madoo

holiday

a complete illustrated account of my september tropical holiday with the lovely mike jacka. every photo seen here was taken by me, and so i guess is copyright 2002 me, as is all the text too, i spose. many images have got mouse-over captions just in case you can't be bothered reading the matching adventures. best viewed in 1024 x 768, as far as i can tell. good luck! you might need a few hours.

cast your mind back towards the beginning of september, 2002. on the 10th, after a short late-night packing the night before, michael and madeleine got dropped off at the christchurch airport by mike's brother colin and checked in for their 12.30 flight at the gloriously early hour of approximately 10.30am, only to find it delayed by an hour. here we meet our intrepid couple, as they prepare for their overseas relaxation jaunt - the challenge: to happily survive 13 days in each others' full-time company......

well for some reason mike likes to check into airports really really really super early. not too bad a plan, as just after we had finished (having not queued at all) the queue suddenly became long. it had something to do with hoping that aj would be there and that we could get our seats upgraded to some higher class. thus, for the potential occasion, both of us were dressed real nice. unfortunately, aj was not due to start until 12.30pm, and though our flight was delayed until then, it was not judged full enough for any upgrades. meh. so i read my book ('don't read your book! pay attention to me! to me!') while mike wandered around the airport doing i don't know what cos i was reading, wasn't i? so we breezed through the security checkpoint and bought an exorbitant lunch (had our own bottled water, after my last experience of the price of water in airports), watched a few planes, and boarded. where? over the wing! of course!

ooo, september 11. what a load of ghastly televised bullcrappy they had, huh? not a mention of the probable motive for the 'tragedy', but i guess that would be the one thing the 'terrorists' were meaning to draw attention to, so maybe there's a media embargo on it or something, so instead, you get to find out about the lives of fireman this and miscellaneous finance worker that. oh puhlease. i woke at 5.30 (which was normal body clock wake-up time in nz) and mike at 6ish. after a large and overfilling cooked breakfast, we set out to explore the tri-district of maroochydore-mooloolaba-something else. first stop for a beach walk was around alexandra head (known as alex). a nice enough place, but nothing compared to mooloolaba, which was just around the head. there, the sand is so squeaky clean it's like walking on cornflour, and the cleanliness is vouched for by some sign proclaiming it to be the cleanest beach. that it was, up to my high standards. No bits of plastic, no rubbish of any kind. certainly no stinky bits of sea lettuce like at crappy old sumner. kicked and splashed our way to the far end, stopped for a while in the shade (even at 9am it's getting pretty hot) then returned to stand at the surf club for a bit so that the guys at t+t in nz could see us on the webcam there (and they did!) we even wrote a giant t+t symbol in the sand, but were incapable of the kind of foreshortening that they do on sport fields for the telly cameras, and anyway, it was too close to the surf club to be seen from the camera's angle. mooloolaba sure is a nice beach, albeit surrounded by high-rise apartment buildings and boutique shops etc etc.

what amuses me a lot about holidays and holidaymakers, is that in order to fill in their time of leisure, visits are frequently made to places purpose-built for people who are on holiday to visit. by this, i mean such attractions as the big pineapple, and all its pineapple-related activities, not to mention the macadamia nut section. we did not partake in any such folly while visiting the big pineapple - indeed, it was only a nourishment stop, but why? why do these things exist? i do not imagine that locals are particularly excited about seeing the big pineapple more than once, so really, it and its kind are solely for tourism interests. how does something like that become interesting and worthy of a visit (especially enough to actually pay good money for) only when one is on holiday? isn't it actually superly amazingly dull, and the only reason you'd go there is to tire out the children, or to fill in the yawning gaps in the conversation when you've run out of things to say to each-other? "oooh look dear, there's another pineapple". it's not like the pineapples actually _do_ anything, they just kind of sit there, growing imperceptibly (unless you get a season ticket, in which case you might notice their growth). kind of like museums, only they're boring the world over, not just the ones in your home town - how many old gum diggers/gold diggers/explorers huts do you have to see before the sacky chaffy beds, rusted tins and chipped-paint mannekins lose their interest? just one or fewer.

