<Amy P.'s Summer>

	How I spent my summer… Amy Perkins Senior, Marine Biology and Ecology Manchester, CT SUMMER IN AUSTRALIA BLOG Thoughts, Rants and Subliminal Suggestions Friday, May 20, 2005 In Australia!! Well then, here I am in Australia! Jet lag is crazy and I think I have finally recovered and this is the third day I've been here! Our group from Florida Tech is pretty cool. There are a total of 23 people all traveling together and this includes 15 girls, our TA/GSA Matt Scripter, Dr. Shenker and his wife Sandy, and 5 guys. We all met at the Los Angeles airport on Monday, May 16 and waited in the airport for what seemed like a God-awful long time then took the 11:50 p.m. flight to Sydney. The flight lasted 13 hours and 55 minutes and it was SOOOOO long. Luckily there were movies continually playing and the seats were fairly decent for sleeping, unlike the planes that I normally fly in from Connecticut to Florida. Thank goodness. We arrived in Sydney at 7 a.m. on May 18. May 17 never existed for me. We took a bus to our hostel in Sydney, called Footprints Westend. It's really awesome!! After getting all of our luggage up to our rooms, we were forced out and walked to the Sydney Aquarium. Twenty-three marine biology majors in an aquarium is a really funny site, and I thought pretty dangerous to do. After that, we walked to the Sydney Fish market for lunch/early dinner. All of the fish for sale was amazing. Afterwards, I chose to go shopping with Sandy and a couple other girls, and we went Opal shopping. Australia has many opal mines so you can get jewelry for fairly low cost compared to the states. Additionally, the quality of the stones is far better, and you can find black opals, not just the white ones in the states. I bought myself a ring, it is absolutely gorgeous. We came back to the hostel and crashed. I was asleep by 6 p.m. Our room woke up by 3:30 a.m., which really stunk. Stupid jetlag. I managed to fall back asleep and woke again at 7 a.m. We went out to breakfast at this awesome little cafe. It had awesome food. We then took a walk through Hyde Park, to the Botanical Gardens, through the Gardens and on to the Opera House. Hyde Park was really pretty. The Botanical Gardens were very cool. There were TONS of Flying Foxes, a type of fruit bat, nesting in the trees. There were also some very cool Golden Orb spiders everywhere. Oh yeah, and plants :-) We even saw a Kookaburra! We walked around the outside of the Opera House then took a ferry over to the Taronga Zoo. Supposedly Steve Irwin's crocodiles lived there while he was renovating his own zoo thing. The entire zoo was on a hillside, and you could take a ski lift to the top then just walk down the hill and see all the animals. There was a baby wombat that was SOOOOO cute! I even got my picture taken with some Koalas, up close! I'll have pictures to share when I get back. We took the ferry back across Sydney Harbour then walked back to the hostel through Hyde Park again, which was beautiful at night. The Eucalyptus trees form a natural cathedral ceiling above you as you walk down the main path, and the tree trunks are lit with lights. It was amazing. Brenda, Dana and I then went out to find a movie theatre because Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith opened today! Hah!! We saw it before the states!!! Except for midnight showings. Either way, we watched it. Movies are way more expensive here then in the states, even with the exchange rate. Got back to the hostel around midnight and went to sleep. Dana and I decided that Padme was a goody-two shoes and didn't deserve Anakin, and we wouldn't mind be seduced by a guy heading for the dark side, especially one as good looking as Hayden Christenson. This morning I went to the same cafe for breakfast then headed back to the room and waited for Dana to get ready to leave. We went to Paddy's Market, which was so cool! There was a whole bunch of stuff, tourist traps for sure, but some of it was neat. I got an awesome massage. I realized that I have several people I need to buy stuff for to bring back, but I really shouldn't get it now seeing as though I still have 5 1/2 weeks left. They are as follows: Mom, Scott, Eric, Eric's sister and my cousin Laura. All of the stuff in the market though was cheapy and not good. Well, that's been my trip so far. I have 5 minutes left on the computer. Got to go!!! Saturday, May 21, 2005 Finally on the west coast Yesterday we flew out of Sydney Airport to Perth (If my typing is weird, like with weird characters, it's because the keyboard is funky). Perth is very pretty and sort of reminds me of Florida, there are a lot of similar plants (only because they have imported Australian plants to Florida). We are staying at this awesome hotel. We have a kitchen and everything which means that we can eat on the cheap if we buy from a grocery store. Australian TV shows are very interesting. We also had our very first lecture for the class from Dr. Shenker. It was just an overview of the logistics of our trip and then talking about Gondwanan species and distributions. We were interrupted several times by people honking as they drove by. We were sitting on the banks of a river, beside a road and the bikers and joggers going by were also interested. A whole flock of wild cockatoos also interrupted the lecture several times. At last it felt like we were taking a class, which we are supposed to be doing. :-) Again, the time stamp on the bottom is wrong for me. Just add 12 hours now. I am on the exact opposite side of the world from the eastern U.S. That's really cool. I don't really know what I'll be doing today, probably just walking around Perth and enjoying the sights. More to come later!! Sunday, May 29, 2005 In Exmouth, WA Well, it's been a while, sorry guys. Internet so far after my last post has been both dial-up and expensive. We've finally come to a place where the connection is relatively cheap. (5 AUS$ for 1.25 hours) That's the best I've seen since Sydney. Things have been awesome here. After Perth, we traveled to Cervantes where the Pinnacles Desert is located. The Pinnacles are totally awesome. They are limestone formations that were left after rainfall leached lime from the sand and formed limestone. A calcite cap formed on top of the limestone. Then plants grew on top of the limestone and started sending roots down and widening cracks. Sand filled the cracks and gradually wind eroded away the sand, leaving the limestone with the cap exposed to the air and showing the pinnacles that are out there today. The red rock was completely amazing and I wish that people weren't complaining about the (cool) weather and having to use the bathroom. I would have loved to see the sunset; we heard it was something to NOT miss (grrrrr). I did get to see kangaroo tracks, and Matt Scripter and I took off from the rest of the group to go see more. The whole desert looks like another planet. After Cervantes, we drove to Kalbarri and hiked through the National Park there. Kalbarri has this awesome gorge formed by the Murchison River, and we hiked the 9 km trail that goes around one of the bluffs. That's about 7-8 miles according to Dr. Shenker’s GPS. The river was kind of high, and we had to crawl along the rock cliffs because the usual path was underwater. It was quite the adventure!!! We also did a marine portion in Kalbarri since the town is right on the coast of the Indian Ocean. There was a beautiful Rocky Inter-tidal coast, and we went and waded around. Matt caught an octopus (take that Jamaican trip!!! we can catch them too!!!) and we all got to play with it. We left Kalbarri and drove up to Monkey Mia (My-a), which has an absolutely BEAUTIFULL resort. We stopped on the way to see the really cool, yet slightly unexciting, stromatolites of Shark Bay and Hamelin Pool. It was a nice hike to see them at least and the water looked REALLY inviting. I wanted to swim, it was so clear. Monkey Mia is the second oldest running dolphin research center. There are over 900 Pacific Bottlenose Dolphins that live in the Shark Bay area and about four of them are called Beach Dolphins. The dolphins have been fed by the people of Denham for a long time and a couple generations keep returning. In an effort to reduce the impact random and uncontrolled feeding would have on their behavior, only four dolphins are fed. They are adult females that receive only 1/5 of their total need and only the fish they would eat anyway. Otherwise they are encouraged to forage normally. We got to watch the dolphin feeding each morning, and both times I saw it, I was ALMOST picked. In fact, the people on either side of me were picked each time, but not me. Grrrr. Oh well, I got bumped by one of the dolphins :-) We also went snorkeling, sailing on a catamaran and night hiking looking for marsupials (A gondwanan distributed animal! :-)) The night hike was cool, even when Kevin and Matt hid in the pitch black and jumped out at us. Now we are in Exmouth, just arrived today (add 12 hours to the timestamp guys) and tomorrow we board our dive boat for three days of diving, including one day with the Whale Sharks!!! I'm so excited!!! Bye for now! Wednesday, June 1, 2005 Whale sharks are da bomb!!!! Wow, I have had such a totally cool past couple of days. The whole group of us went on a dive boat for several days of diving on Ningaloo Reef. This place is totally an undiscovered jewel; Dr. Shenker even says that it is better than the Great Barrier Reef that he's seen. We were supposed to be camping on the Murion Islands, but the weather and water were so rough that it had to be scratched. It was so bad that on our way out to the first dive we had several people yakking over the side. I am not ashamed to admit that I was one of them... I did feel better afterward. The diving was awesome!!!!! I'll save the details for later. The second day of diving was also really cool, and I had the most awesome experience. For