Two Beers and a Pretzel

I finally fit in the skydive.  14,000 ft over Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef.

HOLY COW!!!  WHAT A RUSH!!!  Impossiblt to explain, but it totally kills bungy jumping!!

I had a photographer jump with me, so I have a DVD video and pictures.  Unfortunately, my laptop cannot convert DVD video to an uploadable format, and the picture CD does not come up on my external drive.

Right now I’m at a free internet kiosk in the Sydney Airport waiting to board my flight (Emirates EK 419) to Bangkok in about 15 minutes.  I’ll arrive at 1AM… ouch!!

In the bus from Mission Beach to Cairns (pronounced ‘cans’), I ran into Chris (the Paul Newman look-alike) from the sailing trip.  Being from West London, he says things like:  “Ay geeza, itsa weekend.  We’ll get proppa pissed tonight and land some birds.”  Translation for Americans:  “Hey buddy, it’s Friday.  Let’s go to the pub and try to meet some girls.”

In the hostel, Chris runs up to me and says he’s in a room with a guy who knows me.  He was explaining to the guy that he didn’t know anyone on the bus until “this American bloke from my sailing trip got on.”  The guy listening stopped him and said “You mean Sean?”.  Yep…  with very few American’s on Australia’s East coast right now - I’m almost a D-list celeb.  It turns out that a bunch of the guys and Corinna from Surf Camp were in this same hostel.  Two of them are leaving the next day and want to go out and celebrate.

So Chris and I started the night at 7:30, walking to the bottle shop (liquor store) to get some beers to start the night.  We were going to meet the other guys in town, so by 9:00 we made the 5 minute walk into town and found the Irish Pub.  The other lads weren’t there, but as we walked in a cute girl invited us to a pub crawl that was just starting.  $20, 6 bars, free drinks and pizza, and drinking games with prizes.  BINGO - we have a plan.

A few pubs and games  into the crawl I get a text message from Corinna at a different bar.  The guys are wondering where we are because they’re getting ready to go to bed (it’s only midnight).  So Chris and I get our free shots at Rhinobar and head to the Woolshed to meet the others for a quick drink before rejoining our pub crawl.  After seeing the boys off in style and a few good toasts, we got back to the Rhinobar just in time for a “So you think you can dance” contest.  The girl organizing the pub crawl dragged me into it.  There were 4 from our pub crawl, and 4 from another group.  6 Brits, 1 Frenchman, and me.  The MC chooses a contestant and calls out a dance style.  You introduce yourself and where you are from, then you have to perform that style for 45 seconds on a small stage above the dance floor with appropriately matching music.

The first girl does 45 seconds of lame, white, British girl Hip Hop.  A Brit guy has to do country line dancing.  Another girl does techo rave dancing.  The French guy had to be a male stripper.  Another girl did Irish dancing.  Another guy does a pathetic Michael Jackson imitation.  Then the next to last guy does 50’s sock hop dancing, but has no idea how to do anything like the twist.

I am the last one to dance.  I introduce myself as Sean from the United States, and the crowd (of mostly Brits) boos me…  The MC announces that I am performing BALLET!!!  Holy crap, I was hoping for breakdancing or swingdancing…  I have no idea what the song was, but I did the arms in a halo and spin on your toes.  I ran across the stage doing jumping splits (kind of).  I did back flips and front flips.  Picked up a girl and held her over my head.  More flips and kicks.  At the end, everyone was cheering.  I though it was pretty good to go from boos to cheers in 45 seconds and would have been happy with that.

Then the MC goes thru the dancers and asks the crowd to applaud for the best dancer.  There is standard whooping and applauding for everyone.  I am again last.  When he calls me to the front and announces “The ballet guy from America”, I was almost knocked over by the eruption of sound.  I felt like I just scored the winning touchdown in the Superbowl, or a winning last second half court shot in the NCAA Tourney.  It was nuts.