having said that, we did go inside the actual big pineapple and read about how they grow and get from the plant to the shelves, which is always cool. factory processes have always intrigued me - all the machines that perform the individual tasks, specially designed, just for those tasks, and no other. they are fun to watch. the big pineapple was constructed out of some reasonably strong but thin fibreglassy substance which, when the light shone through it, was a brilliant orange and green, really vibrant colours. neat. i also closely observed a real live (but not so vibrant) pineapple plant (with only a little pineapple growing on it) and that was cool for all of 5 seconds - about as long as it takes to say "oh cool, so that's what they look like". heh heh.

righto, so after the pineapple adventures, it was on in search of the elusive glasshouse mountains (note to self: don't take geotech engineer on holiday anywhere near "interesting" geological features). these we eventually found just by randomly choosing roads and seeing where they went. one led to a dam and on the way to it, down a very steep and deserted road, was the coolest roadkill i had so far seen. a short jog and i added it to my gory photographic collection. the glasshouse mountains are probably old volcanic cones form which all the surrounding stuff has eroded. that seems plausible enough to me, although they could in fact be any rock that did anything - i didn't bother to read enough to find out. they took a long time to get close to, with many detours and long-cuts. a (large, very large) kangaroo had the decency to bound across the road right in front of us and make it seem exotic. i saw many, many more pineapples, and even some macadamia trees. i took too many photos of silly pointy mountains until it finally got too dark to take any more. watched the sun set as we sped right past australia zoo (argh! big scary poster of steve irwin!) and detoured on the way home to caloundra. a brisk wind had picked up for the evening, so we didn't stay there long at all. darkness = hometime and watching crappy lest we forget rubbish on the telly. as my brother has pointed out, we do just forget, as evidenced by the fact that very very few of us can remember any of the many many who died at gallipoli. blah blah people died, yes it was horrible, no need to rerelease and bastardise a song over it. scary thing though, this "dang, we've run out of wars to fight so lets make one in iraq" thing. i later read an article in a june 2001 time magazine that highlighted w's unpopular go-it-alone desires, contrary to worldy advisement etc. if iraq is such a huge threat to the world that we need an itemised list of their weaponry to be made public, then how about every nation with weapons so a stocktake and send it in, cos i see no reason for any of them to be treated as any less of a threat, if all it takes is ownership of a few weapons. i, for the record, own a couple of craft knives and some bits of wire. i also have some sandpaper, for some vicious abrading, if the need arises. ooo, and i bet i could do some damage with my soldering iron, as long as i was being attacked near a power point.

it rained! so we slept in a bit, then went to the sunshine plaza, it's pretty big. i made it past 3 shops before seeing something i knew i was going to buy, but made a good go of pretending i was looking at everything. lots of flimsy floral and patchwork and embroidered thingies. not likely to hold together beyond 3 washes, so not likely i'll participate in this latest fad, although some of it would really suit. nemmind. mike got some sandals and dvds and i got me a sun hat and just before leaving, got the top i first noticed. haven't worn it yet, but it sure is niiiice. carried on with the pretense of being extravagantly spending tourists, and got a skirt for my sister (who it turns out, does not want it - yay!) and a swim top for me. which was perhaps the best buy of the trip, cos it sure saved on sunscreen! did you know that in australia, they sell yoghurt in 6 packs of 200ml pottles? much better than our measly 150ml ones. also, that you can't seem to get any regular maggi onion soup with which to make dip - they only have french onion and tomato. also, they don't stock caramel milk, but have heaps of different brands of iced coffee. fascinating! hooned up to coolum for the sunset and played around on the beach there, digging holes in the sand and taking too many photos of reflections. coolum appears to be popular with surfers. noticed that very few surfboards have patterns on the bottom (shark-attack-prevention thing) but that some did. oh those brave souls. on the way back i was going "blah blah blah blah blah" as i do when suddenly "oooo! pelicans!" so we stopped and watched them swimming and feeding for a while. found out later that pelicans eventually go blind from ducking underwater all the time and then die of starvation cos they can't find any more food, which, though plausible, sounds like rubbish to me. in the evening, mike's nana showed me her collection of photos of mike and assorted family. hee hee ho ho. i was mildly appalled that these appeared to be kept only in a pile, with no semblance of order (except being the right way up) so i attempted to order them chronologically. mike's nana also has a fridge almost covered in pictures, most of them sellotaped on and together with all the other ones. sellotape!! so not photo-safe. but what a good idea - that way she gets to see them every day. some fridge doors should be made with a see-through covering over something like corkboard so that one can collage it with pictures and then protect them from food-grimed hands. this idea brought to you by the letters z and z, and the number 8 hours of sleep needed.

