Monday, June 7, 2010

soo good thing i know how to swim....

a couple weekends ago my friend kate and i flew up to cairns, queensland which is right on the coast of the great barrier reef. buuut its pronounced cAns... it was the weekend just before our study week and a bunch of kids from our uni were going up there the same weekend. we left friday morning on a bus to the brisbane airport, we started off our trip nicely but BARELY making our bus... we got to the train station to take a train to the airport and couldnt figure out where to go so we roamed around that place for a while till a lady asked us if we needed help, clearly we did. this is basically our entire trip of kate and i not knowing what to do or where to go.... haha we got to the airport too early to check in so we sat in the lobby like bums for about an hour and ate pita bread with tomato sauce and cheese, classy meal. we made it to cairns friday night around midnight and walked up to a FAT party outside and all around our hostel. we couldn't go out that night though because we had white water rafting to go to a 6:45 in the morning. soo the next morning we get ready to go rafting and meet outside to be picked up with four of our other friends from uni. we had all signed up for the EXTREME all day, rafting. sweet. thankfully, i'm a good swimmer. we had to sign all these forms about liability, and insurance, rah,rah,rah then pay $30, also for insurance. i then start to realize just how EXTREME, this thing might be. i legit start freaking out. we get out of the van and they give us our life jackets, helmets, and oars. im pretty sure my helmet could not have been on tighter. there were six of us in our little raft and then our guide. we got in and just started going and i was like uhhhh can you tell me what im supposed to do??! and he's like ohh yeah no worries mate ill let you know when it happens... sweet, should i tell him now or later that i can't swim? so he can tell im pretty freaked out and just says well if you're in the water float on your back and kick the rocks away with your feet, and just go to where i point or get back in the boat as fast as possible. ohhh so i will be falling in? even better.... ahh! after about ten minutes my freak out ended and i just did exactly what he told me to do, if he told me to jump of a cliff i would have. it was insane, he would say paddle forward and i was like a machine, haha i did not want to be the reason we got stuck in a fall or flip the boat. soo i calmed down and legit started enjoying my self. i actually loved it and by the end wanted to do it again. it was SOOO much freaking fun. though i was extremely tense the entire time it was amazing. buuuut you will all never believe what i did. we went through this one part of the rapid where there were about 7 undercurrent rapids? right in a row and we went through it on the boat, we were bouncing up and down and water was going every where and we're like ohh sweet we made it through that then he steers us over to the side and ties up the raft and he's like alright, now we're going to swim through that..... uhhhh wtf. so like i said, i just did whatever this guy said for some reason and was like alright people we're swimming. we walk back on the side of the river to the beginning of this rapid and he tells us we need to walk out as far as possible till we basically fall over and swim to the center riiiiight in between the huge boulders... im like ok yeah.. then he says you have about half a second to catch your breath between each rapid... so make sure you do that. ok go. ummmm. what? we all just look at each other and don't move. so finally our guide makes us jump in and somehow i found myself at the first rapid. eff. i was so focused on breathing and timing it it was insane, im pretty sure i was under water the entire time just gettin tossed around hit one rock and every chance of air i got i took it. then i popped out at the end of the rapids and swam as fast as i could to the rafts. hoooollly crap i was like, i did it. i really did it, i can't believe i survived. then a bunch of other people from our group were behind us but they didnt quite swim over quick enough and they had to be thrown ropes to be pulled in and some of them weren't in the middle of the huge boulders, etc... sooo we all get out and our guides like soo we all didn't do so well on that last one, so we're doing it again. im like this is a freaaaaaking joke. i survived once, the chances of that happening again are not likely. but once again he says jump, i say how high? i get in the water again, pass through the rocks, get pushed under the water and bob my way through the rapids somehow successfully making it to the raft again. im amazing. soo for those of you who go to the river with me and do some floating there, that is now a joke to life and that current has nothing on me. i swim through rapids. haha anyway, i managed to survive a day of white water rafting and i LOVED it. we got home later afternoon and everyone had tickets for a pub crawl that night that was sold out. kate and i kept trying to find tickets but couldn't buy them anywhere. theeen at dinner these guys came up and said they had two extra tickets for the pub crawl, score. sooo not only did we get to go on the pub crawl.... but it was free. woo! it was soo sweet. it started at the bar at our hostel then a party bus took us around the city to 5 different bars. it was super fun, participated in some inappropriate contests, got a few drinks.... it was great. the next day we all just hung out by the pool, there was about 15 of us from our college there. that after noon they had a free bbq at the bar and we got to do this free zip line across the pool. we didn't really go out that night because we were all going on the scuba boat the next day. monday morning we woke up and all walked down to the harbor to catch our reef experience boat out to scuba the great barrier reef. again im stoked because im a really good swimmer.... they gave us all wetsuits, goggles, snorkels and fins and broke us up into diving groups of four people. if we weren't in the first diving group we could just go out and snorkel on our own, so my friends are just like alright lets go jump off the boat and snorkel around. im like uhh what? we just go off on our own... nope. can't im finally talked into getting in the water and starting to snorkel. i don't know why i was such a baby this trip but someone should have punched me. i got in the water and started to snorkel. the second i put my head under water and started to swim around i forgot everything i was ever scared of and it was the coolest feeling ever. turns out, all those bored summer days of me swimming around the edge of my pool with my mask on really did pay off, i was a natural. you just got carried away looking at everything and it's like you're in a different world. i loved it! it was my groups time to scuba so i went back to the boat and got all geared up for scuba diving. after i had conquered snorkelling i wasn't freaked out at all for the scuba which i was actually really surprised about. it was easy and i just swam around soaking it all in. our scuba guide was really cool and he would get us to hold these sea cucumbers and put our hands inside this clam that would close up on it. then before i knew it we were coming back to the surface. it was weird thinking that i just went scuba diving at the great barrier reef and all i wanted was to go back down. after all the scuab groups had finished we drove the boat to another section of the reef and were allowed to pay for a second dive. only a few of us did but it was definitely worth it because on this dive we saw a sea turtle!! i had an underwater camera and im hoping i got really good pictures. on our second dive we stayed down for a little while longer and got to see a lot more stuff, we went down where there was sand on the reef and took our fins off and walked around and jumped and did little flips where i almost hit my head straight on the coral.... haha oops luckily our guide saw it and just straight pushed me out of the way. after out dive we were all just sitting up on the deck of the boat waiting to head back to the marina. but our scuba day ended quite tragically. after all the dives and snorkelling our instructors were checking everybody back on to the boat to make sure everyone was there. one person had not checked in. they waited a while and were looking in the bathrooms and joking around about this person taking too long in the pisser. after about 15 minutes we all realised that this was becoming serious. we sat there and watched the instructors agree that this person had not gotten back on the boat and that it was an emergency. they called for rescue and sent out divers on a raft to search around the boat. we were all sent to the bottom deck and basically stood there in silence not knowing what to do or say. we just watched out the windows as the divers searched around the entire boat. all of a sudden the raft came back to boat, more guys got in with several scuba tanks and went back to where they had dropped one diver. they had found the guy underwater, and began to give him CPR, took him to a sand island close by and called a helicopter. it was unreal and so intense. it still doesn't seem like i actually witnessed it happen. none of us knew him so we couldn't help with reports on where we had seen him diving but we found out later that he didn't make it. it was crazy and so intense that i wasn't really even sure how to react. other than a really hard ending we all had a really good day. and a great time in cairns. i basically conquered my fear of the open ocean, sort of, and i would like to say im an amazing swimmer now. after rapids and scuba diving, im preeetty sure i can do anything.