a bit extra, $60, I was able to do a Night Dive on Ningaloo. OMG... It was so thrilling to be down there. The first thing I see… An itty-bitty octopus the size of my thumbnail crawling on my gauges. It proceeded to crawl behind my dive computer and hide there the entire dive. We were also constantly surrounded by these little red worms—kind of cool at first, then totally annoying because they got into my hair, my ears, the cracks in my mask, EVERYWHERE. They were also attracted to our dive lights so we could never really see anything because there was just a glowing red mass. We saw a sleeping lionfish, a HUGE grouper and two sea turtles. The first one was sleeping. We woke them up. Later we turned off the lights, and there was bioluminescence in the water!! That was cool. Today was totally awesome. I slept on board the dive boat in a swag with the other four people who also stayed for the night dive. We were woken up in time to see sunrise over Ningaloo. Awesome. Then, we switched boats to Isabella Darling for Whale Shark swimming. THAT WAS SO COOL!!! There are no words to describe the feeling as you're snorkeling through deep blue water and out of nowhere appears this creature that's completely harmless. And it doesn't care that you're swimming along side it as it feeds. Those short times I was in the water with the shark made this trip so completely worth the price. I don't even care anymore that I was stung to high heaven by the mother-lovin’ box jellies. God that hurt, it felt like I was on fire. Especially when I was nailed on my underarm, but it also gave me more energy as I cursed those stupid inverts to swim and catch up with the shark :-) We even got to swim with a manta ray, and on the last swim with the shark, I watched as it dove down to 10 meters to check out a sea turtle, passed it, then rose back up to about 2-3 m. Those images will never leave me. Unfortunately, due to my night dive and staying on the boat, all of my clothes, and my underwater camera, were not with me. ARRRGGHHHHH. Luckily other people took photos, so I'm getting copies of those. Yay! Well, I'm REALLY tired right now; thank goodness I've taken a shower and shaved and all that wonderful stuff. I'm not even in my bathing suit anymore, which I have been for the last 50 hours or so. Ick. I'm going to bed. Again, add 12 hours to the timestamp. Saturday, June 4, 2005 Snorkeling on Ningaloo Reef Well then, I am going to try to add more detail for the benefit of my now quite large audience of readers!!! Hello to FIT Admissions Office and Mrs. Perkins' sixth grade classroom! And to you sixth graders, ignore bad grammar in here, it isn't like I'm getting a grade for this blog, be nice :-) I suppose I should mention that if anyone is insanely curious, they could e-mail me at aperkins@fit.edu. That being said, lemme get down to the good stuff :-) I spent the past two days snorkeling in the lovely waters of Turquoise Bay on Ningaloo Reef. The bay is aptly named, ahhh, turquoise water... We arrived at the beach yesterday and gathered to organize our research projects that we will be completing here on the reef. Brenda and I will be doing focal follows of parrotfish on the reef. This means that we will be picking an individual parrotfish and following it around for about 5 minutes and recording what it eats, where it swims and the coral it swims to. Once this data is collected, Brenda and I will be looking at all of the information and putting together a presentation for the whole group once we reach Broome. These can be totally informal, and our plan right now is to make a children’s book in the theme of Dr. Seuss called, A Day in the Life of a Parrotfish. That should be great! Anyway, back to the reef. The water was wonderfully warm, especially compared to ocean water in New England, that stuff is cold! I swam out to the coral reef to find some parrotfish, and I see a coral outcropping. I look down into the coral and immediately see an octopus! It was brown with some white spots so it would blend in with the rock. I later identified it as a Common Reef Octopus. I continued swimming around and saw a sea turtle as well! Unfortunately, it swam away too quickly for me to get a photograph. I explored the rest of the reef and then came out for a lunch break. We went to a second part of the beach after lunch but there was more surf, although less current. Because of the constant pounding from the waves, the coral was not as abundant, although I did find a parrotfish that was about 2 feet long! I followed this fish for about 15 minutes as it swam from isolated coral to isolated coral. At each coral head, the huge fish was chased away by 5-inch damselfish! They were fierce! The damselfish were guarding their food. Damselfish actually farm algae on dead coral so that they always have food, and they chase away any other animal that they perceive as a threat to their food supply. Sometimes these fish will attack photographer’s lenses when they get too close! After swimming there for a bit, we returned to our original spot. Most people chose to 'thermoregulate' i.e. suntan, but I chose to go back out in the water and look for the sharks and sea turtles that other people had seen. While I didn't see any of those animals, I did see some awesome giant clams! One was even 2 feet long! They had huge incurrent and excurrent siphons that pulled water in and out to get food. We were able to tickle their colorful mantle! The next day (today for me, add 12 hours!), we went back to Turquoise Bay to keep working on our research projects. I saw two more octopodes (octopus plural, pronounced octo-po-dees). Both were red. One was hiding in a crevice in the coral, and the other was sitting on the sand! The one on the sand stared at me for a while and I stared back. Then, I tried to reach out and touch it, and the octopus inked me and swam away to a hole where it hid! It didn't have much ink and the ink got nowhere near me. It was really cool! After following a couple more parrotfish, I decided to swim around the reef and see what I could see. I saw another sea turtle, and this one let me swim up to it and take some close pictures! Then, as it was swimming away, I caught a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye, and I turned and saw a shark!!! It was a black tip Australian reef shark, 5-6 feet long and about 20 feet away from me!! I was so excited!!!! Then I realized that it might not be a good idea to be out alone on the reef with a shark... Soooooo... I started back for shore. But we know that I must be okay since I'm writing this blog!!! I saw some people who were from our group and started swimming towards them when I saw another flash of movement and there was ANOTHER blacktip!!!! My day was totally made! A couple minutes later, I was shown a completely white stingray rustling up some food in the sand. At that point, it was time to meet with the rest of the group and eat lunch so I headed in. While we were eating, Dr. Shenker gave us a short lecture on the community structure of the coral reef. I love lectures like that, sitting in my bathing suit and scuba booties under a pavilion while listening to the lecture and the waves crashing on the reef. I'm really learning a lot! Matt Scripter, our GSA (graduate student assistant) is pretty wild. I'm in the van that he's driving. This makes for some fun times; take today for example. We were driving through the national park, coming back from the beach when Matt suddenly shouts "EMU!!!!!," stops the van, jumps out and runs across the road and into the bush. I scramble for my camera since he wanted shots of it (so did I, I must admit) and lean across Diane and yank open the window. When emus run, it is a hilarious sight. They look like an ostrich and their bushy butt shakes back and forth as they run and their heads bob up and down. Luckily for Matt and the emu, the emu was faster and got away. He tried this yesterday too, at the goading of the rest of the van, only with a FLOCK of emus. Thank goodness today was only one. We continue on in the van when he suddenly stops again, leaps out of the van and races back up the road where we came from. I turn around only to see him crouched on the ground, not moving. All of a sudden he springs forward and leaps up triumphantly holding something, but we're so far away, we can't tell what it is. He ran back to the van, and lo and behold, he's holding a small lizard called a Central Netted Dragon. It was so cute! And very, very tame it seemed. I even got to hold it! Matt has also caught another lizard called a horny devil, on the road out of Kalbarri. We have fun with Matt. Tomorrow we'll be going snorkeling again, then hopefully hiking up into some of the canyons and getting some nice views. Unfortunately, it's raining like crazy right now, and the trail might be washed out. This is the first time it's rained since we've been in southern Australia, but we are getting into the tropics zone. That's all for now! Forgot other Matt escapades Matt Scripter just read my blog and wanted me to correct a few errors. There were two emus today, sorry. And it was a thorny devil, not horny devil lizard that he caught in Kalbarri. Hmm, I guess that one letter omission could be kind of hazardous snicker Also, I forgot to mention some other Matt escapades (hence the title, but I digress). Today (and yesterday) he pulls over to climb on the termite mounds that are so prevalent in the area. He did a handstand and yes, I did get pictures. I love the action setting on my camera :-) Matt also decided that it would be a great idea to stop off at the Maldura Wreck. The shipwreck was pretty awesome. It ran aground in 1907, no humans died but all the cattle on board ate dust, well, seawater. Anyway, Matt picks up some snails and hermit crabs that he found on the beach and preceded to commission Kevin to pull the hermit crab out of its shell. Kevin found the best method to be