yep, that's the kind of date that you really want to get on a plane, isn't it.... awoke at dawn again, so went for a swim at mooloolaba at 7am, having not yet braved it (after all, we weren't yet officially in the tropics, being 3.18 degrees south of them). meanwhile it was only 11 degrees in christchurch. ha ha ha ha ha!. it was before the hordes of children arrived, so very peaceful, but there were already a lot of people up and about. then it was a bus to brisbane (i slept most of the way), a plane to cairns (i finished the airline magazine's crossword puzzle) and another bus to port douglas (with a name-dropping driver - the thin red line was filmed up there, you know) and the mango tree holiday apartments. yay! top floor! that was pretty much it for the whole day. we had some corn chips but fell asleep before we had decided where to go for dinner. note to self: when going on holiday, do not plan to travel too much, because actual travelling takes a while, and takes time away from the relaxation part of things.

a day of relaxing. dawn on an east coast beach was far too tempting, but disappointed with a fabulous display of being stormy on the horizon, so not allowing even a mere peek of the rising sun. so i took some photos anyway, and mike almost got a good one of the wind fiercely whipping my hair about, except the clouds in the background were too dark for my hair to show up. get the drift? crappy weather. it even rained. but oh sooooooo warm! wandered through town at a financially safe hour (ie before it opened) and got some sustenance for the days ahead from the supermarket. walked home with broken sandals - the leather straps stretched past 4 holes in that one short trip. once back at the mango tree, we got all ready to book a car in town but the heat soon put a stop to our explorations, and we ended up getting one from the car hire place that was about 20 metres down the road. booked it for monday to thursday. other than that, the day was one of swimming and playing in the waves, and lying on the beach relaxing. that was the day i found bean. bean floats, and as such, was a fantastic wavetime companion. oh, how we frolicked, me throwing bean into the oncoming foam then madly searching to see if bean was still in front of me or had, in fact sneaked past amidst all the tumbling and churning wave action. bean had a few bits of coral starting to grow on it, but i kindly removed them, and pocketed bean for some more fun the next day. had a swim in the pool on the way back, and watched some steve irwin on the telly - steve's most dangerous adventures. much hilarity as steve encourages sharks to try to bite him while in a shark cage in his khakis. they failed, sadly. then steve tortures some poor snake for a few minutes. and steve talks to a bunch of army guys. roooly dangerous!

walked into town for the sunday markets via a wrong turn to the estuary. watched in terror as amidst nothing but silence, schools of fish simultaneously leapt from the water, presumably to avoid some unseen submarine predator. what with all the crocodile warning signs around us, we were kind of 'eeeeeeeep' while walking past mangroves. the market was much like any other - those batik clothes from bali, some handmade soaps, some stupid fold-into-a-bag-in-itself towely-thing, half-teatowels with crocheted tops with buttons for hanging on your cupboard handles, and some frozen mango treats. we got the frozen mango. i think i have now learnt my lesson about markets - they are largely pointless, like gift stores that aptly cater for when you want to give something to someone, but contain nothing that you'd ever really consider buying anything for your own use. argh! despite my sunhat and sunscreening, i did manage to get burnt. on my feet! which proceeded to be itchy for two days.

