Overdue pictures: Terrestrial

Sunrise at Chillagoe

The aptly named Balancing Rock

Sunset at Balancing Rock. It looks like the sunrise, but trust me, they're different.

Coldest waterfall ever, but SO WORTH IT.


Lake Eacham, the crater lake - my favorite swimming spot by far.

The toughest hike of my life led to this view. Our viewpoint was a tiny cliff that was a few hundred meters high with nothing to catch you if you fell. But it was SO WORTH IT.

I didn't get any good pictures WITH the wallabies I studied, but here are some pictures of them. Above is Chai. She's my favorite.

This is Bala. She's cute. They're all cute!

Actually, here's my friend's picture of me feeding the wallabies sweet potato!

And again!

Overdue pictures: Brisbane and the Mangroves

Bonding in Brisbane's south bank. This is between some of the museums where you can see the city's skyline.

Daintree River that goes through the mangroves. This isn't a mangrove, but it's a pretty picture of the river.

Our classroom in a bungalow in the rainforest!

First day in the mangroves when we didn't mind them so much...

Last day of the mangroves after a large mud fight. This is a rhizophora tree. Imagine a ton of its roots everywhere. Mangroves are fun and then they're excruciating and then they're fun again. But mostly excruciating. Thus are mangroves: a huge emotional roller coaster.

Heron Island: Restricted Access

I had what can only be described as the best week of my life last week. We arrived, after a 21 hour train ride and a 3 hour ferry, to Heron Island, which is a small island on the Great Barrier Reef that is off-limits to everyone except those doing research at the Heron Island Research Station or anyone staying at the Heron Island Resort, which costs about $600/night/person (we were not allowed on the resort, except for our last night on the island). The island is about 1km in circumference, so it takes less than 20 minutes to walk around the entire thing. The beach is just a 30-second walk away from our lecture room, and we are surrounded by beautiful coral reefs.

So for a little more than a week, this was my home:


Most afternoons when we had a few hours of free time and I didn't feel like snorkeling, I would take a nap on the shores and the above was my view. Like my friend and I said all week, "nbd." No big deal. Except it was AWESOME.

Of course, we were still in school, and our workbook with 26 lectures never let us forget that. Still, it was by far the best class I've ever taken. Each day, we had a few lectures in the morning and a few lectures in the afternoon, but between those, our professors took us out on afternoon snorkels and a night snorkel so we could see the fish and corals we had just been learning about in lecture. We also had a couple days of lab work where we would look at plankton under microscopes and do lab assessments on coral reef biology. My favorite lab was the one about fish diversity - our assignment was to go out into the reefs and take as many pictures of fish as we could. Once we did that, we spent the rest of the afternoon trying to identify our fish.

My favorite thing about Heron Island was that we basically got the entire island, save for the resort, to ourselves. We were given a lot of free time to do whatever we liked - our group had a really intense volleyball tournament (that I decided not to play in because I lack hand-eye coordination), and snorkels in small groups were popular. I went snorkeling almost everyday and never once got sick of it. The Great Barrier Reef is AMAZING - there are so many fish and the water is so clear and beautiful. I got to swim alongside turtles, saw a family of sharks swim right under me, stepped a little too close to sting rays, watched a huge school of fish circle a friend, and came really close to a shark and rays in a shallow part of the reef called "shark bay" (don't worry, these sharks don't eat people, just fish). By the end of the week, however, rays were by far my favorite sea animal. The way they move in the water is so amazing.

I saw a lot last week, but here are some highlights of my favorite snorkels:

At the end of my fish lab snorkel, I swam into shore and when it got shallow enough, I put my foot down. I turn around and see my friend waving frantically at me. I look in the water, and there are about 10 sting rays burrowed in the sand, and the closest one is about 2 feet away from my foot! The rays feel us swimming in, so they all start to depart, and I go under to snap some photos. But all I could think about was a lecture my professor had given me weeks ago about dangerous animals, which was "DO NOT TOUCH THE STING RAYS. THEIR BARBS CAN STAB YOU AND IT HURTS AS MUCH AS CHILDBIRTH!" The one closest me didn't leave and I wanted to stay under to watch it, but I could only see the Powerpoint slide my professor had showed us of a barb in someone's leg. When I asked my professor later, however, she said that sting ray attacks are extremely rare; in fact, one of the girls in the group stepped on a ray and nothing happened. Less than 5 people have ever actually died from a sting ray attack, it was just a bad coincidence that Steve Irwin was one of those people.

