So this is the first of two posts, probably both will end up going today, one may not be until tomorrow if I decide I don’t want to write anymore though. So, two weekends ago, Kyle, Olivia, and I went north to the Whitsunday Islands for the weekend. We flew up Friday, and we came back Monday afternoon. On Friday we left Brisbane sometime in the morning, took a train to the airport, and then waited for our flight. [Quick tangent on domestic flights in Australia. Security is a joke. People have gotten through with razors, scissors, and all kinds of other things. When you get there they ask if you have anything dangerous, and then you can just walk through the metal detectors and send your stuff through the machine, but no need to take off shoes/belts/jackets, just waltz through very quickly. Occasionally they scan your bags for traces of explosives, but that’s about it. They never check ID’s and only check boarding passes as you’re getting on the plane. Kinda crazy. And you only need to be there an hour before departure. Now back to the story.] So we fly in to the Procerpine Airport, which is only slightly bigger than the airport in Colebrook. One runway, one terminal, one security checkpoint, and one tiny food court. And when we were flying in, we took so many turns and adjustments I didn’t think we were going to ever land. After landing, we walked through the airport, and got on a bus to take us to our hostel. The bus ride was about half an hour, and once we got there, we checked in and then explored town. There were a bunch of little shops, but there were also a lot of empty buildings, which was kind of surprising. We went down and explored the beach as well, playing on playgrounds and skipping rocks too. That night the hostel played Slumdog Millionaire, and we watched that. It was surprisingly good.

Saturday morning was an early morning, as we were going on a tour that started at 8. We woke up and checked out of the hostel, and then hopped on a bus to the port our boat was departing from. After picking up some people on the way out, we got to a pontoon type thing at Horseshoe Reef, where we hung out for a few hours. We had lunch, and then there was a water slide, snorkeling, a semi-submersible boat, helicopter rides, and scuba diving for us to enjoy. Scuba diving was pretty cool, since I’m not certified I had to hold on to an instructor the whole time, but it was still fun and definitely worth it. Snorkeling was a little boring, similar to what we did at Heron Island, but we saw some cuttlefish which was pretty cool. After we left there, Olivia, Kyle, and I had a hostel booked on Long Island, which was more of a resort that just happened to have hostel style rooms for us. It was really nice, and we spent the night watching wild wallabies and weird birds cruise around on the beach.

Sunday was a pretty much free day on Long Island, and we had until 3:30 before our shuttle back to the mainland. We decided to go “bush walking,” which is basically hiking, but we only had flip flops, so it was quite the adventure. We were told that one particular path was the best as it would give us awesome views of the surrounding islands, so we decided to take that one. There was only one view, and it was pretty awesome. After that was finished, we got lunch, and just laid out on the beach waiting for the shuttle. The shuttle back was pretty uneventful, and Sunday night we checked back into our original hostel at Aerlie Beach. We got dinner at Subway by the beach, and just sat and chatted for a while before getting ice cream and heading back to the hostel.

Monday was our last day on our mini vacation, and we didn’t do too exciting. We woke up early, got on a shuttle bus back to the airport, and flew back to Brisbane. This Monday was the last week of classes, and it went pretty well. On Thursday we had our Farewell Dinner with all of the Dickinson kids, because our Director, Ann, had to go to Boston, so our last dinner had to be a little earlier than usual. It was a pretty fun night, we all went to the Regatta Hotel for dinner, and some of us hung out for a while afterwards. Abra, Olivia, Kyle, and I stayed longest and played trivia. We came in second to last, but we still got prizes. Friday starts the next and final trip, so I’ll leave you here for now.