a lighter and a leatherman. He heated the ugly bugger out of its shell. It sent Dana into hysterics however and now she won't ride in our van. Oh well, her loss. Well, like I said, we have fun. Sunday, June 5, 2005 Last night in Exmouth Today was pretty cool. We went back to Turquoise Bay half expecting the water to be murky since it poured all night last night. Instead the water was calm and beautifully clear. Ahhh, bliss. Brenda and I snorkeled together, and I saw another octopus and a couple more giant clams. We were allowed free time to snorkel or just play in the water as we wanted. I went snorkeling with Jon and Sandy, Dana tagged along too. I saw two sea turtles and one of them kept showing up! I went back to our hotel and was able to shower. The second group of students who wanted to go night diving was not able to go since the boat was broken. I'm really glad that I was able to do the dive. It was spectacular! We drove back and joined the rest of the group at the Maldura Wreck in Bundegi. The tide was low, so we were able to walk around in the tide pools since it was a rocky inter-tidal area. There were tons of octopi!!!! There were also a bunch of sea hares, which were really fun to hold, soft, squishy and slimy!!! We also saw hairy crabs, which were really hairy, more giant clams and some small mud crabs. We had to watch out for the cone snails that were in the area. These snails are very defensive and have a stinger with enough poison to kill an adult human. Nasty critters. Luckily, the only cone snails we saw were dead cone snails, as in, their shell. Tomorrow morning we leave early for a very long drive to Port Hedland. From there, we'll be driving to Broome the next day. G'Day!! Thursday, June 9, 2005 Happy 16th Month Anniversary to Eric and I!! Well, the title is kind of self-explanatory, but I realized the 7th of June was our 16th month anniversary. This is officially now the longest relationship I've been in. Yay!! We are in Broome and it is pretty cool! We drove up from Exmouth and stopped in Port Hedland before continuing on to Broome the next day. The drive from Exmouth to Port Hedland was pretty unexciting, until one of the tires blew on the luggage trailer in my van. Matt, luckily, is a pretty skillful guy and changed the tire while several of us attempted to use the bushes on the side of the road as a bathroom in the rain. That was an experience, kind of amusing too. The drive from Port Hedland to Broome was just about as exciting as the previous day, only this time, we weren't sure if we'd have enough gas to get between service stations since they were pretty spaced out. But, we all made it safe and sound. Our first night in Broome we went to our hotel and settled in and bought groceries for the week. I love hotels in Australia. They all have either community kitchens or kitchenettes in the rooms. It makes eating wonderfully cheap since you can cook for yourself and avoid eating at restaurants all the time. I love it! They even have stoves cough Columbia Village cough so you can bake. Our first full day (yesterday), we started by going to Gantheaume Point where there are these beautiful rock formations that go right to the water so you can climb all over the cliffs. Then we went to an aquaculture center where they grow topsnails and barramundi. Barramundi are the Australian Snook, which is the fish that I study in the states. They look a lot alike. The barramundi start off life as males, and as they age and grow bigger, they change into females. On our guided tour, we got to watch the guide feed the HUGE female barramundi! There was even a cute puffer fish in the tank too! I've been on so many tours here in Australia I think it might be funny to give a campus tour with an Australian accent. "And raght over heah folks we have a wihld squirrel of FIT..." Don't get scared Steve :-) I'm just pulling your leg. No worries! After the aquaculture place, I went to Chinatown where all of the shops in Broome are. I followed Sandy Shenker around as she spent lots of money on very beautiful cultured saltwater Broome pearls. Broome was founded because they were the port for the pearl luggers to come in and unload their catch. There is even a cemetery devoted to the Japanese pearlers who died on the job. It's kind of sad. After Chinatown, I headed back to Gantheaume Point to watch the sunset and snatch a couple pictures of the dinosaur tracks that are only visible at low low tide. I did get to see them! This place has 30-foot tides that come in and out. That's a 30-foot vertical change. It's pretty spectacular. The dino prints were really cool, and sunset was beautiful. The colors are just absolutely amazing and set with the rock, the ocean and the sunset—it was awesome. I hope my pictures come out well. Today was a day off, and Brenda and I took off on the public bus system. Yay for $9 unlimited all day bus pass. We first went to Cable Beach to hopefully book a camel ride, but unfortunately the sunset rides were filled for all of the camel operators. Then we went to Chinatown and went pearl shopping. Mom, are you sitting down? A lovely pearl necklace caught my eye (freshwater pearls mind you, a bit cheaper), and I took Sandy's advice. If it catches your eye, buy it. Let's just say that it will look stunning with my black dress, and I really fell in love with it. After Chinatown, we caught the bus and headed to the crocodile farm. It amused Brenda and I to no end to see American alligators on display there. The saltwater crocs are huge!!!! And we'll be traveling and camping through saltwater croc territory starting Sunday! Actually, we'll be with both fresh and saltwater crocs. Both are found in the rivers in the Kimberley. It's okay to swim with freshies, they're fairly docile, but the salties are the ones to watch out for. I got to pet a baby salty!! It was SOOOOO soft. And it made cute noises like the baby alligator that Matt caught back in Florida an eon ago. Don't tell Florida Fish and Wildlife. Shhhhhh. It's a secret. There were several wonderful wallets made from alligator skin that I wanted to get for Eric as a birthday present, but they were more expensive than my pearl necklace... This croc farm actually breeds crocodiles for their skin and meat. Apparently they're good eating and their leather is really soft and nice. The farm also takes the problem crocs so they aren't killed and keeps them safe and breeds them. Each big croc has a girlfriend, and our tour guide was not as brave and daring as Steve Irwin but he was kind of cute. (Eric, ignore that, Brenda and I admired only) These big guys move fast!! The guide fed them chickens! Anyway, time for dinner and working on homework, yes, you heard me, homework. I have a project to make that's due tomorrow after we visit the pearl farm. G'Day! Friday, June 10, 2005 Last Day in Broome Today was our second to last day in Broome and we spent it touring the Willie Creek Pearl Farm. Very cool! I tried on a strand of pearls that cost 440,000 dollars Australian. Eeek! We had our presentations of our Ningaloo Reef projects. Kevin's was memorable when he imitated a sea cucumber. Tomorrow we have another day off, and I am hopefully going to the racetrack!! Maybe I'll bet on a couple horses! We leave Sunday for the Kimberley! Yay camping! Sorry for the lack of detail but I'm running low on Internet time... Friday, June 24, 2005 Darwin continued Okay, so back online. Now I have tons of Internet time because banks don't open on weekends in Australia. This really stinks. I have to buy things in $10 increments because that's the minimum charge amount for a visa—ARRGGHHH. I also have to eat at places that can take cards and that usually means more expensive meals. I have 2 dollars in change left and cannot get cash until Monday, when I'll be in New Zealand. At least the New Zealand dollar has a better exchange rate than the Australian dollar. Wooot! 100 USD becomes 140 NZD!!! Damn, I like that. I also just booked my hostel in New Zealand. Only 22.15 for two nights—WOW!! I wish the U.S. had hostels. Anyway, back to the summary of the past week and a half. I believe I was at El Questro..... After El Questro Gorge, we took a riverboat cruise on the Chamberlain River. The highlight of that was the spitting Archer Fish. If you held your hand out over the boat, the fish would spit at you and then you could feed them a piece of bread. I've decided that the fish tank I set up this year at school is going to have Archer Fish that I'm going to condition the same way. They'd spit at me anytime they saw me! The behavior is actually natural but it's used to knock an insect off of a branch into the water so the fish can eat. They are excellent aim, hence the name, Archer Fish. That night a bunch of people got drunk because Jon (Dr. Shenker) had said that the beer was not being used up quickly enough. Bad move on his part cringe The next day we were set to leave El Questro Station but stopped at Zebedee Springs, which is a natural hot springs that's kind of warm (lol). It was nice to relax. From the springs, we drove a lot until we stopped at Kununurra, and from there, our last campsite in the middle of nowhere, the roughest camp we've stayed at. There were no facilities at all—so bathrooms, nil; sinks, nil; running water, nil. We were on top of the plateau for the full moon. It was so beautiful and bright. The next day we arrived in Darwin and we are staying at the YHA. Just yesterday I took the final exam for the class. We had to have some physical form of evidence that we learned something on this trip, hence the exam. I thought it was a pretty decent exam. I sat by the pool, listened to some CDs and took the exam. I'll be on again and post all about Darwin tomorrow, I've only got 7 minutes left. Bubye! Darwin and 10 days of camping Camping in the Kimberley is now done. Hence the really long break between posts. Since I am about to go get dinner (It's 5:15 