Way down upon the Barron River, far far away, that's where my heart is rafting ever!

I've become tired of waiting for the rafting people to put their pictures up... So here it is, newest blog update! I have a couple pictures from that day. Didn't have access to my camera until after the trip was done. You can see here where we came from. Another groups of rafts are in the distance.

Little kids were taking turns swinging into the water. We didn't get to try but it looked like fun! I was impressed with a lot of the kids flips!

So yeah, just like everything else so far, rafting was AWESOME!!! I'm happy that I got to check that off my "I've never..." list. That list is growing smaller... One thing that will probably remain on there: bungie jumping. Mackey wanted to do that in Brisbane. Yeah sorry man. I remember one time telling Dad that I wanted to go skydiving. Dad said "But you're not terminally ill..." Anyway, I'm proud of myself for enjoying roller costers. I think I'll stick with those kind of drops!

We got picked up by the tour group at our hotel and made our way up the mountain alongside the Barron River. Extremely beautiful sights! I spent my non-paddling time just staring up at all the trees that surrounded us. No cameras allowed since they would only get soaked. Plus you kinda had to stay focused ;) Our raft was made up of 6 guys (that includes my brother), myself and the tour guide Fabio... who by the way was fabulous ;) hehehe! He was from Peru and had been in Cairns for ten years. It was interesting to hear the mix in accents. There were also four other rafts in the trip.

First up of course was safety. We learned what to do if we fell out of the raft. I was thinking that it wouldn't be that big a deal, I mean, I know that falling in is a big deal, but I'm used to canoes and such where it's tough to lose balance and fall. On the raft it was a different story! You sit there on the side of the raft and when you go over the falls you hold on to your paddle for dear life with one hand and hold onto the rope on the raft for dear life with the other! Fabio told us we could wedge our feet underneath the seats that went across the rafts and that would help us stay in the raft. I still have bruises on my right shin from how forcefully I had my foot wedged. That right foot was the only one close enough to the seat haha! Left one didn't help out much.

Just like when we realized that a pipe had burst in our apartment causing a huge leak in the ceiling, I was giggling like crazy the entire way! Mom says it's a shock factor, maybe a nerve-wracking situation that just causes you to laugh when instead you should be worried. I'm not going to lie, I was freaked out the entire way. Still having a blast though! And I'd go rafting again in a heartbeat!

About a third of the way down we were asked if we wanted to go swimming. Turns out Fabio was being serious and we all hopped out of the raft and floated a bit down calmer water. One guy stayed in the raft because he couldn't swim. I had running shorts and a tshirt on but that didn't matter. Bring on the water! The thing to remember was to stay on your back and keep your feet up in front of you. I loved being in the water! I heard one guy ask "How's she going so fast?" hahah I guess it looked like I'd caught a current, but really my arms were going underneath the water like a duck's feet! So fun! Most swimming I've done in months! Then we had the joy of climbing back in the raft... that's very awkward lol!

The big excitement... yes the entire experience was very exciting... but the big excitement came when we did what's called "surfing." Basically you paddle like crazy upstream towards one of the falls and then your raft gets sucked in by a current but is still being pushed away by another current, so you just stay there with your raft flying all about. We all stayed to watch each raft surf. Unfortunately, the crew that went after us got sucked in and flipped! Six not too thrilled tourists in their lifejackets and helmets and one surprised tourguide thrown into the water and heading downstream towards more rapids! All the tourguides jumped up and started throwing ropes left and right to the tourists. We did manage to pull everyone out of the water and back in their raft. Only lost one paddle. I grabbed one from the water. Felt proud of myself lol!

We got to jump in and go down the rapids on our backs once more near the end. It was a wonderful experience. It turns out during the wet season that river fills soooooo high (we could see the water lines on the rocks) and crocodiles actually come up the river! They have to make sure the crocs are gone each season before they start rafting again. Of course we didn't know about that until after we were through with our rafting trip lol! Good times :)

After rafting we enjoyed walking around the beach at our hotel. No swimming (you were told to swim in the pools at your hotels) but the sights were still gorgeous.

And here are some photos from the Brisbane International Tennis Tournament! Pat Rafter was a super cool tennis player, and still is a super cool person! I got a picture with him years ago in Indianapolis. I always remember thinking wow, he still takes the time for pictures and autographs with fans! What a nice guy!

Andy Roddick strutting his stuff in Brisbane...

His most powerful weapon...

I just thought this photo was awesome! Aussie legends!

A look at Monfils about to serve inside Pat Rafter Arena

And for you boys, here's World #21 Ana Ivanovic. She was ranked #1 in the world in 2008 when she won Roland Garros.

And one more. I like her tennis outfits :) They're designed by Paul McCartney's daughter Stella!