booked our dive trip and attempted to plan our following days (4 of them with car) using mere cartoon maps. might i just say now that i found most of the brochures, while they contained maps, contained largely useless maps. the kind that had straight lines between two places when in fact the road was distinctly curvy. the kind which showed towns as large orange buttons with several roads leading out from the middle. this can lead to some confusion, until you realise that no, not all of the roads actually lead in or out of the town centre, nay, but one may do so, whereas the others may turn off even kilometres before or after you pass through these burgeoning metropoli! one disadvanatge of an east coast beach is that when the sun falls, the shadows stretch across the sand, and you have to keep shimmying the towels down until you reach where the sea is shimmying up (or down, i guess) and at that point, you go home.

started the day by hauling mike out of bed to go and see a very stormy dawn. the car we hired for our journey was a v-can-green daewoo matiz. it was 4 door and very dinky and completely gutless when it came to actually having some speed. just as well we were aiming for a cruisy drive. headed north through the sugar cane fields, past the sugar mill (tours anyone? no thanks! not that bored!) and through mossman which had these amazing trees covered in thick ferny things that matched the car. mmmm, it was starting to get green and lush and rainforesty already! mossman has a gorge which is an attraction, but as we were heading for cape tribulation, we decided to get there first, and go to the gorge on the way back if there was time.

crocodiles! after some careful research we elected to go on bruce belcher's crocodile cruise in favour of the daintree river train, which looked like some flimsy kooky painted up gypsy fair kind of "adventure" - all it lacked were oompa loompas. we laughed muchly as it oozed its way along the river. nice river, and such a shame that you can't go swimming in it cos of ALL THE CROCODILES!!!!! oh dear. one swam very close past us, looking with its marbly eye (larger than beady; no less intimidating). we were lead to a few more (they kind of just sit there; being reptiles, any movement comes at the expense of muscle energy stores as their relatively poor circulation means any activity above minimal is anaerobic and thus requires a recovery period to replenish energy stores; so if you're a crocodile and going to move, then it had better be catching you some food or attempting to shake off steve irwin) and on the way saw a lovely green frog that lived on bruce's boat, some egrets and hawks and a darter, also an amethyst python. "where?" "up there, in the plant" [madeleine searches for hypothetically small green snake] "where????" "up there! in the plant" [madeleine wonders how saying the same thing in a different tone is supposed to be any more specific...but at that point notices the LARGE black/purple snake sitting on top of the plant....] it was a pretty river, and we thankfully were not subjected to a loudspeakered commentary, there being only four of us on the boat which could comfortably fit 80.

as we drove, the roads got narrower and narrower and soon, the edges had disappeared, with the road surface just blending into the edge of the rainforest, with plants towering over the middle, and vines attempting to stitch the bisected rainforest back together. so very lush. warnings of cassowaries. we decided to do as many of the rainforest boardwalks as we could (not fond of walking onto rainforest true with only sandals on). that meant 3. the first was a bit blah, being near the daintree environment centre. we spent a lot of time trying to walk either faster or slower than the guided tours, which it seemed entailed having some guy in a khaki suit reading out the plaques for you just in case you could not read them yourself. y'know, all that "when a tree falls in a rainforest, such as this one from such and such hurricane in 19-blahty-blah, that is an opportunity for the other species to grow to fill the gap. first in is this one, then this one and finally this one". somehow i have heard it all before.

at least i got to meet the fan palms up close and personal. fan palms are cool - they have large fan-shaped leaves with a beautifully even round circumference made up of several separate fronds radiating from the end of the stalk, all ending in a perfect zig-zag. the leaves are large and few, and stick out at different heights over the plant. the impression is one of syntheticness, as if these are so perfect they must be man-made; they kind of reminded me of a ride at disneyland, maybe, or the tops of cotton reels? something vaguely yet comfortingly familiar, anyway, made from corrugated iron, maybe? really attractive, though, so i took some photos. this was a bit challenging, as it was actually raining at the time. though mike had no such protection, i, wisely, had imported my nz $2 shop 'emergency raincoat' complete with domes, and had the camera at most times concealed underneath, bringing it out only for photos, which entailed many a careful undoming. the rain was a nice touch, though, being of course cooling in effect, and also shining up the rainforest foliage real purty. my sandals did tend to slip a bit on the wooden boardwalks, so i ended up going barefoot. snakes and spiders be damned! it was very quiet in the rainy rainforest (excepting the noise if swishing plastic raincoat), and peaceful. the many stops for fan palm shelter meant many an impromptu smooching.