p.m. here), this post won't be that long. A really good update will come when I get home and don't have to pay for internet. However, I have highlights from camping… Sleeping outside with clear nights EVERY night. I now can recognize the Southern Cross and Scorpio and what's really cool is that the Milky Way is visible EVERY night. We started in Windjana Gorge after driving from Broome with our cool guides, Mic, Joel, Karl and Tom-Tom. We went to Tunnel Creek and walked through the cave and back out again. It was really cool to do and very wet since we had to do a lot of stream crossing. The blind catfish were awesome! We also saw a HUGE goanna outside the cave entrance. We hiked into Windjana Gorge in the evening and were able to see the eye-shine of several hundred freshwater crocs in the river. That was totally awesome. You can tell a freshwater croc from a saltwater croc at night by the color of the eye-shine. Red is fresh, green is salt. Therefore, red means go ahead, green means stop right there and run for your life... After Windjana we stayed at Silent Grove but went hiking into Bell Creek, which was a pretty decent hike but with a wonderful waterfall and swimming area at the end. I jumped off of a 10 m cliff into the water. It was so much fun!!! We also stopped at several other gorges, all with beautiful water that was clean enough to drink!!!! I thought that was pretty awesome. Our guides are awesome too. They are total chefs at a campfire. The first night we had grilled barramundi for dinner. The fish was superb!!!! We also drove up to Kalumburu, which is an aboriginal community that you can only enter with permission. The community was so excited we were coming that they spent 3 days cleaning up town and then held a Corrobori for us so we could see some of their ceremonial dances. That was totally cool. We also met one of the Elders, Basil, and he told us a story about one of the paintings he had made. The next day, Clarry, an aboriginal tour guide, showed us around Kalumburu and taught us about the rock art in the area and how to make spears and then throw them. I got to throw a spear and did a pretty good job at that!! We also stopped at the Mission in town and visited their museum of Aboriginal history. That was pretty good. When we first arrived we spent about one hour playing footie with the aboriginal kids. They are tough!!! One 5 year old was tackled when he caught the ball but came up all smiles. They were also fascinated with our digital cameras and wanted to take pictures of each other. One sad part is that they've been heavily influenced by black rap culture from America, so they make all of the hand signals that rappers make in music videos. We hope to send them positive images from the states so they don't think Americans are only like rappers. After Kalumburu we went to the Mitchell Plateau. There was a really nice hike in to a beautiful gorge and HUGE waterfalls. We were able to swim at the top of the falls but not at the bottom due to the saltwater crocs. A bunch of people opted to chopper out to get a birds-eye view of the area. I took the option as well and it was gorgeous. I can't wait to see my pictures. The next stop was El Questro Station, which was luxury camping compared to what we've been dealing with. Hot showers. Mmmmmmm. We hiked into El Questro gorge which was another cool hike but really hard. Halfway through we had to portage across a pool of water to continue hiking. The swimming at the end was awesome. ...To be continued, dinner time :-) Tuesday, June 28, 2005 The New Zealand saga The flight to New Zealand from Darwin was not all that bad, although I freaked a guy out by talking in my sleep. I was tired. My first view of New Zealand was awesome, I already want to go back. I got out of the airport, said farewell to Matt, and then caught the bus to the hostel. The bus driver was nice, he gave me an extra discount for my roundtrip ticket. I checked in, put my luggage in the room and met two of my roommates. They are older women traveling around the world. I went downstairs to book a day trip only to find the booking agent closed. Luckily the front desk helped me out. I decided on what seemed to be a good day tour, getting out of the city, and went to pay for it only to have my card denied. I was a bit upset. I have the money! I found out later that a heat wave in Connecticut shut down the bank's computers and that's why the money couldn't be accessed. Since I couldn't do anything about it, 1 a.m. east coast time in the U.S., I wandered out into the city for food and an evening of entertainment. I saw Madagascar, which made me chuckle because they made fun of Connecticut, no one else got it. I browsed Borders for a while and then called home. Mom and Dad said they'd put more money in the account, I planned to go to a bank to sort my money woes out. To top it all off, I'm having an allergic reaction to something. My legs are covered in hives and they itch like nobody’s business. Ick. One thing I can say about New Zealand is that I finally feel like I'm in the southern hemisphere. Boy is it cold! I can see my breath! The hostel's beds are comfy and I love sleep. In the morning, I woke up and was finally able to pay for my day trip. Since it was a while before I was to be picked up I went back to bed. Mmmmmm. The tour is interesting. I was the first person to be picked up, so I was all alone sitting in a huge coach. We drove around the city and a bunch of landmarks were pointed out. We also stopped at Mt. Eden, which is one of several extinct volcano cones in the Auckland area. I walked around the rim. The next stop was the Auckland War Memorial Museum. The first floor had a nice display of Maori history. The second floor had an interesting natural history exhibit. It made me wish I had been able to go diving at Poor Knight's. The bus also drove through some of the residential areas of the city. We even saw the most expensive street. Man, those houses were awesome! On the way back for lunch, we saw a brilliant rainbow. I transferred onto my Bush and Beach part of the trip. The one I was really looking forward to. There were only eight people including me, plus a tour guide—nice and small. We saw a bunch of places, close to Auckland, on the western coast in the Waitakere regional park. We also stopped at Karekare and Piha. There was even a rainforest! But it was cold! I loved it. We also stopped at a visitor's center to learn about the Maori carvings. All the carvings outside of a traditional meetinghouse are male and they have erect penises and tattoos. The erection signifies the strength and readiness of the men protecting their family. Pretty cool. The swirly tattoos all over their bodies are a symbol of life and vitality. It mimics the swirling of a new tree fern bud, which we also saw. Another stop was at Piha Beach. The black sand (some of which I pilfered and got home) is magnetic and comes from the volcanic activity in the area. Apparently there is also titanium and other valuable metals and elements in the sand. Those elements are mined elsewhere in the country. We saw a gorgeous waterfall whose only upstream source is rain. The waterfall was near the beach where "The Piano" was filmed. I must watch it now. Our guide also took us to his house where we had tea or coffee and cookies. I gratefully accepted the coffee he was passing out in the tour van. We made a last scenic stop—well worth the cold and wind before heading back to the main city. Apparently Auckland is larger than London square-mile wise but only has 1.5 million people. It is also the largest city population wise in the country. The country has a total of 4 million people, a number they reached only recently. I was dropped off back at the hostel and made myself dinner of creamy chicken and veggie soup. I curled up on a couch in the lounge and read and finished a book I found in the book swap. I also planned my activities for tomorrow since they require detailed planning so I get to the airport and catch my flight back to Los Angeles. I've also determined that I hate itching and that my continuous massive breakout is due to something in my clothes. Luckily I have antihistamine medicine leftover from my spider bite a year ago and brought it along. If I itch on the plane, I don't think I'll mind since the meds knock me unconscious. Yay, sleep aids! Off to bed, I'll be up early. I caught the free shuttle to Kelly Tarlton's Underwater World, paid for admission and entered. The aquarium was dedicated to the Antarctic explorers who raced to reach the South Pole. They had a nice penguin display but my favorite was the stingray pool. They had several huge stingrays that were quite friendly but you couldn't touch them, grrrr. The feeding time was cool. A guy got into the tank with them. The stingrays came up to him and patted him on the head with their wings while he fed them. I was so jealous! I want his job! Well, maybe not, but I want friendly stingrays to do that to me. They also had some small sharks and fish that you viewed from underneath just like at nearly every aquarium now. Kind of boring. The only unique thing was that the entire aquarium was underground in old sewer pipes of the city. I did manage to waste time like I wanted and I met a nice Indian girl. We exchanged e-mails and I told her I’d send pictures from the aquarium. I slowly traveled back to the hostel, where my luggage was stored and waited for the airport shuttle to pick me up. At the airport, I met a nice guy named Jory who has a Ph.D. in Immunology. He and I talked for a while, and he gave me the names of a couple of people I could contact about my interest in Astrobiology. That's totally awesome! Boarding the plane starts in 1 1/4 hours. Ugh. One memory I do not want to forget that I neglected to mention earlier about the Bush and Beach trip. New Zealand smelled like New Hampshire. The air was so pure at the rainforest. I loved it!

