Jackie's World Tour 2009 – Let the mayhem begin!

Ok, so I seriously had someone ask me today if I have ever licked ant butt.  How many of you can say that you have licked ant butt or have even been seriously asked that question? Not many of you, huh??? Well, I am proud to say that I am officially on the list of people that has licked ant bootie. It was a green ant to be specific and it tasted like Vitamin C! In fact, 1 lick gives you more than daily amount of Vitamin C that you are supposed to have in the course of a day. Pretty good, huh? I swear only in the treetops of the Australian rainforest can you do such a thing. LOL The Australian rainforest was pretty cool and Ruth and I did a nice little trip up to Cape Tribulation right before we both left Australia. But more on that later….but now I bring you my review on the Australia Zoo!

What an amazing place. I totally love the Australia Zoo. In fact, I loved it so much I think that I probably could work there and be very, very happy. It is such a unique zoo. They have the handlers walking around the zoo with lots of the animals throughout the day. It was unbelievable. I got my picture taken with a koala bear which was so cool. Those little guys are so cute. Ok, I will say this, they are small and really cute but damn those little stinkers pack some weight. I was not expecting them to be so damn heavy! And they have a kung-fu grip! That little koala grabbed onto me so tight I thought he was going to leave bruises! So worth it though. They really are so damn cute! Oh, and I did I mention they were totally and utterly cute! hee-hee… They also have this area where they just have kangaroos and wallabies hanging around. You can go around and feed them and lay with them and stuff. It was really nice just layin next to a Roo and petting his ears. I loved that. I think the thing I liked the most about the zoo is that it was very interactive and you can tell that the handlers really loved the animals and took great care of them. The handlers were everywhere all the time and interacting with the animals all the time. It was such a difference from all the other zoo’s I have ever been to. My favorite part of my trip to the zoo was the lemur feeding. I had signed up for 2 different encounters, which means you go into the enclosures and actually interact with the animals. I did the wombat and the lemur encounters. The wombat encounter was ok. Very cute animals but the interaction with them was quite limited. We only really got to scratch their butts as they ate their lunch. We couldn’t scratch their heads or stand in front of them cause apparently when they decide it is time to move they haul ass and barrel over anything in front of them. They call them bulldozers and for good reason. One of the wombat’s we were feeding decided he had enough and just took off like a bullet out of a gun in a straight line without caring who or what was in front of him. Very cute animals but kind of boring as far as the encounter goes. Now the lemurs were a totally different story. I was the only person who had signed up for the encounter so it was me, the photographer, the handler and the 2 lemurs. The lemurs are actually not on display at the moment so I got taken to the back of the zoo to their private enclosures. It was so damn cool. I got about a half an hour of me feeding them all by myself. They were very inquisitive and it was just awesome. The photographer got some amazing shots of the little buggers on my shoulder and of the feed. I loved every minute of it. Apparently the back of the zoo is where they take the animals out of their enclosures and “walk” them around for some exercise. When I was going to the lemur cages the leopard was out on a “walk”. I didn’t get a chance to see him but how cool would that have been. I did however see Tila the camel being taken on her walk and I got to take some pics with her and feed her a carrot. It was pretty awesome! 🙂 All in all, I had an amazing day at the zoo. I love that place. It is amazing to see what Steve Irwin and his family have done with something that just used to be a crocodile rehabilitation area.

Anyway, after the zoo I left Mooloolaba and caught a flight to Townsville to meet my friend Ruth (who I met in Fiji) and do some diving. We decided to dive the Yongala which is a huge shipwreck and is one of the best dive wrecks in the world. We stayed at the Yongala dive lodge which was really quaint and nice and the next day we did our dives. Words cannot even describe how amazing that is! All the things that I had seen in Fiji on my 72 different dives I saw on one dive and everything was HUGE!!!! The bat fish were the size of my head and the potato cod were about half the size of my body! And I saw HUGE rays. I think there were 3 different kinds and they were so magical to watch as they glided through the water. Got to see a couple of turtles that were about half to size of my body as well. The wreck is totally covered in coral and marine life that one whole side of if doesn’t even look like a wreck, it just looks like an amazing reef. It was sooooo cool. Unfortunantely, the Yongala is a wreck where you cannot penetrate the vessel so we could only explore the outside. When the ship sunk no one knew what had happened to it so they could not find it. It was found years and years later and the passengers that were on the ship were never taken off. So they are still actually in the ship. It is considered sacred so that is why no one is allowed to go into the wreck. How weird it would be to dive inside a shipwreck and see skeletons. I don’t quite know how I would feel about that.

After the Yongola Ruth and I headed up to Cairns to go on our 5 day/4 night liveaboard to the Great Barrier Reef. The night before we headed out on the boat was my bday night so we went out for dinner and a drink. It was very low-key which suited me just fine. I have to say, I really like Cairns. I can’t quite put my finger on why I like the town but I do. I has a nice laid back but party atmosphere. It is a nice mix.

