brisbane, we had about an hour and a half layover. First, we had to go through Customs, where a small beagle got me in trouble because I had an orange in my bag. They confiscated that from me and gave the dog a treat! Then we had to pick up our baggage, check in and re-check our baggage, take a train to our terminal, go through security again, and make it to our gate! We JUST made it during the final boarding call. The flight to Cairns (pronounced CANS) wasn’t long. Flying into Cairns was absolutely beautiful. The “mountains” are less than 1,000 feet, but they appear much larger, and are covered with beautiful forest. I was the kid taking pictures out of the plane window as we landed.

We are staying in a hostel called the Northern Greenhouse. It’s nice; we’re 4 or 5 to a room. The common room is a covered porch with couches and two computers, and there is a kitchen where we can get breakfast in the morning or cook our own food. We had most of the day when we arrived to ourselves. I walked around with a few other kids; we went down to the water and had paninis for lunch at a café. I hate cities, but Cairns is the perfect size for me. It’s a somewhat touristy town, but has a really pretty town center where there is live music, and lots of pretty trees and flowers around all the sidewalks. Plus, you can see the mountains and ocean from many places in the city.

Later, the whole group went down to the “lagoon,” a huge public pool filled with filtered ocean water. The lagoon is structured so that when you look out toward the ocean, it appears as if you are actually in the ocean, with the mountains surrounding you. I was floating on my back in the water when these HUGE bats, like the size of red-tailed hawks, flew screaming over head. It was dusk, and there was a lone white egret flying calmly through their scattered crowd. It was sort of surreal. It was a great end to a tired, humid day. Tony, our director, then took us out for pizza. A large pizza was about the size of a personal pizza at home! We went to sleep soon after we returned to the hostel, and it really just took that one night of sleep to recover from any jet lag.

On Saturday, we got up early to grab breakfast (Vegemite was an option, but I haven’t tried it yet!) and then took taxis to the base of Mount Whitmore. It was pouring, but we hiked to the top (about 600 feet) despite the rain. Tony and Jack, another advisor, talked to us about many of the plants and other land features as we hiked, and we were given water-proof notebooks for the semester. It just took the one hike to accept that we are going to be damp and everything we own will probably be wet for most of the semester! The rainforest was also beautiful; it was just hard to look at everything because the rain was falling in your eyes every time you looked up! I would love to go back to that trail, as well as the Botanical Gardens next door, when it’s not raining, so that I can take pictures. We ended the hike with a walk along a boardwalk through a swamp, which had impressive vegetation, and had brunch under a pavilion. Apple-guava juice, dragon fruit, star fruit, mangos, watermelon, pineapple, kiwis, and scones with jelly and cream was absolutely delicious! We spent the rest of the day in meetings about the semester, and it never stopped raining!

Today we just had more meetings at Reef Teach, the classroom we’ll be using while we’re in Cairns and on our homestay. Tomorrow, we are driving North to Port Douglas and the Atherton Tablelands to continue orientation for the week. I’ll be out of internet until I get back in Cairns on Saturday!

Here is some more info from the rest of my readings, which you don’t have to read, although I think the last two parts are particularly interesting!

~Because the Australian government essentially had no ties to the land or history attached to the environment there, it was easy for them to promote economic growth, industrialization, population growth, increased and improved technology, and huge development projects that negatively affected the environment and nature of the continent.
~The use of the term “stakeholders” in Australia in the 1990s, especially popular with bureaucrats, businesspeople, and others negotiating development, reinforced economic imperatives and excluded nature.
~Rainforests, like those found in Australia, maybe defined as “A closed moisture-loving community of trees, usually containing one or more subordinate storeys of trees and shrubs; frequently mixed in composition; the species typically, but not invariably, broadleaved and evergreen; heavy vines (lianes); vascular and non vascular epiphytes, stranglers and buttressing often present and sometimes abundant; floristic affinities mainly with the Antarctic or Indo-Malaysian floras; eucalypts typically absent except as relics of an earlier community.” The diversity of life found in rainforest communities is a major factor in what distinguishes rainforests from other ecosystems and vegetation types. The height and depth of canopy closure, as well as the leaves, vines, and trunks of vegetation, and special life forms or growth forms, are used to classify different types of rainforests. Such rainforests may be classified as vine forests, fern forests, or mossy forests. Climate and weather are also used to classify rainforests in categories such as subtropical rainforests, dry rainforests, warm-temperate rainforests, and cool-temperate rainforests.
~Australia was once part of Gondwanaland, a giant land mass made up of the present day land masses of Africa, South America, Antarctica, India, Madagascar, New Zealand, New Caledonia, and part of New Guinea. This landmass began to break up about 120 million years ago. One of the last events of this break-up was Australia’s separation from Antarctica about 50 million years ago. Antarctica stayed in the same location, while Australia drifted northward. During a 35 million year period of isolation from other land masses, Australia was able to develop the great diversification of the unique flora and fauna on the continent.
~The community composition of a coral reef is largely determined by light availability, wave action, sediment load, salinity, and tidal range. Available food and inorganic nutrients, temperature, and the topography of the sea floor are also important factors. Hermatypic or reef-building corals refer to corals that contain zooxanthellae, or single-celled algae, that live symbiotically with the coral polyps. Corals that do not contain this algae are referred to as ahermatypic. Hermatypic corals require sunlight to grow, because the algae need photosynthesis. Ahermatypic corals do not need sunlight, and can grow at any ocean depth. In order to reproduce effectively in environments where water is constantly moving and parents may be separated, the corals of the Great Barrier Reef have synchronized their reproductive behavior to the time of year when water temperature is increasing most rapidly after winter, the phases of the moon (when the moon is full), and time of day (shortly after sunset)! “At least half of all the corals of the entire Great Barrier Reef release their gametes just after dark about five days after the full moon in late spring.” Many corals deposit layers of skeleton in seasonal cycles. These layers, like the growth rings of trees, can act as biological clocks.