Our professors arranged a lot of snorkels for us, including three boat snorkels where we were taken out on boats to different parts of the reef around the island to snorkel for about two hours. These were some of the best snorkels I had. On one such snorkel, we saw manta rays which are the biggest sting ray species. They can reach up to 8 meters, but the ones we saw were about 3 meters in wingspan. We didn't get to see them underwater since we were on our way back to shore, but they were pretty close to the top, so we got to see them flap their fins. It was on this same snorkel that I swam alongside a turtle and saw a family of sharks swim under me. There were also mating turtles, but I missed that, sadly.

We also got to do a night snorkel where we were given flashlights and taken out in groups of 5 to see what we could find at night. We ended up finding a woobegong, which is a pretty rare shark species, chilling out on the ocean floor. We also saw a LOT of turtles. I thought the night snorkel was going to be freezing, since I had been pretty cold on the other snorkels (thank god for wet suits, even though they gave me a really weird tanline on my legs). The night snorkel was actually pretty warm, though. While I didn't see as much on the night snorkel as I did in the morning, I still really enjoyed it, especially when everyone got to jump off of the jetty afterwards.

My most favorite snorkel was one I went on with two friends. We went out to the reef crest, which was where the reefs started getting deeper, so there's more diversity of animals. It was here that I saw my first shark. I also saw a lot of turtles (it never gets old) and two different species of rays! My favorite part was when my friends and I came across a big school of really big fish. Usually the schools of fish you see are of small fish, but these were pretty big - I'd say more than a foot long. They seemed confused - they would come toward us and then back off, then go one direction and then change. They wanted to pass us, I think, but were afraid of us. Finally, my friend who had a camera swam toward them, and they all began circling her like a huge cyclone! It was so awesome to see, but after awhile, I wanted to see if I could get into the middle of the cyclone too, but when I swam forward, they all scattered. Still, it was so awesome to see and it was definitely not anything I had ever expected to see while snorkeling.

On the night of our exam day, our professors ended up buying everyone beer, played a beer pong tournament with us, and danced with us. It was a lot of fun - definitely something you only get on a trip like this where your professors hang out with you and treat you out to food after you're done with an exam! That night, I went out to the jetty with some friends and we waded into the pool and saw a LOT of turtles (again, it will never, EVER get old). One ended up coming really close to us, so close that we had no choice but to pet its shell! Turtles are actually laying their eggs at night around this time, and during our night walks around the beach, we saw a LOT of turtles. They move so slowly on the sand; they'd take a couple of steps and then rest then take another few steps and then rest.

On my last day here, I had a huge research paper due, so I prepared for a long night to finish it. Little did I know that I would actually be pulling my first ever all-nighter. I ended up being awake from 9:30 am to about 3pm the next day, but I gotta say that it was by far the best late night studying I'd ever done. At around midnight, some friends and I went out to the jetty and jumped off a couple of times. We ended up swimming for about an hour among the turtles and sharks that swim by when the tide gets high. A friend and I also climbed onto a yacht that was tied to the shore. We were being such rebels. Then, around 5am, about half of us who were still up went to the other side of the island to watch the sun rise. You don't get that during normal all-nighters, I'll tell you that.

I never thought that I could be more sad leaving than I was for Wetherby, but Heron by far beat that sadness. I think what makes it so sad is that I will probably never, ever be able to go back to Heron again, and it was the most amazing place. Even if I can one day afford the resort, I'll never have that same experience again. Still, it was freaking AMAZING. Words really can't describe.

So I'll post pictures!

Snorkeling!

Sunset
I'm the one on the right, in case you can't tell.


Enjoying one last view of Heron before we leave

Sunrise at Shark Bay during my all-nighter

Stanford in Australia 2010!

I really like this picture. This was on one of our last days at Heron Island. My professor and her son are in the middle, as well as my other professors and tutors. Click for a clearer picture. Also, find me!

5, 6, 7, 8 WOO!