Amy P.

Australia group

Australia 2

How I spent my summer…

Amy Perkins

Senior, Marine Biology and Ecology

Manchester, CT

SUMMER IN AUSTRALIA BLOG

Thoughts, Rants and Subliminal Suggestions

Friday, May 20, 2005

In Australia!!

Well then, here I am in Australia! Jet lag is crazy and I think I have finally recovered and this is the third day I've been here! Our group from Florida Tech is pretty cool. There are a total of 23 people all traveling together and this includes 15 girls, our TA/GSA Matt Scripter, Dr. Shenker and his wife Sandy, and 5 guys.

We all met at the Los Angeles airport on Monday, May 16 and waited in the airport for what seemed like a God-awful long time then took the 11:50 p.m. flight to Sydney. The flight lasted 13 hours and 55 minutes and it was SOOOOO long. Luckily there were movies continually playing and the seats were fairly decent for sleeping, unlike the planes that I normally fly in from Connecticut to Florida. Thank goodness. We arrived in Sydney at 7 a.m. on May 18. May 17 never existed for me. We took a bus to our hostel in Sydney, called Footprints Westend. It's really awesome!! After getting all of our luggage up to our rooms, we were forced out and walked to the Sydney Aquarium. Twenty-three marine biology majors in an aquarium is a really funny site, and I thought pretty dangerous to do. After that, we walked to the Sydney Fish market for lunch/early dinner. All of the fish for sale was amazing. Afterwards, I chose to go shopping with Sandy and a couple other girls, and we went Opal shopping. Australia has many opal mines so you can get jewelry for fairly low cost compared to the states. Additionally, the quality of the stones is far better, and you can find black opals, not just the white ones in the states. I bought myself a ring, it is absolutely gorgeous. We came back to the hostel and crashed. I was asleep by 6 p.m.

Our room woke up by 3:30 a.m., which really stunk. Stupid jetlag. I managed to fall back asleep and woke again at 7 a.m. We went out to breakfast at this awesome little cafe. It had awesome food. We then took a walk through Hyde Park, to the Botanical Gardens, through the Gardens and on to the Opera House. Hyde Park was really pretty. The Botanical Gardens were very cool. There were TONS of Flying Foxes, a type of fruit bat, nesting in the trees. There were also some very cool Golden Orb spiders everywhere. Oh yeah, and plants :-) We even saw a Kookaburra! We walked around the outside of the Opera House then took a ferry over to the Taronga Zoo. Supposedly Steve Irwin's crocodiles lived there while he was renovating his own zoo thing. The entire zoo was on a hillside, and you could take a ski lift to the top then just walk down the hill and see all the animals. There was a baby wombat that was SOOOOO cute! I even got my picture taken with some Koalas, up close! I'll have pictures to share when I get back. We took the ferry back across Sydney Harbour then walked back to the hostel through Hyde Park again, which was beautiful at night. The Eucalyptus trees form a natural cathedral ceiling above you as you walk down the main path, and the tree trunks are lit with lights. It was amazing. Brenda, Dana and I then went out to find a movie theatre because Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith opened today! Hah!! We saw it before the states!!! Except for midnight showings. Either way, we watched it. Movies are way more expensive here then in the states, even with the exchange rate. Got back to the hostel around midnight and went to sleep. Dana and I decided that Padme was a goody-two shoes and didn't deserve Anakin, and we wouldn't mind be seduced by a guy heading for the dark side, especially one as good looking as Hayden Christenson.

This morning I went to the same cafe for breakfast then headed back to the room and waited for Dana to get ready to leave. We went to Paddy's Market, which was so cool! There was a whole bunch of stuff, tourist traps for sure, but some of it was neat. I got an awesome massage. I realized that I have several people I need to buy stuff for to bring back, but I really shouldn't get it now seeing as though I still have 5 1/2 weeks left. They are as follows: Mom, Scott, Eric, Eric's sister and my cousin Laura. All of the stuff in the market though was cheapy and not good.

Well, that's been my trip so far. I have 5 minutes left on the computer. Got to go!!!

Saturday, May 21, 2005

Finally on the west coast

Yesterday we flew out of Sydney Airport to Perth (If my typing is weird, like with weird characters, it's because the keyboard is funky). Perth is very pretty and sort of reminds me of Florida, there are a lot of similar plants (only because they have imported Australian plants to Florida). We are staying at this awesome hotel. We have a kitchen and everything which means that we can eat on the cheap if we buy from a grocery store. Australian TV shows are very interesting. We also had our very first lecture for the class from Dr. Shenker. It was just an overview of the logistics of our trip and then talking about Gondwanan species and distributions. We were interrupted several times by people honking as they drove by. We were sitting on the banks of a river, beside a road and the bikers and joggers going by were also interested. A whole flock of wild cockatoos also interrupted the lecture several times. At last it felt like we were taking a class, which we are supposed to be doing. :-) Again, the time stamp on the bottom is wrong for me. Just add 12 hours now. I am on the exact opposite side of the world from the eastern U.S. That's really cool. I don't really know what I'll be doing today, probably just walking around Perth and enjoying the sights. More to come later!!

Sunday, May 29, 2005

In Exmouth, WA

Well, it's been a while, sorry guys. Internet so far after my last post has been both dial-up and expensive. We've finally come to a place where the connection is relatively cheap. (5 AUS$ for 1.25 hours) That's the best I've seen since Sydney. Things have been awesome here.

After Perth, we traveled to Cervantes where the Pinnacles Desert is located. The Pinnacles are totally awesome. They are limestone formations that were left after rainfall leached lime from the sand and formed limestone. A calcite cap formed on top of the limestone. Then plants grew on top of the limestone and started sending roots down and widening cracks. Sand filled the cracks and gradually wind eroded away the sand, leaving the limestone with the cap exposed to the air and showing the pinnacles that are out there today. The red rock was completely amazing and I wish that people weren't complaining about the (cool) weather and having to use the bathroom. I would have loved to see the sunset; we heard it was something to NOT miss (grrrrr). I did get to see kangaroo tracks, and Matt Scripter and I took off from the rest of the group to go see more. The whole desert looks like another planet.

After Cervantes, we drove to Kalbarri and hiked through the National Park there. Kalbarri has this awesome gorge formed by the Murchison River, and we hiked the 9 km trail that goes around one of the bluffs. That's about 7-8 miles according to Dr. Shenker’s GPS. The river was kind of high, and we had to crawl along the rock cliffs because the usual path was underwater. It was quite the adventure!!! We also did a marine portion in Kalbarri since the town is right on the coast of the Indian Ocean. There was a beautiful Rocky Inter-tidal coast, and we went and waded around. Matt caught an octopus (take that Jamaican trip!!! we can catch them too!!!) and we all got to play with it.

We left Kalbarri and drove up to Monkey Mia (My-a), which has an absolutely BEAUTIFULL resort. We stopped on the way to see the really cool, yet slightly unexciting, stromatolites of Shark Bay and Hamelin Pool. It was a nice hike to see them at least and the water looked REALLY inviting. I wanted to swim, it was so clear. Monkey Mia is the second oldest running dolphin research center. There are over 900 Pacific Bottlenose Dolphins that live in the Shark Bay area and about four of them are called Beach Dolphins. The dolphins have been fed by the people of Denham for a long time and a couple generations keep returning. In an effort to reduce the impact random and uncontrolled feeding would have on their behavior, only four dolphins are fed. They are adult females that receive only 1/5 of their total need and only the fish they would eat anyway. Otherwise they are encouraged to forage normally. We got to watch the dolphin feeding each morning, and both times I saw it, I was ALMOST picked. In fact, the people on either side of me were picked each time, but not me. Grrrr. Oh well, I got bumped by one of the dolphins :-) We also went snorkeling, sailing on a catamaran and night hiking looking for marsupials (A gondwanan distributed animal! :-)) The night hike was cool, even when Kevin and Matt hid in the pitch black and jumped out at us.

Now we are in Exmouth, just arrived today (add 12 hours to the timestamp guys) and tomorrow we board our dive boat for three days of diving, including one day with the Whale Sharks!!! I'm so excited!!! Bye for now!

Wednesday, June 1, 2005

Whale sharks are da bomb!!!!