After being overwhelmed by screams and cheers, I could barely hear the MC over the mic telling everyone that I was the winner of a seven day trip to Fiji!!!! HOLY CRAP!!!  Freaking FIJI!!!!

I can honestly say that a year ago I never expected that I would ever enter a dance contest at backpacker party bar on the great barrier reef, win over the crowd, and win a trip to Fiji.

Now…  well, sometimes it seems like this kind of stuff happens far to often to be random luck…  This night ranks up there with “Spring Break ‘95″, “Fraternity Ski Trip”,  “Oktoberfest”, “Duty Free Vodka and Cranberry Juice”, “My first 24 hours in Vegas with Will”, “Casino Winnings at Steve’s Bachelor Party”, “It started at an Irish Pub in Florence, Italy”, and “Searching for Food in Prague at 1AM”.  To that illustrious list I can now add “I won a trip to Fiji at a backpacker bar dance contest in Australia”.

Yes, I am having a lot of fun!!!

I really have no idea how I can ever go back to a suburban desk job - regardless of what it pays.

I just have to figure out when I can go to Fiji since literally 12 hours before dancing I had just booked my tickets to Thailand and India.  I’m thinking Nov or Dec on my way home from the 2nd half of this trip.  I probably won’t have enough money left to do Europe properly, so I may swing back thru SE Asia since I’m really cutting that short, and that’s a place where everyone who’s been there raves about it.

On the 16th Aaron and I took the overnight Greyhound bus from 1770 to Arile Beach so we could catch a sailboat to the Whitsunday Island chain for the 18th - 20th on Apollo - an 80′ Maxi racing yacht.

I actually ran into Lisa, the really cute Swede I met in New Zealand and a couple people from the Surf camp.  Aside from that, Aaron and I already knew 1/2 the people on our boat…  Damien, Belinda, and the 4 Isralies from the Canoe Trip, Marc, Janine and Franzi from Fraser Island, Rachel and Emma (who did the Canoeing with Marc).  The others we met were all cool - including Chris, who looks like a young Paul Newman (after Ant looking like Steve McQueen, I’m now waiting to find a guy who looks like a young Robert Redford or Clint Eastwood).

On the morning of the 18th we walked across town to the marina and met the crew, reviewed the rules and itinerary, and started sailing with some lucky wind (rare for this time of year).  Here’s the crew…  Heidi (skipper), Molly (chef), Ryan (mate), and Jonno (divemaster).

After a great sail, we arrived at Whitehaven beach - where the silica sand is so fine you can clean jewelry.  There was no coral here, but we had to wear “stinger” suits incase we bumped into any jellyfish.  We all just goofed around for a few hours.

We sailed during sunset to a cove in the Cook Strait where we tied up to a mooring buoy.

That night we partied pretty well.  A young Brit, Leo, was celebrating his 21st birthday and the crew rigged a beer bong for our entertainment.  There was a lot of goon, beer, and I had made 7&7’s.

The next day we motored over to Luncheon Bay where there was a very nice reef and reasonably clear water.  Jonno was giving everyone a free resort dive.  I again tried to dive and again started freaking while breathing underwater.  0 for 2 with SCUBA, so I stuck with snorkeling and free diving and loved it.  We were officially in the Great Barrier Reef National Marine Park.  I got the underwater camera and proceeded to break it in 2 minutes.  Luckily, it was just water in the USB socket shorting out the LCD, so after it dried out later that night it worked fine again and I’m being extra careful of sand in the seals.  The result of that problem is a lack of pictures of the best snorkeling day we had.

We all stayed there for a pretty good sunset from the beach with the boat in the picture.  I took another time lapse video (if I can ever upload it).

One more night of partying and we motored to the sandbar at Langford Island where we snorkelled for a few hours.  The Olympus was working again, so I got plenty of pics and videos…

It was a neat reef, with a nice mix of Large Poly Stonies, Small Polyp Stonies, and Soft coral… and a ton of fish.