leaving on a jet plane

2009-01-27T19:30:00.000-08:00

I am currently writing from a Hampton Inn in Jamaica, NY, right near JFK airport. Mom, Lois, and I drove down a day early to beat the potential ice storm. (My mom: "I prayed to the gods that there wouldn’t be a weather event on the 28th, so what do I get? A weather event on the 28th!") I fly out of JFK tomorrow at 4 PM. The first leg of the trip is from here to LA, then from LA to Brisbane, then from Brisbane to Cairns. Quite the journey! Hopefully, the snow/ice won’t prevent any problems with me getting from here to LA.

I spent the day packing. It was a bit last minute; I had been visiting Skidmore on Sunday and Monday, and originally thought I would have an extra day to pack, but I think I’ve squeezed everything I need (and probably a few things I don’t need) into my pack and a duffle. The painted wine glasses I bought for my host family are taking up a bit of space in my carry-on tote, but I think I will be able to manage everything. I’ll meet the other 13 members of my group (12 girls, including me, and 2 boys) in LA, and hopefully we’ll all be able to sleep on the plane!

While I’m not quite sure if I’m been mentally preparing for my semester abroad, I have been academically preparing. I just finished reading The Diversity of Life by Edward O. Wilson to have a greater sense of ecological principles. I also read The American’s Survival Guide to Australia, a useful book which also provided a humorous "American-Australian Dictionary," and parts of Australia for Dummies, a gift from Katrina.

In addition to those texts, on Wednesday, exactly one week before I was to hop on the plane, I discovered that there are 12 introductory articles that I need to read before arriving in Cairns. Unfortunately, the second one that I opened was 53 pages long! It was three chapters from Geoffrey Blainey’s Triumph of the Nomads: A History of Ancient Australia. A lot of the information found in those chapters reminded me of Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel. So I’ve been reading. Here are some things I’ve learned from the five articles I’ve read so far:

~Aborigines often function under kurruwarri kujarra—"two laws"—Aboriginal laws and laws of the Australian government. Australian customary law is in radical conflict with European law in almost every aspect. After serving 20 months in prison for manslaughter, Stephen Barnes Jungarrayi was released to face yawarra, or "blood." The family members of the man he killed and his own family members beat him as payback and so that he could be accepted back into his community. Such multiculturalism in Australia creates controversial subjects: the preservation of ancient cultures vs. human rights issues.
~Aboriginal Australians inhabited the continent for thousands of years, long before the end of the last ice age. During the last ice age, when much of the world’s water was held in icebergs around the world, the oceans were much shallower. Therefore, the continent of Australia was actually much larger; it would be unrecognizable from its shape as we know it on maps today. As the icebergs melted, aborigines watched the land change as some of their sacred sites were covered by the sea. Aborigines also witnessed the formation of two volcanoes, Mount Eccles and Mount Napier. Such changes in their physical environment not only changed the Aborigines’ way of life, but also the way they viewed the world.
~Aborigines lived nomadic lives. A clear advantage of this lifestyle was the fact that when food was scarce, they could easily move to areas where it was abundant. Curiously, while agriculture developed in nearby areas like New Guinea, Aborigines never adopted such practices. At the time of European arrival, Aborigines were actually better-fed than many people in “more civilized” countries in Europe.
~Pmara kutata = everlasting home. It may be a sacred place in the Australian landscape. Much of the mythology of ancient Aborigines contains accurate ecological information.
~"Ownership of the land in the European sense did not exist: aboriginals were part of the living systems because through their mythology they understood that their ancestors created the landscape and the life on it, including themselves, with each part playing a role in the maintenance of the whole dynamic world. The most important role that an individual could play in this system was that of custodian of the common environment."

I will be continuing to read while waiting for my flight, on the plane, and during layovers, and hopefully I will be able to finish all 12 articles by my arrival. I’m very excited for a semester filled with completely new material, and I’m definitely ready to get my hands dirty! I will continue to enlighten you throughout my time in Australia, and hope that you’ll enjoy reading my notes. Please keep in touch!