Adventures Galore

Yikes, it's been a LONG time since my last update, and a lot has happened. Shana, Julia, and myself embarked on whirlwind tour of adventures that only now has the promise of settling down. I guess the best thing to do is highlight each adventure by location....so here we go. I hope you're ready for a long read:
Brisbane: Where we started, obviously. Spent a lot of time planning our ensuing adventures, spent even more time swapping stories about barmaiding.
Cairns: Flew to Cairns last Saturday, really hungover- I don't recommend it. Skydived on Sunday, which was really cool. We jumped from 14,000 ft., freefell over the Pacific for 60 seconds, then floated over the rainforest and Great Barrier Reef for 10 minutes or so before landing on Mission Beach. We spent the rest of the day playing in the ocean, which sounds refreshing, but the water was warmer than my shower water. Shana purchased a DVD of herself skydiving, ask nicely and maybe she'll show you. After skydiving, there was nothing else for us to do in Cairns but pick up our cute little white hatchback rental car (we named her Lucy) and head to Port Douglas, about an hour north.
Port Douglas: We bought a shitty 2-man tent for all three of us and decided it was a great idea to stop at Dougie's Campground and campt there. The only problem is that Port Douglas is in the tropics, so the temperature hovers around 90 degrees, with 80% humidity. Also it's monsoon season. So we "woke up" (oh wait, we never slept) soaking wet and laying grimly side by side. Awful. Luckily it was all worth it, because that day we went scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef! Awesome, absolutely the coolest thing I've ever done. We did three 1/2 hour dives on the Agincourt reefs, each one cooler than the last. Actually, I don't remember much about the first dive because I was so nervous (I'm afraid of deep water.) When you jump in the first time, you hold on to a rope underwater and they make you take your regulator out of your mouth, drop it, find it again, and put it back in your mouth (just in case it happens deeper down.) That was the only time I sort of freaked out, because I just kept swallowing sea water and couldn't get the thing in. But I calmed down, worked out how to swim around, and then could appreciate everything around me. The first thing I saw was a reef shark. We also saw a couple turtles, a ray, a lot of clown/lion/angel/trumpet/trigger fish. On my last dive, I went through a coral tunnel into a coral cave that looked just like Ariels grotto, minus the snarfblatts and dinglehoppers. This underwater heaven made going back to Dougie's & the nightly monsoon that much harder....so we left the next day.
Crocodylus Village: A totally empty hostel in the middle of the Daintree Rainforest. Like actually in the middle. We stayed there for four nights and went on hikes in the jungle during the day and ate meager rations at night (because there was no grocery store....because we were in the middle of the jungle, duh.) Our biggest adventure was hiking Mt. Sorrow, which was 3.5k and 6800 ft. high, which creates a rather dramatic slope. It took 6.5 hours, and was horrible. Oftentimes it was hand over hand climbing up vines and rocks, and there were giant spiders and leeches everywhere, I pulled off at least 50. We were sore everywhere, but are very proud of ourselves. Julia has some very dramatic photos of us that I'll make her post later. We also found something called the Blue Lagoon, which is like a jungle oasis, a swimming hole filled with the clearest, bluest water I've ever seen. We don't think there are any crocodiles there. Crocodylus was really cool/surreal, but it was nice to leave and get back to civilization again, ie. eat more than museli and peanut butter for every meal.
Tully: We left Crocodylus with no plan and now find ourselves in Tully, QLD, waiting to secure a job packing bananas. We were going to camp, but we drove into the "campsite", aka an open field, aka a refugee compound, and decided it didn't look safe. There were too many people crouched under tarps, eating noodles out of a pot and shooting us wild-eyed glances for my liking. Now we are more comfortably ensconced in a glorified shanty village named the Banana Barracks Hostel. Our home is a small clapboard shed with a flickering light and a leaky sink, named Mambalo No. 5. Hopefully we'll get some work for a couple of weeks so as to have a little extra money and some good stories.

What a life.