most of the boardwalks contained a significant mangrove section, and i have to say i was botanically impressed by the variety of adaptation to the same ecological challenge. mangroves, because they grow in mud, do not typically have the aeration around their roots that normal plants get, so they have to find some other way of getting air. some have buttress roots, tall thin walls of roots, looking like when a stick lands on mud and then it rains and then the rest of the mud is washed away but not the bit under the stick so it sticks up on a narrow stick-shaped pedestal, just like that. others have snorkels, roots, that just stick straight up out of the mud. others still have knee roots, rootsd that stick up out of the mud but then bend and go back down into again, presumably so they can again so sticking up somewhere else. i loved how these three forms could be seen all at one place, in a mud-coloured miniature medieval city type configuration, walls and huts and spires. so i took a photo, geez!

>ok, you thought that was a lot of writing for one day? then check this out. finally saw a proper sunrise, complete with the sun doing its wicking up from the sea bit (horizon distortion). kept a good focus on it all at maximum zoom. i have now made a funny little movie of it :)

got myself a new nickname today from mike. don't know how he came up with it, nor how to spell it. set out early so as to miss the traffic and achieve all that we did in one day (turned out to be 400km of travelling). first up was the drive up towards kuranda with a stop at the barron gorge. we saw the most amazing wild insect we saw on the whole trip. a small but bright green spider. that was honestly it. no plate-sized bird-eating spiders for me, no, in fact nothing with which to torment mike at all! dang it all. there's nothing like setting out early and beating all the tourists. unencumbered vistas, and the space and time to set up little mini-tripod self-timer shot without having to wait for the camera-illiterate to kindly get out of the way. because we got to barron gorge before even the first train, that's what we got, and it was a huuuuuuuuuuge view! just a pity that in damming the gorge, the mighty barron river was reduced to nothing more than a vertical creek. you would have needed binoculars to even see it, i think. pretty impressive drop, though, for a waterfall. we had to imagine its majesticity, but that's not so harsh - at least it meant it wasn't raining!

just after leaving the gorge, we passed a sign that was of my new nickname, so of course, had to take a picture. just after that, we passed (drove over?) the most awesome road kill i have ever seen. mike saw it first, so i made him turn around and go back to see it again. it was a snake, about 2 m long, and really really meaty (you could tell by the amount of gory squishing. though i really really wanted to add it to my collection, i just could not, as it was too much of a bloody mess, and besides, the road it was on was just past an intersection, so too busy for me to run out and compose/focus before becoming part of the work of art myself. there endeth the roadkill series! after choosing to eliminate the snake, it seemed like there was no point to bother with the possum and the kangaroo and the unidentified thing - possibly just a head. the roadkill series, abruptly terminated before its time, which is apt, considering that was the point of the series in the first place - at least, that was my justification, and not at all that i wanted to make mike go all greebly ;)

suddenly we found ourselves in the outback (or near enough) - red dirt, and lots and lots of termite mounds. this was at once exciting, novel, and scary, because who knew what enormous 2 metre killer snakes were lurking in the scraggly undergrowth, anticipating a sating lunge at the ankles of any passing naive sandal-wearing photographer? not to mention spiders, and those enormous ants. eep. so i trod very carefully and not at all off any beaten paths. got some lunch materials and my bag checked (cos the supervisor was watching over our checkout girl) at mareeba and saw some real genuine aborigines (rare on the coast) then hooned (relatively, for the matiz) towards granite gorge, with some careful navigation attempts on my part again ruined by cartoon map flippery. grrrr. i'm just grateful for mike's innate sense of direction/ability to read road signs.