I'm becoming known for some particular things among the group here, such as being constantly bit by bugs, being allergic to nuts, being deaf, and being particularly vocal about how I feel about things that bite me. Another thing people are starting to associate me with is being one of the biggest Stanford football fans here. I don't really think that my fan level reflects my love for football, but rather my personality (if I like something, I like it immensely). However, it is true that I am the only one here who owns this year's Red Zone shirt since I went to the first game, and also the only person who brought all 3 Red Zone shirts. And, it is also true that the only thing I'm really sad about missing is the football season, especially when we're doing so well.

Needless to say, we do have internet here, but while ESPN2 and 3 don't work outside of the states, we've been "watching" the games here using ESPN's gamecast or play-by-play which automatically refresh to tell you what's going on. It's a pretty intense way of watching the game. When we were staying in the bungalows, we had an hour break between exams for lunch which was conveniently during 4th quarter, and 15 of us ended up crowded around my computer waiting for the page to refresh to see if we had scored against Oregon (we didn't. =( very sad.). Two days ago, we were making damper when it was the last 4 seconds and we were going for a field goal while being down by 1 to USC. Damper-making stopped as we waited for the page to refresh (so nervewracking!) and when we got the goal, everyone broke out into All Right Now. It wasn't the same as rushing the field, but I'll take it.

Go Card!

Caves! Trees! Wallabies! Oh my!

Right now, I'm staying at Wetherby Station, which is a cattle ranch somewhere east of Cairns. I think I'm in the outback, but I'm not exactly sure. We're staying in tents outside of the main building, which has a beautiful wraparound porch where we've been lazing around since we have a few (sort of) free days before we move on to Heron Islands, where we'll be doing the coral reef leg of the trip. We also got to study and take our tests outside, which was pretty awesome.

Despite our vacation-like accommodations, we've mostly been too busy to enjoy them until now. Here's a list of what we've been doing here:

• Caving at Chillagoe: We spent one night at Chillagoe, which is where a ton of caves have developed over time. We woke up early to see the sunrise, went into a couple of caves, saw the sunset, and went stargazing. It was an amazing day. The caves included one where we could crawl through a really tiny crawl space called the "laundry chute" that made me feel claustrophobic, as well as adventure caving, which meant it was just a cave with no walkways where we were alone with our flashlights. That was really awesome.
• Learning about forests: We spent a couple days having lecture about the surrounding forest ecosystems. One of our TAs (who is dating our professor) owns some land right next to Wetherby Station that includes the rainforest and sclerophyll forests, which we were learning about, so we did some field days there.
• Mt. Hypipamee: We then spent a day driving about an hour and a half south to see Mt. Hypipamee which is this HUGEEE crater that is probably the only one like it in the world. We got to swim at a waterfall here, where you could swim behind the waterfall into this little cave that again made me feel very claustrophobic, but it was worth it.
• Lake Eachem: Later that day, we went to Lake Eacham, which is another large crater filled with water (a crater lake) surrounded by the rainforest. The lake is 1 km across, and I ended up swimming to the middle and swimming there for about an hour. The water was AMAZING. The lake goes almost 70m deep, and the water is amazingly clear, clean, and still. This was definitely the best swim of the trip, and perhaps the best swim I've ever had.
• After looking at some huge fig trees, we went on a 3km walk around Lake Eacham to look at the rainforest around it. That night, we went platypus spotting at a river near a tourist farm where my professor used to work. We got to try crocodile meat (which has the texture of chicken and fish) and kangaroo meat (which tastes like beef), and went spotlighting in the rainforest where we saw possums, wallabies, spiders, frogs, and a bunch of other insects.
• Davies Creek Hike: On our last day before our exams, we went on a huge 12km hike. The entire thing was uphill and at the top of the mountain, there were 5 lookout spots to see the view. It was the most difficult hike I've done, but also the most worth it because the view was AMAZING. We had to do a lot of climbing over rocks and mud, which was really scary, but I had a lot of fun even though I was so exhausted by the end, and my knees and feet hurt a lot from going downhill. I never knew downhill could be harder than uphill. We were really lucky though; last week's group went on the hike when it was raining, so they got attacked by leeches. I also got a leech bite, but they're really not as scary as they sound at all, but some people last week got a LOT of bites including one who got one in her eye. Last week was also too cloudy to actually see the lookouts, so people didn't make it to the top, and one person ended up having to go to the hospital because his leg got cut badly on a rock. To top it off, they got attacked by wasps!! Basically, their group was super unlucky - the hike was already pretty difficult, and to have all that happen while it rained!
• After the hike, we went on a swim in a creek which felt AMAZING after the hike and just rested for an hour. That night, we had steak for dinner (Wetherby Station, being a farm, has amazing food that is super fresh) and then we had to study for our exam the next day.
• Also of note - my friend, a future vet, birthed a calf!
• Like in the mangroves, mosquitoes are not the worst things here. In the forests near where we're staying, there are horse flies which are huge flies that bite you and their bites HURT. Luckily, they're really easy to kill because they're so slow, but if you're not paying attention, you can have flies all over you.