Wow, I have had such a totally cool past couple of days. The whole group of us went on a dive boat for several days of diving on Ningaloo Reef. This place is totally an undiscovered jewel; Dr. Shenker even says that it is better than the Great Barrier Reef that he's seen. We were supposed to be camping on the Murion Islands, but the weather and water were so rough that it had to be scratched. It was so bad that on our way out to the first dive we had several people yakking over the side. I am not ashamed to admit that I was one of them... I did feel better afterward. The diving was awesome!!!!! I'll save the details for later. The second day of diving was also really cool, and I had the most awesome experience. For a bit extra, $60, I was able to do a Night Dive on Ningaloo. OMG... It was so thrilling to be down there. The first thing I see… An itty-bitty octopus the size of my thumbnail crawling on my gauges. It proceeded to crawl behind my dive computer and hide there the entire dive. We were also constantly surrounded by these little red worms—kind of cool at first, then totally annoying because they got into my hair, my ears, the cracks in my mask, EVERYWHERE. They were also attracted to our dive lights so we could never really see anything because there was just a glowing red mass. We saw a sleeping lionfish, a HUGE grouper and two sea turtles. The first one was sleeping. We woke them up. Later we turned off the lights, and there was bioluminescence in the water!! That was cool.

Today was totally awesome. I slept on board the dive boat in a swag with the other four people who also stayed for the night dive. We were woken up in time to see sunrise over Ningaloo. Awesome. Then, we switched boats to Isabella Darling for Whale Shark swimming. THAT WAS SO COOL!!! There are no words to describe the feeling as you're snorkeling through deep blue water and out of nowhere appears this creature that's completely harmless. And it doesn't care that you're swimming along side it as it feeds. Those short times I was in the water with the shark made this trip so completely worth the price. I don't even care anymore that I was stung to high heaven by the mother-lovin’ box jellies. God that hurt, it felt like I was on fire. Especially when I was nailed on my underarm, but it also gave me more energy as I cursed those stupid inverts to swim and catch up with the shark :-) We even got to swim with a manta ray, and on the last swim with the shark, I watched as it dove down to 10 meters to check out a sea turtle, passed it, then rose back up to about 2-3 m. Those images will never leave me. Unfortunately, due to my night dive and staying on the boat, all of my clothes, and my underwater camera, were not with me. ARRRGGHHHHH. Luckily other people took photos, so I'm getting copies of those. Yay!

Well, I'm REALLY tired right now; thank goodness I've taken a shower and shaved and all that wonderful stuff. I'm not even in my bathing suit anymore, which I have been for the last 50 hours or so. Ick. I'm going to bed. Again, add 12 hours to the timestamp.

Saturday, June 4, 2005

Snorkeling on Ningaloo Reef

Well then, I am going to try to add more detail for the benefit of my now quite large audience of readers!!! Hello to FIT Admissions Office and Mrs. Perkins' sixth grade classroom! And to you sixth graders, ignore bad grammar in here, it isn't like I'm getting a grade for this blog, be nice :-) I suppose I should mention that if anyone is insanely curious, they could e-mail me at aperkins@fit.edu. That being said, lemme get down to the good stuff :-)

I spent the past two days snorkeling in the lovely waters of Turquoise Bay on Ningaloo Reef. The bay is aptly named, ahhh, turquoise water... We arrived at the beach yesterday and gathered to organize our research projects that we will be completing here on the reef. Brenda and I will be doing focal follows of parrotfish on the reef. This means that we will be picking an individual parrotfish and following it around for about 5 minutes and recording what it eats, where it swims and the coral it swims to. Once this data is collected, Brenda and I will be looking at all of the information and putting together a presentation for the whole group once we reach Broome. These can be totally informal, and our plan right now is to make a children’s book in the theme of Dr. Seuss called, A Day in the Life of a Parrotfish. That should be great!

Anyway, back to the reef. The water was wonderfully warm, especially compared to ocean water in New England, that stuff is cold! I swam out to the coral reef to find some parrotfish, and I see a coral outcropping. I look down into the coral and immediately see an octopus! It was brown with some white spots so it would blend in with the rock. I later identified it as a Common Reef Octopus. I continued swimming around and saw a sea turtle as well! Unfortunately, it swam away too quickly for me to get a photograph. I explored the rest of the reef and then came out for a lunch break. We went to a second part of the beach after lunch but there was more surf, although less current. Because of the constant pounding from the waves, the coral was not as abundant, although I did find a parrotfish that was about 2 feet long! I followed this fish for about 15 minutes as it swam from isolated coral to isolated coral. At each coral head, the huge fish was chased away by 5-inch damselfish! They were fierce! The damselfish were guarding their food. Damselfish actually farm algae on dead coral so that they always have food, and they chase away any other animal that they perceive as a threat to their food supply. Sometimes these fish will attack photographer’s lenses when they get too close! After swimming there for a bit, we returned to our original spot. Most people chose to 'thermoregulate' i.e. suntan, but I chose to go back out in the water and look for the sharks and sea turtles that other people had seen. While I didn't see any of those animals, I did see some awesome giant clams! One was even 2 feet long! They had huge incurrent and excurrent siphons that pulled water in and out to get food. We were able to tickle their colorful mantle!

The next day (today for me, add 12 hours!), we went back to Turquoise Bay to keep working on our research projects. I saw two more octopodes (octopus plural, pronounced octo-po-dees). Both were red. One was hiding in a crevice in the coral, and the other was sitting on the sand! The one on the sand stared at me for a while and I stared back. Then, I tried to reach out and touch it, and the octopus inked me and swam away to a hole where it hid! It didn't have much ink and the ink got nowhere near me. It was really cool! After following a couple more parrotfish, I decided to swim around the reef and see what I could see. I saw another sea turtle, and this one let me swim up to it and take some close pictures! Then, as it was swimming away, I caught a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye, and I turned and saw a shark!!! It was a black tip Australian reef shark, 5-6 feet long and about 20 feet away from me!! I was so excited!!!! Then I realized that it might not be a good idea to be out alone on the reef with a shark... Soooooo... I started back for shore. But we know that I must be okay since I'm writing this blog!!! I saw some people who were from our group and started swimming towards them when I saw another flash of movement and there was ANOTHER blacktip!!!! My day was totally made! A couple minutes later, I was shown a completely white stingray rustling up some food in the sand. At that point, it was time to meet with the rest of the group and eat lunch so I headed in. While we were eating, Dr. Shenker gave us a short lecture on the community structure of the coral reef. I love lectures like that, sitting in my bathing suit and scuba booties under a pavilion while listening to the lecture and the waves crashing on the reef. I'm really learning a lot!

Matt Scripter, our GSA (graduate student assistant) is pretty wild. I'm in the van that he's driving. This makes for some fun times; take today for example. We were driving through the national park, coming back from the beach when Matt suddenly shouts "EMU!!!!!," stops the van, jumps out and runs across the road and into the bush. I scramble for my camera since he wanted shots of it (so did I, I must admit) and lean across Diane and yank open the window. When emus run, it is a hilarious sight. They look like an ostrich and their bushy butt shakes back and forth as they run and their heads bob up and down. Luckily for Matt and the emu, the emu was faster and got away. He tried this yesterday too, at the goading of the rest of the van, only with a FLOCK of emus. Thank goodness today was only one. We continue on in the van when he suddenly stops again, leaps out of the van and races back up the road where we came from. I turn around only to see him crouched on the ground, not moving. All of a sudden he springs forward and leaps up triumphantly holding something, but we're so far away, we can't tell what it is. He ran back to the van, and lo and behold, he's holding a small lizard called a Central Netted Dragon. It was so cute! And very, very tame it seemed. I even got to hold it! Matt has also caught another lizard called a horny devil, on the road out of Kalbarri. We have fun with Matt.

Tomorrow we'll be going snorkeling again, then hopefully hiking up into some of the canyons and getting some nice views. Unfortunately, it's raining like crazy right now, and the trail might be washed out. This is the first time it's rained since we've been in southern Australia, but we are getting into the tropics zone. That's all for now!

Forgot other Matt escapades

Matt Scripter just read my blog and wanted me to correct a few errors. There were two emus today, sorry. And it was a thorny devil, not horny devil lizard that he caught in Kalbarri. Hmm, I guess that one letter omission could be kind of hazardous *snicker*

Also, I forgot to mention some other Matt escapades (hence the title, but I digress). Today (and yesterday) he pulls over to climb on the termite mounds that are so prevalent in the area. He did a handstand and yes, I did get pictures. I love the action setting on my camera :-)

Matt also decided that it would be a great idea to stop off at the Maldura Wreck. The shipwreck was pretty awesome. It ran aground in 1907, no humans died but all the cattle on board ate dust, well, seawater. Anyway, Matt picks up some snails and hermit crabs that he found on the beach and preceded to commission Kevin to pull the hermit crab out of its shell. Kevin found the best method to be a lighter and a leatherman. He heated the ugly bugger out of its shell. It sent Dana into hysterics however and now she won't ride in our van. Oh well, her loss. Well, like I said, we have fun.