well here was a dilemma. in the car hire agreement, it stated we were not to go off road, but the last 1km or so the the granite gorge area was not sealed. which isn't to say it was all stones and chippy-windscreen chippy-paint objects, just very red dusty sandy stuff, the kind that sticks well to a vehicle and says "LOOK AT ME I GOT DRIVEN OFF THE ROAD" to any vehicle inspector. but we sure weren't going to walk the last 1km, for very good reason: it was stinking and mercilessly hot. the sun beating down, the trees scantily clad in foliage, so offering little in the way of shade, and the only solid shadows being those directly beneath us. how glad were we for air conditioning? very very glad. parked at the gorge area and slathered on enough sunscreen to kill a cat, then began our journey around the gorge area at our own risk, as the signs clearly stated. there was a trail painted on the rocks (line of white dots to follow, with the occasional scrawled name and arrow). you could construe this as graffiti, ruining the otherwise beautiful area, but you could also choose to see it as very very wise, considering the ease of getting so so lost, and disorientated muchly by the heat. yah, so, anyway, saw some rock wallabies, discovered my sandals had very unreliable grip on the rock surfaces so had to go bare foot for some of it (which was ow ow ow) and while clambering, gave my camera a really good solid whack on a rock. oooooo! *wince*. hold breath while turning on and checking focus and functions.....whew! lucky.

the place was like no other. suddenly we were very small people in a very big landscape with an enormous view out over the tablelands. wicked. finally, we reached the end of the path and started back towards the car. now, having no idea how far we'd come, i thought the car park would be just over the next rise, so wasn't too worried about there being no visible respite from the burning solar rays. however, after a few times of "it must be just over the next rise" i was beginning to get worried, there being noone who knew where we were etc etc, being found as shrivelled, dessicated bodies by some unwitting tourist. never has the sight of a lone child swinging on a lone swing been so welcome (given its normal creepiness factor). very picnic at hanging rock type scenery, though i have not read the book nor seen the movie, so would not know for sure. i write so much because granite gorge was one of my favourite bits of the holiday.

ok, so then we set out for malanda and millaa millaa and the 'waterfall circuit' for some fun with long exposures. the scenery became lush and rainforesty again, encompassing the postcard legend, the curtain fig. woot. so, a tree falls into another tree, right, and these fig seeds get dropped in the canopy then send roots down to the ground from wherever they are, meaning a huge wall (curtain) of fig roots. mmm. fascinating. saw the postcards. the waterfalls were not as spectacular as many i have seen previously in life, and the enjoyment of them was somewhat hampered by a huge bus of people on some guided tour again, poor things. they were mostly talented at standing in the way when someone has a camera pointed at something. so we sat around waiting for them to get ahead of us, and were about the last people to be at the last fall for the day, i suspect. balanced my camera in the middle of the stream and took some pictures. i really needed to have some slower speed film for it to be effective, but no matter. after that, it was time to get back to port douglas as fast as we could, which was via gillies highway. now, one map showed this to be a niiice smooth journey, straightforward enough. however, i did also find another cartoon map showing it more accurately to be a series of tight squiggles, which is what it was, up and down through some large-scale scenery.

saw dawn by myself this time. again with the rising sun, but not so many clouds as the previous one. there are a lot of people up and about at dawn, presumably because it's one of the coolest times to be on the beach. at that stage, only the largest crabs have made their holes for the day, and they sure do scoop the sand out a long way...the holes are about 2-3cm in diameter, and quite deep, not that i was willing to poke anything in to see how deep, for fear of disturbing a crab, angered, and strong from its sand-throwing efforts.