Our last 3 days here are reserved for people who have to do their research projects. I'm one of those people. We went to check out the area where I'd be doing research on wallabies, but the wallabies never showed up, so I'm instead doing research on some young wallabies my professor is taking care of. These wallabies were rescued and will later be released to the wild. I observe the wallabies on top of our land rover for about an hour at 5am, after lunch, and at dusk. This is a lot of fun because wallabies are super cute, and sometimes after our observations, my professor lets us come in and play with the wallabies. It's great! They are the cutest things ever!

We also made damper, which is an Australian outback bread with no real recipe. We had a competition to see who made the best one - ours got burnt and broke in the pan so we weren't even in the top 3 (out of 6), but it was a lot of fun and was really good.

The food here is amazing, but while we are doing so much physical activity, a lot of people are worried about gaining weight. I think that's a valid concern - we get breakfast, morning tea (usually with a lot of cake and cookies), lunch, afternoon tea (again with cake and cookies), dinner, and dessert. Usually the food is so good it's hard to resist getting seconds, but I'm lucky that I'm not a big fan of sweets and prefer fruit - Australia has AMAZING produce. Sometimes, though, the sweets here are so good it's hard to resist.

Tomorrow, we leave for Heron Islands, but I'm pretty sad to be leaving Wetherby. I really love sitting out on the porch and reading, napping on the grass, or having campfires at night and sleeping in tents, all while having amazing food and company. I had the best week here and I learned so much - although it never seemed like it, we were still very much in school and had assignments to do every night and a final exam. We keep talking about how lucky we are that we get 3 extra days at Wetherby and not at the rainforest bungalows like the other group, which, while they were nice, just did not have the same kind of comfort as Wetherby.

Fun fact: My professor did a segment in Planet Earth about glowworms, which she is something of an expert about. She's only 33 right now, which means she was 28 when she did Planet Earth. Crazy! She told us all about the process, which sounded so arduous for a 5-minute clip. She's kind of awesome and really cool to hang out with. Here's the segment (at least I'm pretty sure it is, since I can't watch Youtube videos):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNVaRPZTGwI

Not boygroves. MANgroves.

Last week, I spent a week studying about mangroves. Like I said before, mangroves are a type of forest by riverbanks where water comes in and out everyday. This means the trees had to come up with new ways to survive since they don't get much air for half a day everyday. So, this makes for a very rooty, muddy, and crabby forest.

On the first day we were here, we settled into our bungalows in the middle of a rainforest, which is up a mountain from the Daintree River, where the mangroves we'd be working in are located. We did a rainforest walk led by an aboriginal tour guide, who showed us how aboriginals used to live in the rainforest. He showed some trees where, if you touch their black sap, you burst out in blisters like you've been badly burned. It was a really interesting hike. After the hike, we got to swim in a freshwater stream, which was amazing. The cold water felt AWESOME against the 30 or so mosquito bites I got from the hike. Note to self: never, EVER wear shorts in the rainforest. There's usually enough shade so it doesn't get hot.

For the next few days, after a boat tour on the Daintree River where our professor introduced us to the plant species in the mangroves, we had field days. Our group of 23 (split from the program's overall group of 47 which were taking the other half of the class that week) was split into 3 groups to study different parts of the mangroves. I was in the group studying fauna (mainly, crabs). My group was a lot of fun and we ended up having a lot of fun times in the car, which resulted in a bunch of inside jokes, but my group wasn't so fun in that we ended up being in the mangroves more than anyone else. Don't get me wrong, mangroves are really interesting to learn about. They are much less fun to be in for 8 hours a day. The first day, my group went in to collect leaves, and I ended up getting so many insect bites that I broke out in hives that night!