Sunday, June 5, 2005

Last night in Exmouth

Today was pretty cool. We went back to Turquoise Bay half expecting the water to be murky since it poured all night last night. Instead the water was calm and beautifully clear. Ahhh, bliss. Brenda and I snorkeled together, and I saw another octopus and a couple more giant clams. We were allowed free time to snorkel or just play in the water as we wanted. I went snorkeling with Jon and Sandy, Dana tagged along too. I saw two sea turtles and one of them kept showing up! I went back to our hotel and was able to shower. The second group of students who wanted to go night diving was not able to go since the boat was broken. I'm really glad that I was able to do the dive. It was spectacular! We drove back and joined the rest of the group at the Maldura Wreck in Bundegi. The tide was low, so we were able to walk around in the tide pools since it was a rocky inter-tidal area. There were tons of octopi!!!! There were also a bunch of sea hares, which were really fun to hold, soft, squishy and slimy!!! We also saw hairy crabs, which were really hairy, more giant clams and some small mud crabs. We had to watch out for the cone snails that were in the area. These snails are very defensive and have a stinger with enough poison to kill an adult human. Nasty critters. Luckily, the only cone snails we saw were dead cone snails, as in, their shell.

Tomorrow morning we leave early for a very long drive to Port Hedland. From there, we'll be driving to Broome the next day. G'Day!!

Thursday, June 9, 2005

Happy 16th Month Anniversary to Eric and I!!

Well, the title is kind of self-explanatory, but I realized the 7th of June was our 16th month anniversary. This is officially now the longest relationship I've been in. Yay!!

We are in Broome and it is pretty cool! We drove up from Exmouth and stopped in Port Hedland before continuing on to Broome the next day. The drive from Exmouth to Port Hedland was pretty unexciting, until one of the tires blew on the luggage trailer in my van. Matt, luckily, is a pretty skillful guy and changed the tire while several of us attempted to use the bushes on the side of the road as a bathroom in the rain. That was an experience, kind of amusing too. The drive from Port Hedland to Broome was just about as exciting as the previous day, only this time, we weren't sure if we'd have enough gas to get between service stations since they were pretty spaced out. But, we all made it safe and sound. Our first night in Broome we went to our hotel and settled in and bought groceries for the week. I love hotels in Australia. They all have either community kitchens or kitchenettes in the rooms. It makes eating wonderfully cheap since you can cook for yourself and avoid eating at restaurants all the time. I love it! They even have stoves *cough* Columbia Village *cough* so you can bake. Our first full day (yesterday), we started by going to Gantheaume Point where there are these beautiful rock formations that go right to the water so you can climb all over the cliffs. Then we went to an aquaculture center where they grow topsnails and barramundi. Barramundi are the Australian Snook, which is the fish that I study in the states. They look a lot alike. The barramundi start off life as males, and as they age and grow bigger, they change into females. On our guided tour, we got to watch the guide feed the HUGE female barramundi! There was even a cute puffer fish in the tank too! I've been on so many tours here in Australia I think it might be funny to give a campus tour with an Australian accent. "And raght over heah folks we have a wihld squirrel of FIT..." Don't get scared Steve :-) I'm just pulling your leg. No worries!

After the aquaculture place, I went to Chinatown where all of the shops in Broome are. I followed Sandy Shenker around as she spent lots of money on very beautiful cultured saltwater Broome pearls. Broome was founded because they were the port for the pearl luggers to come in and unload their catch. There is even a cemetery devoted to the Japanese pearlers who died on the job. It's kind of sad.

After Chinatown, I headed back to Gantheaume Point to watch the sunset and snatch a couple pictures of the dinosaur tracks that are only visible at low low tide. I did get to see them! This place has 30-foot tides that come in and out. That's a 30-foot vertical change. It's pretty spectacular. The dino prints were really cool, and sunset was beautiful. The colors are just absolutely amazing and set with the rock, the ocean and the sunset—it was awesome. I hope my pictures come out well.

Today was a day off, and Brenda and I took off on the public bus system. Yay for $9 unlimited all day bus pass. We first went to Cable Beach to hopefully book a camel ride, but unfortunately the sunset rides were filled for all of the camel operators. Then we went to Chinatown and went pearl shopping. Mom, are you sitting down? A lovely pearl necklace caught my eye (freshwater pearls mind you, a bit cheaper), and I took Sandy's advice. If it catches your eye, buy it. Let's just say that it will look stunning with my black dress, and I really fell in love with it. After Chinatown, we caught the bus and headed to the crocodile farm. It amused Brenda and I to no end to see American alligators on display there. The saltwater crocs are huge!!!! And we'll be traveling and camping through saltwater croc territory starting Sunday! Actually, we'll be with both fresh and saltwater crocs. Both are found in the rivers in the Kimberley. It's okay to swim with freshies, they're fairly docile, but the salties are the ones to watch out for. I got to pet a baby salty!! It was SOOOOO soft. And it made cute noises like the baby alligator that Matt caught back in Florida an eon ago. Don't tell Florida Fish and Wildlife. Shhhhhh. It's a secret. There were several wonderful wallets made from alligator skin that I wanted to get for Eric as a birthday present, but they were more expensive than my pearl necklace... This croc farm actually breeds crocodiles for their skin and meat. Apparently they're good eating and their leather is really soft and nice. The farm also takes the problem crocs so they aren't killed and keeps them safe and breeds them. Each big croc has a girlfriend, and our tour guide was not as brave and daring as Steve Irwin but he was kind of cute. (Eric, ignore that, Brenda and I admired only) These big guys move fast!! The guide fed them chickens! Anyway, time for dinner and working on homework, yes, you heard me, homework. I have a project to make that's due tomorrow after we visit the pearl farm. G'Day!

Friday, June 10, 2005

Last Day in Broome

Today was our second to last day in Broome and we spent it touring the Willie Creek Pearl Farm. Very cool! I tried on a strand of pearls that cost 440,000 dollars Australian. Eeek! We had our presentations of our Ningaloo Reef projects. Kevin's was memorable when he imitated a sea cucumber.

Tomorrow we have another day off, and I am hopefully going to the racetrack!! Maybe I'll bet on a couple horses! We leave Sunday for the Kimberley! Yay camping! Sorry for the lack of detail but I'm running low on Internet time...

Friday, June 24, 2005

Darwin continued

Okay, so back online. Now I have tons of Internet time because banks don't open on weekends in Australia. This really stinks. I have to buy things in $10 increments because that's the minimum charge amount for a visa—ARRGGHHH. I also have to eat at places that can take cards and that usually means more expensive meals. I have 2 dollars in change left and cannot get cash until Monday, when I'll be in New Zealand. At least the New Zealand dollar has a better exchange rate than the Australian dollar. Wooot! 100 USD becomes 140 NZD!!! Damn, I like that. I also just booked my hostel in New Zealand. Only 22.15 for two nights—WOW!! I wish the U.S. had hostels.

Anyway, back to the summary of the past week and a half. I believe I was at El Questro.....

After El Questro Gorge, we took a riverboat cruise on the Chamberlain River. The highlight of that was the spitting Archer Fish. If you held your hand out over the boat, the fish would spit at you and then you could feed them a piece of bread. I've decided that the fish tank I set up this year at school is going to have Archer Fish that I'm going to condition the same way. They'd spit at me anytime they saw me! The behavior is actually natural but it's used to knock an insect off of a branch into the water so the fish can eat. They are excellent aim, hence the name, Archer Fish.

That night a bunch of people got drunk because Jon (Dr. Shenker) had said that the beer was not being used up quickly enough. Bad move on his part *cringe* The next day we were set to leave El Questro Station but stopped at Zebedee Springs, which is a natural hot springs that's kind of warm (lol). It was nice to relax. From the springs, we drove a lot until we stopped at Kununurra, and from there, our last campsite in the middle of nowhere, the roughest camp we've stayed at. There were no facilities at all—so bathrooms, nil; sinks, nil; running water, nil. We were on top of the plateau for the full moon. It was so beautiful and bright.

The next day we arrived in Darwin and we are staying at the YHA. Just yesterday I took the final exam for the class. We had to have some physical form of evidence that we learned something on this trip, hence the exam. I thought it was a pretty decent exam. I sat by the pool, listened to some CDs and took the exam.