the skyrail is "the world's best rainforest experience". you can tell, because it has so many awards, and can afford to have such exorbitant prices for a gondola ride, even if it is 7.5 km long. it was pretty neat flying above the rainforest, sure, but i think i preferred the experience of being in the rainforest, because from some distance above, you don't really get that feeling of lushness and variety and all encompassing living going on, the diversification of lifestyles and habits etc etc blah blah shut up you zoomoolologist. there were a couple of stations to stop at one the way - y'know, more of those informative plaques plus a few views of bits and pieces. one station had an interactive display, but i found its inaccuracy a bit annoying. you'd point at a bit of trunk and get a particular animal. point at another bit of trunk off in another part of the image and get the same animal. so wasted time doing that for a few minutes. i am so disillusioned with such things - it's almost like when you have to wait for something, and all you have got to read is a bus timetable - just as likely to get forgotten only slightly more educational. mike was under no such compulsion to get his money's worth in education and information, so we railed on to kuranda!

i am happy we got to go to kuranda, because our first stop there was the kuranda buttefly sanctuary, and there can't really be many things more beautiful and calming and peaceful than to be surreunded by hundreds of pretty butterflies just flitting and diving and swooping about their business. they were contained in a large aviary setting complete with water features, and had guided tours led not by loud-mouthed blokes, but quiet spoken butterfly enthusiasts, as you would expect. not an aussie twang to be heard!. so i got out my camera and started photographing as many different types as i could find that were not in flight (in flight, they were very hard to keep up with).

skyrailed back to kuranda and plodded back up the coast past port douglas into the mossman region to visit the gorge. on the way we passed some trees that smelled just like the zapote icecream of monday. mmmm. drool. mossman was another walk through lush rainforest to one of the best swimming holes i have seen that isn't my favourite one in the aniseed valley in nelson. as it was getting on for dusk, not many people were swimming or about - i guess locals think it's too cold or something! started to go further up the track, but it just kept going on and on, so instead followed a 'track' down to the river and sat there for dusk, balancing on rocks taking long exposure pictures again (all of them overexposed due to wrong film type - no matter!). the rest was a respite from the hot stickness of walking in a rainforest that's been giving off mosture all day. one word - fug. ick. ok that's two words. we were about to leave when it was suggested to go for a swim. so i raced back to the car, dumped the camera and got our togs. by the time i had made it back to the river it was a lot cooler, and mike, who had been sitting waiting, was also. nevertheless, a swim is a swim, and a promise is a promise. but plunging into dark green water at dusk when you can't really tell its depth or the creatures lurking within was kind of spooky, especially with noone else about. another creepy asking-for-axe-murderers moment (particularly the innocently giggling clothes-back-on-the-shore aspect of it). we swam up to the rapids and sat in them for a bit, then floated down them back to the main pool, hoping to avoid collisions with large just-submerged rocks on the way. then, as a nice treat for mike, i ditched the bikini. really super asking for it now, thought i, but no hardened criminal psychopaths arrived. phew. got out and towelled off, and in no time at all, could see the creatures that had been lurking within, as they all came out! saw many fish, and something which may or may not have been a turtle, just swimming across the open water, nothing to worry about (indicating an absence of underwater criminal psychopaths also). could have been a platypus - i'm sure if i knew more about the local ecology, i'd have been able to work out which, but i hadn't been reading the plaques. as we towelled off and reclothed, the greyest part of dusk hit, and with it, a swelling cacophony of wildlife calls.

though we got up early again, chose not to go and see dawn, and possibly missed one of the nicest ones (cloudy, but not too cloudy, so pretty). got misled again by the cartoon maps, as a short road appeared to go straight to the shoreline, but in reality, had a compulsory left turn (wrong direction). dang, said i, for any other of the short roads to the shoreline would have sufficed, yet i chose that one in particular. paid up and got on the boat to green island with lots and lots of other people. applied masses of sunscreen because the constant itching from those little bits of sunburn from missing backs of shoulders etc were making things less pleasant. collected our snorkelling gear while on the boat and got to the island at about 10am.

