The other Long Island

Once again, this post is somewhat late but after seeing the things certain people (you know who you are) wrote on my facebook wall it looks like I'm going to have to pick up my post efficiency. So, here it goes...

After orientation I went on a pre-semester trip with 16 other students. We arrived at Hamilton Island on 12 July and to my surprise we did not stay there. Instead we took a ferry to the Long Island Resort. Our coordinator, Matt, kept confusing me whenever he said Long Island. I was not ready to go home! To say the least, it was nothing like home. The ferry ride was about 45 minutes long and we passed these beautiful hilly islands covered with trees. The water was so blue that in some places we could see the sea floor. I was in complete awe. When we arrived on the island we realized that there was basically no civilization. The only things on the island were three resorts, one of which was only accessible by helicopter. So pretty much the socialization options were quite limited. I guess that was good though because I got to know the other students on the trip really well.

On the first night we were there we played trivia with Brett. It was quite interesting. To say the least, we know a lot less than we think. There were three rounds (we missed the first one) with 20 questions each. The winner got a free bottle of wine, so we really really wanted to win. Unfortunately, we didn't think about the fact that there would be a lot of Australian trivia. So my team got 7/20 and 9/20. But the other team from our group ended up winning the third round (though I think they may have cheated a little bit, but no judgments here). We were talking to the other teams of Aussies and they were hysterical. It might have just been the booze but I have noticed that a lot of Australians are much more free to joke about a lot of topics that are hushed at home. After the winning group claimed their bottle of wine, we decided to sit in the hot tub for a little while. We got to talking and I discovered that Ken (UMD) is from Wantagh. I hated him for a little because I hate Wantagh but then he told me he went to Chaminade so it was okay. The personalities of other people on the trip really started coming out and it was awesome hanging out with them. We were looking at the stars from the hot tub (yea, lame whatever) and I had never seen that many stars. I mean, we were seriously on a secluded island so there was basically no light pollution. It was incredible.

The second day there (13 July) we got a free day. This was the first free day we had during the entire time in Australia. A bunch of us decided to go on a hike around the island but someone stole our map so we got a little lost. However, the island isn't too big so we found our way home unscathed. At the top of the hill on the island the view was amazing. The water was such a pristine blue color and all of the other islands just made it look like paradise. When we got back from our hike we hung out at the beach for a while. The sand sucked; it was really coarse grained and rocky with pieces of shells and stuff. The beach was also incredibly flat so the high tide line and the low tide line were about 40 feet away from each other. It was really weird looking. Once we got bored on the beach we decided to go kayaking. It was complimentary so we figured we might as well try it out. They had bouys marking out the boundaries where we could go and they stressed these boundaries several times. After rowing for a while we got kind of bored and just sat or laid in our kayaks. After about 10 minutes of that, this guy came out towards us and started yelling at us for being outside the boundaries. We looked around and we were way way way outside the buoys. But, the guy was a total jackass about it. He was like, you have to follow the same rules as everyone else and you have to pay attention to the boundaries, its not rocket science. It was totally unnecessary. So that was the end of kayaking for us. Other people in the group went on another hike after kayaking but I was still feeling really sick so I just decided to go take a shower and nap for a while so I could feel better for that night's adventures--Bingo with Bretto! This was pretty terrible. We had to make our own cards by filling in numbers so a bunch of people ended up just changing their numbers throughout the game to make it go faster. The winner won a free drink and Ken (UMD) won the second round. The third round was the "booby prize round" and Ben (Grand Valley) won that one. Brett came over to him with something under a towel and some very interesting conversation ensued and it ended with him uncovering a coconut with a face drawn on it. He taught us how to open a coconut which will become a great skill in the future. We were walking around for a little and discovered that we could see the Milky Way. It really puts stuff in perspective that we are so small in this place. We had an early morning the next day so we all went to bed after that adventure.

On the 14th we went snorkeling and it was definitely the best day on Long Island. We took a ferry to Whitehaven Beach. They told us the sand at Whitehaven is the whitest in the world. It was really hard so it didn't even feel like sand. Against the white sand the water looked even bluer, almost like a teal blue. We stayed on the beach for about an hour and then we went over to another part of the beach for a "bushwalk" or just a hike. We got to see the most photographed beach in the world. There were a bunch of moving sandbars that made this beach the most unique I had ever seen. It was apparently voted the best beach in the world. Even from the top of the hill we could see sting rays in the shallow water. Our final stop was the Great Barrier Reef. We snorkeled there for about an hour. Everything was absolutely beautiful. It was pretty sad that I was trying to spot fish that I could compare to fish from Finding Nemo. Unfortunately I didn't find too many that I recognized but it was still beautiful. We got back from that adventure, ate dinner, and attempted to go to karaoke but Brett was not hosting it so it was lame. As I was still feeling like hell I went back to the hotel for the night.

We left Long Island on the 15th and took the ferry back to Hamilton Island. And then we started our adventure to Cairns, but I'll share those adventures later...