Holy Jetlag, Batman
I finally touched down in Cairns, Australia 48 long hours
after leaving my home in Maine. I have never been more exhausted and
bored in my entire life. Just getting from Portland to L.A. took an
entire day and my travels had only just begun. We had a 6 hour
lay-over in L.A. that didn’t take off until 2am due to a
“malfunction”. I sat in my window seat on a Boeing 757 Qantas plane,
drifting in and out of consciousness only to hear random comments
from our Australian pilot about some “bad news” and “malfunction”
that would take over an hour to fix. When we finally were in the
air, I slept the next 5 hours, waking only when they fed me some
Moroccan couscous dish or snack bag treat. The 14 ˝ hours we flew
over the Pacific Ocean dragged on to the point where I thought I
would scream from claustrophobia and aching muscles that wanted to
stretch and move around. But fortunately, the flight did finally
come to an end, only for my group to scurry through customs, grab
our bags and run to our connecting flight from Sydney to Cairns
(pronounced CANS, by the way).
Flying into Cairns was breath-taking as we descended through
the clouds to the thriving city below that was nestled against
mountainous rainforests. The group seems really chill, and I am
beginning to make a lot of friends. Up to this point it has largely
been orientation and class syllabus introductions. I have my first
essay due next Tuesday though, which is weird considering it feels
like a summer camp so far.
If it doesn’t kill you, it makes you itch.
Obviously a large portion of our orientation was to describe
all the potentially fatal creepy crawlers of the rainforest. Around
the site we have to be careful of the eastern brown snake, the
red-bellied snake and a few rather large spiders. There are also
stinging trees with tiny hairs over the entire plant that will
release poisons into your skin upon touch and cause immense burning
and pain. Wait-a-whiles are tall plants that dangle long vines with
sharp hooks that will rip your skin as you walk by. The grossest so
far is definitely the leeches. We are in the wet season right now in
Australia and you cannot walk 5 feet into the rainforest without a
few leeches jumping on you to suck your blood. Fortunately they
carry no diseases and are not poisonous like much of the rest of
Australia. It’s just gross.
There’s also a giant scrub python living near the compost. I
haven’t met him yet.
Every morning by 5:30am I wake to the wonderful noises of
the rainforest, which includes some birds that sound like an alarm
clock, a machine gun and a small child crying. It’s really
disturbing. Other wildlife around the site that I’ve seen so far are
the resident scrub turkeys (Charlene and Charles), lots of toads and
a bandicoot.
As far as weather, it really hasn’t stopped raining.
Apparently this is the most rain that northern Australia has seen in
20 years. Go figure, right? Everything is always damp and moldy.
Even though it has mostly been cloudy, I have already gotten a lot
of color because the UV rays out here tend to be 15 times stronger
than the States. We are also on constant cyclone watch.
Well, that’s the update so far. Australia is absolutely
beautiful, and I can’t wait to learn more about it
Australian word of the week is: budgy smugglers.
It means speedo.
