We conquered the Tully

Sunday, November 23rd

Waking up at 6am was a bit brutal, but at least it was for a good activity - rafting down the Tully river.  Natasha, Mel, Connie and I didn't quite estimate the time properly.  We were cutting it close for pick up time and we still didn't buy water for the trip yet.  I ran to iga, despite the van being there to grab a few bottles for us.  The driver was not too happy with us, but oh wells.  We were all still exhausted from the previous night, so rafting was a challenge.  Our tour guide seemed to be quite a perverted jokester.  It was a good thing we thought he was funny.

We rafted for four hours with a 30 mins break for lunch.  Our raft guide was Chris P.  He had quite a party mouth with perverted comments to crack jokes.  For instance, he told us stories about how he jokes with Japanese tourists by telling the boys to pick up girls by saying "do you want to tongue my nut" with hand motions.  So wrong, but funny.

He also told us a wonderful story about an 87 year old widow that was backpacking around the world.  He and another guide paddled her through the rapids while she pinched their butts.  I hope I'll have that enthuisiasm at that age too.

Our rafting this time was not as exciting as the Zambezi river.  It could be due to the water flow, but it was mainly class 4 rapids.  The rafting was also more technical than last time, less extreme.  We had to basically dodge rocks to not get stuck on the rocks.  We did not fall out because there were rocks everywhere.

It was actually a good river for us since it was Mel and Bernice's first time rafting.  Natasha is also a bit scared of adventurous activities.  So some parts were pretty nerve wrecking, especially the parts with lots of directions.  Natasha had to always double check the directions.  I did mess up too.  One time we were told to hold on, and I didn't listen, so I completely fell into Bernice and knocked her shin with my paddle.  I felt so bad.

Some other cool things we did were:

We cliff jumped off a 20-25 feet cliff.  It was Connie and Natasha's first cliff jump.  They were brave.  I was too, but I had a life jacket on, so it kept me safe.  Steph did a belly flop down, with her arm moving like a doggie paddle.  Very precious and funny...only because her flop was lightened by her thick life vest.

Class 2 rapids are not really meant for swimming.  One by one, we were let off to swim down a class 2 rapid.  We had to float a bit on our back, and when the dude said swim, we swam, then when he said float, you float.  Easy enough, but somehow I couldn't do it properly.  I swam too slow and as I was swimming I totally smacked into a big rock with my knee.  Ouch!  The guy was like....ohhh ok float float float.  Natasha felt like she was drowning, gulping the river water like it was her job.  But hey, we all did it and survived.  Connie was too tired to swim it.

I apparently was the queen of finding rocks in the river.  There could be one rock in the river that we could hit, and I somehow always floated my way towards it and smashed into it.  A floating hazard.

Like I said, the flow of the river was not high enough for us to safely capsize.  But there was a drop where Chris tried to make us fall out.  He made us all sit in front of the raft hoping that we fall out when we hit the drop.  Unfortunately it didn't work according to plan and he fell out instead of us.  We were all safely in the raft.  He quickly got on and charged at us, one by one pushing each of us off.

Towards the end we had a group photo and we did a giant heart photo with Chris in the middle.  How sweet!

We were all pretty tired after surviving the Tully river.  We slept almost the whole way back.  Toward the end I started to do my emailing and saw Terry and Eddie from our Whitsundays trip were back in Cairns.  We made plans to try to catch up that evening after showering and dinner.

Since Connie is just paying a short visit to Australia, she needed to eat some exotic meat.  We went searching for some at the esplanade and found crocodile and kangaroo steak.  We shared our meals.  The kangaroo tasted like a cross between venison and beef while the crocodile was like a chewy chicken.  I preferred the kangaroo and it was better at Scotties in Mission Beach.  We also had a bottle of Taz Pinot Noir and it was ok.  It was good to have a nice sit down meal with the girls after a long rafting day.

We then stopped by Rattle and Hum to see if Eddie and Terry were still there.  We didn't find them there, but we decided to get a drink anyhow.  As I was about to order at the bar I saw Terry and a dude turned around and it was Eddie!  They were there with their diving buddies.  So jealous of them!  They were all going to Woolshed, a pub we saw the first night.  It looked like a wild college bar, but it was the happening place of Cairns.  So we went there with them.  We got a stamp that was full of blue ink that wouldn't wash off.

At Woolshed they had a two for one special.  I was double fisting the whole time because I wanted whiskey and diet.  It was great.  Connie and I also shared a rum and coke and it was nasty.  Way too much rum, but I drank it anyways.  They were having a fish race at woolshed.  Basically they auctioned off little fish and the buyer had to race with them.  The fish are poured into a long tube fish tank and the contestant has a straw to blow in the tank to steer the fish.  If all goes well it quickly swam to the finish line.  If it's confused it may try to dodge the bubbles and swim the wrong way.  The fish were named by country and Argentina won.  Pretty ridiculous.

We also did some dancing and shots that night.  All good fun before back at the hotel around 2am.  Just in time to squeeze in 4 hours of sleeping before our great barrier reef trip.  Lovely.