I'll be on again and post all about Darwin tomorrow, I've only got 7 minutes left.

Bubye!

Darwin and 10 days of camping

Camping in the Kimberley is now done. Hence the really long break between posts. Since I am about to go get dinner (It's 5:15 p.m. here), this post won't be that long. A really good update will come when I get home and don't have to pay for internet. However, I have highlights from camping…

Sleeping outside with clear nights EVERY night. I now can recognize the Southern Cross and Scorpio and what's really cool is that the Milky Way is visible EVERY night.

We started in Windjana Gorge after driving from Broome with our cool guides, Mic, Joel, Karl and Tom-Tom. We went to Tunnel Creek and walked through the cave and back out again. It was really cool to do and very wet since we had to do a lot of stream crossing. The blind catfish were awesome! We also saw a HUGE goanna outside the cave entrance. We hiked into Windjana Gorge in the evening and were able to see the eye-shine of several hundred freshwater crocs in the river. That was totally awesome. You can tell a freshwater croc from a saltwater croc at night by the color of the eye-shine. Red is fresh, green is salt. Therefore, red means go ahead, green means stop right there and run for your life...

After Windjana we stayed at Silent Grove but went hiking into Bell Creek, which was a pretty decent hike but with a wonderful waterfall and swimming area at the end. I jumped off of a 10 m cliff into the water. It was so much fun!!! We also stopped at several other gorges, all with beautiful water that was clean enough to drink!!!! I thought that was pretty awesome. Our guides are awesome too. They are total chefs at a campfire. The first night we had grilled barramundi for dinner. The fish was superb!!!!

We also drove up to Kalumburu, which is an aboriginal community that you can only enter with permission. The community was so excited we were coming that they spent 3 days cleaning up town and then held a Corrobori for us so we could see some of their ceremonial dances. That was totally cool. We also met one of the Elders, Basil, and he told us a story about one of the paintings he had made. The next day, Clarry, an aboriginal tour guide, showed us around Kalumburu and taught us about the rock art in the area and how to make spears and then throw them. I got to throw a spear and did a pretty good job at that!! We also stopped at the Mission in town and visited their museum of Aboriginal history. That was pretty good. When we first arrived we spent about one hour playing footie with the aboriginal kids. They are tough!!! One 5 year old was tackled when he caught the ball but came up all smiles. They were also fascinated with our digital cameras and wanted to take pictures of each other. One sad part is that they've been heavily influenced by black rap culture from America, so they make all of the hand signals that rappers make in music videos. We hope to send them positive images from the states so they don't think Americans are only like rappers.

After Kalumburu we went to the Mitchell Plateau. There was a really nice hike in to a beautiful gorge and HUGE waterfalls. We were able to swim at the top of the falls but not at the bottom due to the saltwater crocs. A bunch of people opted to chopper out to get a birds-eye view of the area. I took the option as well and it was gorgeous. I can't wait to see my pictures.

The next stop was El Questro Station, which was luxury camping compared to what we've been dealing with. Hot showers. Mmmmmmm. We hiked into El Questro gorge which was another cool hike but really hard. Halfway through we had to portage across a pool of water to continue hiking. The swimming at the end was awesome.

...To be continued, dinner time :-)

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

The New Zealand saga

The flight to New Zealand from Darwin was not all that bad, although I freaked a guy out by talking in my sleep. I was tired. My first view of New Zealand was awesome, I already want to go back. I got out of the airport, said farewell to Matt, and then caught the bus to the hostel. The bus driver was nice, he gave me an extra discount for my roundtrip ticket. I checked in, put my luggage in the room and met two of my roommates. They are older women traveling around the world. I went downstairs to book a day trip only to find the booking agent closed. Luckily the front desk helped me out. I decided on what seemed to be a good day tour, getting out of the city, and went to pay for it only to have my card denied. I was a bit upset. I have the money! I found out later that a heat wave in Connecticut shut down the bank's computers and that's why the money couldn't be accessed.

Since I couldn't do anything about it, 1 a.m. east coast time in the U.S., I wandered out into the city for food and an evening of entertainment. I saw Madagascar, which made me chuckle because they made fun of Connecticut, no one else got it. I browsed Borders for a while and then called home. Mom and Dad said they'd put more money in the account, I planned to go to a bank to sort my money woes out. To top it all off, I'm having an allergic reaction to something. My legs are covered in hives and they itch like nobody’s business. Ick.

One thing I can say about New Zealand is that I finally feel like I'm in the southern hemisphere. Boy is it cold! I can see my breath! The hostel's beds are comfy and I love sleep. In the morning, I woke up and was finally able to pay for my day trip. Since it was a while before I was to be picked up I went back to bed. Mmmmmm.

The tour is interesting. I was the first person to be picked up, so I was all alone sitting in a huge coach. We drove around the city and a bunch of landmarks were pointed out. We also stopped at Mt. Eden, which is one of several extinct volcano cones in the Auckland area. I walked around the rim. The next stop was the Auckland War Memorial Museum. The first floor had a nice display of Maori history. The second floor had an interesting natural history exhibit. It made me wish I had been able to go diving at Poor Knight's. The bus also drove through some of the residential areas of the city. We even saw the most expensive street. Man, those houses were awesome! On the way back for lunch, we saw a brilliant rainbow.

I transferred onto my Bush and Beach part of the trip. The one I was really looking forward to. There were only eight people including me, plus a tour guide—nice and small. We saw a bunch of places, close to Auckland, on the western coast in the Waitakere regional park. We also stopped at Karekare and Piha. There was even a rainforest! But it was cold! I loved it. We also stopped at a visitor's center to learn about the Maori carvings. All the carvings outside of a traditional meetinghouse are male and they have erect penises and tattoos. The erection signifies the strength and readiness of the men protecting their family. Pretty cool. The swirly tattoos all over their bodies are a symbol of life and vitality. It mimics the swirling of a new tree fern bud, which we also saw.

Another stop was at Piha Beach. The black sand (some of which I pilfered and got home) is magnetic and comes from the volcanic activity in the area. Apparently there is also titanium and other valuable metals and elements in the sand. Those elements are mined elsewhere in the country. We saw a gorgeous waterfall whose only upstream source is rain. The waterfall was near the beach where "The Piano" was filmed. I must watch it now.

Our guide also took us to his house where we had tea or coffee and cookies. I gratefully accepted the coffee he was passing out in the tour van. We made a last scenic stop—well worth the cold and wind before heading back to the main city. Apparently Auckland is larger than London square-mile wise but only has 1.5 million people. It is also the largest city population wise in the country. The country has a total of 4 million people, a number they reached only recently.

I was dropped off back at the hostel and made myself dinner of creamy chicken and veggie soup. I curled up on a couch in the lounge and read and finished a book I found in the book swap. I also planned my activities for tomorrow since they require detailed planning so I get to the airport and catch my flight back to Los Angeles. I've also determined that I hate itching and that my continuous massive breakout is due to something in my clothes. Luckily I have antihistamine medicine leftover from my spider bite a year ago and brought it along. If I itch on the plane, I don't think I'll mind since the meds knock me unconscious. Yay, sleep aids! Off to bed, I'll be up early.

I caught the free shuttle to Kelly Tarlton's Underwater World, paid for admission and entered. The aquarium was dedicated to the Antarctic explorers who raced to reach the South Pole. They had a nice penguin display but my favorite was the stingray pool. They had several huge stingrays that were quite friendly but you couldn't touch them, grrrr. The feeding time was cool. A guy got into the tank with them. The stingrays came up to him and patted him on the head with their wings while he fed them. I was so jealous! I want his job! Well, maybe not, but I want friendly stingrays to do that to me. They also had some small sharks and fish that you viewed from underneath just like at nearly every aquarium now. Kind of boring. The only unique thing was that the entire aquarium was underground in old sewer pipes of the city. I did manage to waste time like I wanted and I met a nice Indian girl. We exchanged e-mails and I told her I’d send pictures from the aquarium.

I slowly traveled back to the hostel, where my luggage was stored and waited for the airport shuttle to pick me up. At the airport, I met a nice guy named Jory who has a Ph.D. in Immunology. He and I talked for a while, and he gave me the names of a couple of people I could contact about my interest in Astrobiology. That's totally awesome! Boarding the plane starts in 1 1/4 hours. Ugh.

One memory I do not want to forget that I neglected to mention earlier about the Bush and Beach trip. New Zealand smelled like New Hampshire. The air was so pure at the rainforest. I loved it!