It turns out that mosquitoes are not the worst things in Australia, the flies are much worse. It turns out all the bites I'd been getting were from sandflies, which are so tiny that you can't even see them. Mosquitoes can bite through clothes and jeans, but there are infinitely more sandflies, and sandfly bites can last up to two weeks! I ended up getting groups of localized sandfly bites that still itch today, and a couple of mosquito bites that went away by the end of that week. I got 100 sandfly bites on my neck alone, 40 around my ankles, 60 on both legs, and I didn't even want to count the ones on my arms. Some of my friends got 100 bites just on the back of their hand, which looked gross and painful!! Bug spray didn't work either - I put bugspray on my skin and then my clothes (40% deet, although my friends with 100% deet still got eaten), then put on insect repellent lotion on my face, and then another layer when I got into the field and I STILL got eaten. I ended up using my eczema steroids as itch cream, and passed it around because everyone was suffering. Some people told me I won in terms of having the most bites, but that's not really a contest I wanted to win.

But other than that, I had some good times in the mangroves. The second day, we went to a rhizophora forest where I learned the true meaning of "jungle gym." The picture below is one I pulled offline (we've reached our internet capacity, so we can't upload pictures). I wasn't very happy when I saw that we'd be working a day here, but it ended up being a lot of fun climbing the roots. The roots are pretty easy to climb, except sometimes you can't tell if a root is dead, and you put all your weight on it and it collapses, making you fall into the mud below and sink into the mud up to your calves. Not so pleasant. Also, we ended up working late on 2 of our field days, so the tide began coming in and we had to wade back out into the boat. The water ended up going up to our knees at one point. There was really no point in trying to stay dry, though, since it basically rained the entire time we were in the forest. Like I said, not so pleasant.

Overall, I wasn't a big fan of the mangroves, because they were really difficult to move around in with all the mud and the roots, and because I basically got eaten alive, but in the end, it wasn't too bad. I realized that once I gave up on trying to stay clean and dry, I had a much better time. On our last day (when only my group had to go back into the mangroves and everyone else got to sleep in), we ended up having a mud fight. In the end, though, I'm relieved to be out of the mangroves, but I would also go back in, but definitely not for 9 hours a day, 3 days in a row.

Also, our bungalows were very humid, so we were basically never dry. My passport curled up and all my papers felt like they had been dipped in a bucket of water. When I brought my clothes to where I'm staying now, everything still felt so wet! I also ended up throwing out the $6 shoes I bought specifically for the mangroves because they got so dirty. That was very satisfying.

Fun fact: Vietnam has a lot of mangroves on the Mekong Delta. My professor did some research there recently, but unfortunately, a lot of mangroves are dying because of human activity and climate change.

Short update

I've been really busy these past two weeks. For the first week, I was in the mangroves which are like... if you think of a beach where the ocean is the river and the shoreline and sand is a bunch of dirt and trees, you get mangroves. So basically, the tide comes in and out every day, making it almost always muddy, and a ton of crabs frolic in and out of the dirt. I wasn't too big a fan of mangroves because I got eaten alive by mosquitoes and sandflies (and got hives as a result), and it was impossible to not get soaked and caked in mud each day. In the end, though, I had a lot of fun times in there. I also have some cool pictures, but I'll do a huge photoblog when I get good enough internet. We're all sharing a pretty weak internet line right now that's enough to skype but not to upload pictures.

For now, I'm still in North Queensland for another week or so and we've been looking at the surrounding forests each day, including the rainforest. Our days are packed so we don't get much free time. Basically, we wake up at 7 (sometimes earlier), have lecture for an hour or two, go into the field, lunch, back to the field (this means a number of things, but it's usually a hike of some sort), some free time (usually swimming unless we go back to the ranch), dinner, lecture, and then free time. By then, it's about 8 and I'm exhausted, but I have assignments I need to finish for the class. It's a lot of fun though. For the first few days, we went to some caves, went stargazing, and saw the sun rise and set. Now, we're staying at a ranch with a wrap-around porch in tents just outside of it. The food is amazing! It's sort of insane how nice our accommodations have been here. In the mangroves, we stayed in bungalows smack in the middle of the rainforest, so you went to sleep hearing birds and frogs and rain, which made it impossible for me to sleep without earplugs. A lot of people are worried they're going to gain a lot of weight by the sheer amount of food we've been getting, but I'm not too worried since we're always out doing things.