snorkelled till lunch and was just about to quit (as in "lets go back for lunch now" "all right" [plunge into water for snorkel back to shore]) when what should swim past in front of me but a large brown turtle! "woot!" said i, which, through the snorkel, came out like "rooooo-h" and proceeded to chase it away from mike and take a few snaps with my underwater camera. luckily this was before i got sunscreen on the plastic in front of the lens which kind of damaged the plastic making it a little less transparent. d'oh. lunch was a buffet that went surprisingly well, given the numbers of people it was supposed to serve. mike swapped his flippers for a larger pair and we went to the other main beach of the island to digest. mike went off for a walk away down the beach while i wrote some notes on activites so far done, then sculpted a little sand armchair for bean to sit in. of course when mike was there, i had to add in the surround sound home theatre system, and made a kidney spa pool too. nothing spared for little bean!

returned the car and took more dawn photos, this time involving a coconut palm silhouette. returned chez mango for a sleep in, then started to read the sequel to bridget jones' diary called bridget jones: the edge of reason. mike started to read over my shoulder at about page 60, then over the course of the day (in bed, on the sofa, at the beach), we finished the whole book. quite funny - especially now you have the movie actors to put into the roles. i was impressed by the characterisation they named jellyfish - one of those people who seems outwardly to be nice, but manages to levy some pretty nasty barbs disguised as mere chit-chat and idle conversation. for example, saying "oh yes i remember those trousers of your bridget - you used to wear them when you were slimmer" etc etc. if you have ever met one of these people, you'd know what i mean. i know of at least one. instantly recognisable. bought another underwater camera for tomorrow's dive trip (a new kodak model; claims to go to 10 metres and to be sunscreen resistant in the lens - yay!) then went back along the beach to read in the half-shade. did the shimmying towards the sea thing again, then swam for a bit. i 'rescued' a crab that latched onto me, only to find it immediately ran back into the sea once on land. also got a bit of a scare by a floating fish that was not at all dead, oh no, cos when you touched it, it sprang into life for a few seconds, then returned to floating in the waves. strange, so got out. took a few pics of us swimming in the sea, but i knew that by then, the lens was so munted, they'd be absolutely crap (and they were). still, it's the only photos of me wearing my bikini, so maybe it's not so bad that they were so blurry ;)

ignored dawn again and instead tidied, did dishes and readied for our reef dive. again left the gigantic camera behind in favour of the pentax (which is really odd to use after my slr for so long - i keep looking through the viewfinder and expecting to see the focus changing, not so!). got collected at 8am for the boat, then sped out to the reef while having talks and instrauctions on how to operate dive equipment and what to do when we got in the water (which was prove we could do a few tricks). got assigned to the 4th diving group, so we had to go snorkelling at the first site for about 15 minutes first (oh no...). the dive itself wasn't as difficult as the one i did in rarotonga as there was absolutely no current to contend with - the water was glassy smooth - and i didn't have such trouble with my ears. at a few points during the dive (about 20 mins) i did suddenly realise that the only thing keeping me alive was the apparatus on my back, and that if i lost my regulator i'd have to bloody well hold my breath until i found it/the spare one again. but the panics were ony fleeting, and were soon forgotten. at depth, the light is less, so the colours less bright - everything looked blue. so i didn't bother with photos (i have seen too many wasted u/w cameras to not know what to do with them). it was surprising how difficult it was to not kick other divers in the head with flippers, as i didn't dare look anywhere but straight ahead, for fear of osing regulator, i guess. i also got kicked a few times. it was also difficult to remember to stay on the same level as the guide, not to go to shallow or deep. so you'd go "oops! i'm too deep" and hoon up to crash into someone else. duhhhhh.

our last and very lazy day. in the morning, took a few pictures of four mile beach looking its best so far, and in the afternoon went for a swim. mike tried to subtly remove my bikini, but did not factor in the friction of lycra straps, so that kind of hurt. he tried it on for a while, but only far out in the water where noone could see. tried the bikini top on, that is, not that anything else! he spent most of the day being creepy michael, staring and glaring at me while i was reading magazines. other than that, a nothing day. perfect!