This cluster of Yellow and Pink leathers was about 1 meter in diameter.

This red acro colony was easily 2 meters in diameter

This blue tipped stag colony was over 1 meter wide at it’s narrowest point.

A Hawk Nosed Sea Turtle

It was really fun seeing fish and corals in the wild that I used to keep in my aquarium.  Especially considering that my corals were considered large at 2 ft across - and some of these corals were larger than my entire 400 gallon aquarium.  Honestly, I don’t want a reef tank again.  It’s cheaper, more beautiful, and less hassle to fly to Australia and go snorkelling.

After lunch, we rigged up for sailing and raced another Maxi yacht back to Airile Harbor.  We killed them.  The wind was pretty light and we were barely making 15 knots, so the crew let me man the wheel for a while…  Cool as anything - I raced an 80′ sailing yacht!!!

This was my view of the boat.

Otherwise we all just tanned on deck and took the obligatory “last day” pics and exchanged facebook ID’s.

Here’s a pic of me with a few Israeli friends who Canoed in Noosa with me and were also on the boat.  Hey dad, the dark guy is named “Yoni” (inside joke).

Later that night a number of us met at a local bar for some final rowdy dancing and drinking.  I had to catch a bus to Mission Beach the next morning, so I left the party around 2 am.

Aaron and I tried to look like badass bikers with handlebar mustaches on chopper-esque mopeds. This is a horrible pic of me, but here goes…

And here are our hog wild bikes being led by a real cruiser…

You can check it out for a time-lapse video of the whole ride…

And the sunset over one of the only places on the East coast of Oz where you can see the sunset over the ocean…

Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the world.  It also has a rainforest, a nice variety freshwater lakes, shipwrecks, and you can drive on the beach.  You cannot go into the ocean because there are serious rip currents and semi-permanent packs of sharks (including a few great whites).  It is a UN World Heritage Site, because it had some unique habitats and endangered species.

From our hostel (Pippies) in Rainbow Beach.  This hostel had some pretty strict rules.

If you don’t know, GOON is almost wine in a box.  A real box, but not really wine…  It will not actually say “wine” anywhere.  It will be called “Sweet Dry White” and some boxes have ingredients like grape juice, alcohol, eggs and fish.  It’s called GOON because when empty, the mylar bag in side the box can be inflated into a pillow and apparently the Aboriginal word for pillow is GOON.  It’s also a backpacker favorite because it’s like $8 for 2 liters.

So anyway… 11 of us (4 Germans, 3 Brazilians, 2 Swedes, 1 Canadian, and Me) loaded 3 days provisions and tents on the roof and packed into an early ’90’s Toyota Land Cruiser.

It was a beautiful day for the 10 minute ferry crossing. We made it to gorgeous Lake Mckenzie before the rain started.

I couldn’t resist testing the underwater abilities of the Olympus u-8000 - especuially with the dramatic dropoff.

The rain was intermittent as we setup camp and Aaron had some fun unloading the roof rack.

The next day we went to the shipwreck and a spot where rocks jut out called Indian Head

On the way to campsite #2, Arron and I had to change a flat tire that eventually cost us $20/person.  We had a little help…

Then we moved on to an Aboriginee camp where “Nick” hosted us for a campfire and some digireedoo playing…

He gave us PVC digireedoo’s to learn the playing method.

There were also a few dingos roaming around.

The next day we woke up very early to beat the tide on the beach and drove to lake Wobbi before catching the ferry back to the mainland.  Janine apparently did not enjoy the fact that I was taking a picture while driving…

Lake Wobbi is full of algae, so it’s green.  This pic is from the sand dune about 50 meters above the lake.  We actually had enough sun for me to get a mild burn while playing frisbee in the water.

Then a long drive on the beach back to the ferry…

Back to the hostel to relax and catch a bus to 1770 the next day, where Aaron and I booked a “Chopper-roo” biker tour and a 4×4 rain forrest tour.