And yeah, I took a pic of Darren Cahill. He was Agassi's coach and now does a lot of commentating for the tennis championships. If I ever met him I'd tell him that he's a good looking guy! There he is, top of the picture...

That's something Mumsy and I tend to do, blurt out random compliments... Eh Mom? Remember? George McPhee incident? LOL! And I may never meet Darren Cahill. However, there was that one time when I heard Brad Gilbert say to Cliff Drysdale "I'm telling you, I'm a wealth of useless information!" and I remember thinking hey, that sounds like me! I decided then that if I ever met Brad Gilbert I'd tell him that what he said made me laugh. About a year later I did meet Brad Gilbert, ran into him in Georgetown, and totally forgot to tell him my story. Ah well, life goes on :) Sorry to ramble there but I hope you've enjoyed this edition!

Smiles all around :)

Goodness gracious where to begin!

Okay to start things off, I'm just warning you now that this is going to be a long blog. We are now in Cairns (found the really warm weather) and have free internet :) It's also really slow internet, so just uploading these pictures has taken forever. Speaking of pictures, I have over 300 since my last blog update. Don't worry, I'm not going to throw all of them at you here. I've just picked some fun ones. So there, I've given you all my warnings! Enjoy!

So last time I left you was with the bridge-climbing adventure and the aquarium. We finally saw a break in the rain that evening. It was a welcome sight! This is the view from our hotel balcony:

Love that sky! The next day brought the first of two bus tours. This day (Tuesday I think? Not sure... hahah I'm not feeling the greatest right now. I don't get motion-sickness, but I'm still feeling those ocean swells right now...) Anyway, days don't really matter. What does matter is that we went from Sydney to Manly Beach, then on a boat cruise for lunch, and then out to Bondi Beach. The beaches were beautiful! Bondi was definitely busier, but Manly had more going on in the sense of things to do besides being in the water. Only bad part of the day... we really weren't expecting so much sun. The forecast still called for clouds... whoops... We finally found sunblock at Bondi but by that point our foreheads had suffered. Ah well, live and learn!

Here's Gavin checking out the sights on the way to Manly! Check out Sydney waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay in the distance...

Manly Beach:

This guy is having a blast!

From the beach to the lunch cruise! I never thought I'd have a picture of myself with the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge in the background... I've always enjoyed pictures of my friends like that :) good times!

While we were on the roof deck of the cruise ship we noticed a little tiny plane doing some sky-writing! Well, I guess to us it looked little and tiny... probably wasn't that small... But whoever was driving it was awesome! The first line said BONDI NYE...

Apparently if you wanted to have a blast on New Year's Eve, Bondi was a shore thing! I'll have to just take their word for it. I can tell you one thing, going to the Sydney Opera House for New Year's is also a shore thing!!! SURE THING! (hey by the way, the movie A Sure Thing is also awesome! John Cusack, so cool!) I'll get to NYE later. How many tennis balls do you think are lost when playing on this court?

Remember how I talked about the rabbits that live under the Sydney Harbour Bridge? Here are a couple of them!!! How cute!

One good thing about this first tour day: It was the first day I finally felt in tune with the time difference. Check out my watch... I decided on the way here not to change it. For you guys, 11:43pm. For me, 3:43pm the next day. Hey! On my watch it says Monday! That means for me it was Tuesday! I was right! So cool deal, day 1 of touring was Tuesday. Glad that mystery has been cleared up :)

From the lunch cruise we made our way back to the tour bus for the second half. On the way we passed a statue of the guy who brought surfing to Australia from Hawaii (Come on Chris, who is it?) DUKE KAHANAMOKU!!! Unfortunately we were going to fast to get my camera out in time, but the statue showed him surfing on top of huge rocks, pretty cool! Bondi Beach by the way is where the bikini first made its appearance! I got a lot of pics (one I found out later included a topless woman...didn't mean to do that... lol sorry guys I didn't put that one up) and you'll see that Bondi Beach was definitely the place to be! All these people can't be incorrect!

I think it would be pretty cool to be out on that rock!

I didn't have my bathing suit because a lot of the things we've done have been a surprise. Gavin was lucky and got to take off his shirt and lay on the beach. I guess I could have been like that woman and done the same... nawwwwwww ;) I did make my way to the water though and stood as much in the waves as I could without getting soaked. Loved every moment of it!

Mom here's a pic for you! Everyone if you want to hear a fun story, ask Mom about the Mad Hatter's Teacup ride in Disney World! Hey Sonny and Suzy, you guys could go on that ride soon! Have a blast running down there! And Mom I hope this pic doesn't make you sick ;)

Here's something to make you guys faster swimmers! Get you ready for the 2010 triathlon season!