The day after my bday we headed to the port and got onto the Taka liveaboard. Ruth had contacted them a couple of days earlier so at dinner that night they came out with cupcakes and sang Happy Birthday to me. I was really surprised and I was really touched that Ruth had gone out of here way to make sure they did something for me. The trip was absolutely amazing. It was the first time I had ever spent any length of time on a boat and it was definitely an experience. The first night on the boat we were told that the sea was probably going to be a little rough cause we were heading all the way up to the northern fringes of the Great Barrier Reef and we would be sailing through the whole night. Ok, no problem, I popped 3 motion sickness pills and got ready for the worst. I also, upon advice from the crew, put my backpack under one side of my mattress (I had the double bed in the room) so I wouldn’t roll off the bed in the middle of the night. Now this would have been awesome advice if the postion of my bed was such that I was rolling from right to left with the movement of the boat. This was not the case. The way our beds were situated was that the movement of the boat was from head to foot. So Ruth and I spent the whole night like we were on the pirate ship ride at Great Adventure. There were times when I looked over at the wall next to my bed and I swear we were almost vertical! It was crazy. I felt like a bouncing ball the whole night, boing, boing, boing, boing…..Needless to say, I did not sleep at all that night. It was so bad that when I got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night (numerous time I might add…my bladder is rebeling against me in my old age!) I was thrown around the cabin like a rag doll. It was actually comical at some points. I mean I could literally take one step from my bed and be in the bathroom if I wasn’t being thrown around. This night I think I made about 5 zig zags up and down the cabin before I reached the door. You know it is bad when you are on the 2nd floor of the boat and the waves are crashing against your window. Let’s just say thank god we were one of the rooms that had a bathroom ensuite! Lack of sleep aside, I really loved being on the boat. The diving outside of the Barrier Reef was amazing. We had 9 dives at places that were outside the barrier reef and they were fabulous. The other dives on the Barrier were not that great. Alot of people have told me that the Great Barrier Reef is not the great and after my experience with them, I tend to agree. The dives sites north of the Barrier Reef are much, much nicer. One of the dives we did outside the reef was a shark feeding dive (take a deep breath Mom, I am ok!) That was amazing. It attracted mostly smaller sharks like white tips and grey reef sharks but an oceanic silver tip made an appereance at one point and that guy was quite big. It was amazing. Even the smaller sharks are impressive when they are swarming in big masses. Hell, smaller sharks are impressive when they are alone but in a huge group it is magical. They are such beautiful creatures. I am always astounded at just how sleek and graceful they are everytime I see them. After the feed they hung around for awhile so we got to see ALOT of sharks that dive. I have found that I particularly like dive sites that are pinnacles or bommies. That means that there is a huge formation that shoots up from the ocean floor and rises up near the surface. You just spiral around the pinnacle and look for lots of little things that live in the coral. We had a couple of pinnacle dives and I got to see a bunch of nudibrachs (my favorite thing in the world to see, they are sea slugs and very cute and just for you Mom, harmless). They are usually pretty small and they are the most colorful little buggers around. I heart nudiebrachs! 🙂 I also got to see alot of poisonous stonefish and various scorpionfish. These guys are really cool too since they meld into the coral and you really have to be looking to see them. The only problem with them is that they are highly toxic and if you touch one by accident you are up shit’s creek. My motto when diving is don’t touch anything…I find it keeps me covered in the not touching highly venemous creatures that can kill me in 2 seconds category! Anyway, all in all I did 13 dives in those 5 days and it was awesome. It was expesive but totally worth it!

After we got off the boat we met up with the crew and the rest of the passengers for drinks in Cairns. That was a fun night. There was lots of drinking and complete silliness. One of my favorite moments was when the chef of the boat (Rueben) switched shirts with me in the middle of the bar. It was quite humorous seeing him in my peach ruffly tank top. I was kind of jealous cause I think he may have looked better in it than I did. LOL
Then it was off to Cape Tribulation which is north of Cairns and is located in the world’s oldest rainforest. It was absolutely gorgeous here, nice and peaceful. We did a horseride through the rainforest and on the beach. I really enjoyed that. My ass hated me for a couple of days after that but I loved it. It is so much fun to gallop with a horse! After that we did a zip line in the canopy of the rainforest. That was pretty freakin awesome as well! And of course that is where I liked ant butt! Great way to top off a kick ass day!

All and all Australia has been alot of fun but for my wallet’s sake, I had to head out of there pretty quickly. It was really expensive there and I was quickly going broke. So I got a flight and now I am in Singapore. I will be writing about Singapore very shortly. I didn’t think I was going to really like it but I was very wrong. It is a country (is it even a country?) that has no home and no real identity. My thoughts on that later. Till then…..HUGS and KISSES!!! Miss you guys!