Day 2 of tours! This one took us up to the Blue Mountains! The tour the first day was very organized. This one was more like a crazy adventure that pitted us 14 tourists against our tourguide. It was a crazy day to say the least! First stop out of town was in Melbourne to see where the Australian Open was getting set up. SOoooooooooo can't wait to get up at 3:30am for tennis later this month... We also saw where the Sydney Olympics took place! I have the closing ceremonies on tape somewhere, absolutely loved those olympics! Here's the track and field venue:

From there it was on the the Blue Mountains! Talk about gorgeous countryside!

I saw this at one of the lookouts. I don't know who wrote it but I thought it was beautiful!

Say hello to the Three Sisters!

Another beautiful view...

If you look behind me you can see what the Aussies call their Grand Canyon.
Exploring the Blue Mountains was really awesome! Only bad part was after we couldn't find our driver. Anywhere. I still don't really know what happened but I will say it was fun getting to talk to the other people in our van. After about 45 minutes of waiting and wondering our driver finally showed up. All's well that ends well :) Last part of our day was going to the wildlife preserve. I loved these lil owls:
How can you not love that face:
Does anyone else remember the cartoon on Nickleodeon called The Little Koala?

And speaking of cartoons, when my family moved to Williamsburg I was starting the 4th grade and one day our teacher decided we should watch a movie. We watched The Rescuers Down Under. I don't really remember much about that movie, except there was this evil Goanna Lizard named, you guessed it, Joanna. All my classmates made fun of the new girl who had the same name as that lizard. Yup, still sticks with me. Here's the Goanna now...

On to cuter pictures :)

A lot of the animals were just wandering around. Two birds came around a corner and had a squabble right in front of Mackey lol! He reacted in time to get a picture of one of the birds hightailing it out of there! This lil dude didn't mind me petting him.

Welcome to the big show!

Back home! Moved from the redlight district (hah!) to Darling Harbour. Want to say it right? Dahling Hahbor. That's our hotel, the Novotel hotel!

Day 3, December 31 2009! That morning was spent on my version of the Ironman (I'll explain that another time lol!) and that evening was spent at the Sydney Opera House! Unfortunately, we didn't bring our cameras. We thought we weren't allowed to... we were the only people without cameras... hahah it's alright though! I'll never forget what I saw! And I do have pictures on my phone. I plan on getting them as soon as I get back to the States. Mackey had his phone as well and took a few pictures. It was fun getting all dressed up and enjoying a night out with my brothers! Here's proof that I do actually wear a dress at times ;)

There's the Sydney Harbour Bridge just behind us! WOW absolutely the MOST AWESOME firework display I've ever seen!

New Year's Eve in Sydney was the most magical evening ever! I may not have pictures at the moment, but let me see if I can paint one with my words. There was a gala when we first got there, just drinks and such as we milled about before dinner. I told Mackey that I felt like I was at prom lol! Only difference was that it was all these old women wearing prom dresses. We weren't the youngest ones there, but it was close. The dinner was absolutely awsome! My brother and I talking about relationships during dinner... that wasn't that awesome hahah but it did put a lot in perspective for me. And in the words of Forrest Gump, that's all I have to say about that! After dinner we went in and listened to the Opera Australia. I used to have to go to the opera in high school and I didn't appreciate it then. A lot had to do with the fact that I couldn't see (it was before I started wearing contacts and glasses) but I must say, Opera Australia's New Year's Eve was wonderful. Wow they could play! And WOW they could sing! I loved it!

There were fireworks at 9pm (so the parents could get their kids home) and then the big show at midnight. And what a show it was! They had it timed to music and the fireworks were coming from the bridge, from across the water, and from my right. It was hard to know where to look!!! Some of the blasts had those loud noises that just hit you right in your heart. Completely amazing! Here's a youtube link to the fireworks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhN6v7E5Yhk SO AWESOME!!!

Thanks Mackey for taking Gavin and I around the world to say goodbye to 2009!!!

And now, since I'm tired, I'm going to leave you with a few images of today's trip to the Great Barrier Reef :) That was another ultimate experience, one that I highly recommend if you make it out here. I went scuba diving and snorkeling for the first time ever! Those fish don't even care that you're there! They come right up to your face lol! And the giant clams... WOW!

I went over to the drop-off with my snorkle, and I will say, it wasn't just scary for Nemo's dad, it was scary for me too lol! I couldn't see down to the bottom but about halfway I could see this HUGE fish swimming slowly about. Not anything dangerous, but enough to freak me out. I didnt' mind the big fish as much when I was down there with them and could see that I had nothing to fear. And I did remember sunblock this time :)

Mackey finding his way around...

Hello fishy!

Smiles all around :) Happy New Year!