Hanging Out With Sea Cucumbers

Wow. My oh my. My first day (yesterday) without a post means today is a double post. Yesterday and the better part of today, the American group I'm in (CIEE) went to Rottnest Island, a small little island 20km off the coast of WA, almost directly west of Cottesloe Beach. Because we did a lot and I'm rather tired, this will be a run through some highlights of the trip! (I'll post a YouTube video later too!)

First and foremost, Rottnest Island has served many purposes for Australia, including a defense post during WWII and a prison island. Named by the Dutch, they thought the quokkas they saw were large rats, and thus named it after them. Quokkas, which are all over the place where ever humans are, are not rodents but marsupials, and are quite the cute little suckers:

We first met a quokka on our walk into the island, on our way to get our bicycles. Rottnest is mostly a bicycle island, which is quite fantastic. The first day we did about a 12-15km trip around the island seeing various sites, including a large cannon used in WWII to defend the port cities of Perth and Fremantle. While it was never used, it was capable of launching a 71kg projectile 28.5km.

 

We checked into our accommodations (essentially small houses in which bunk beds were stacked inside) about 200m from one of the many beaches scattered around the island. The beach was really cute but pretty cold! After swimming about a bit, we gathered to wait for the bus to take us to the pub for dinner (I would have preferred to bike there, but a lot of people were complaining about how sore they were! Lamecakes!). A few younger kids were playing cricket in a large courtyard next to where we were waiting for the bus, and they let us bowl (pitch) and hit with them. It was wicked fun. I'm a terrible bowler, but would love to practice. Everytime I would pitch it behind the batter. It was quite dreadful. I'll get it I'm sure (video of this to be posted!).

The pub was okay, the food was decent, but the alcohol was too expensive (8-9+ AUD a drink) for me to have any. It was fun talking to everyone after dinner, but all in all, the first day was kind of a let down. Going back to our rooms I kinda wanted to teleport back to campus because I was bumming out. Because I skipped over a lot of Wednesday, it essentially consisted of biking, meeting quokkas, eating a lot of cookies during our bike stops, seeing a cannon, visiting a nice beach, playing cricket with little kids, and going to a pub for dinner.

Today was pretty cloudy in the morning as well, which was disappointing. However, today we went snorkeling. I've never been snorkeling for reals, so it was a real treat. Even though it was quite cold and overcast, it was a blast. I saw several sea cucumbers (one of them was HUGE) and even held one. It was pretty cool. I wish I could have taken pictures because it was pretty damn awesome. I saw a few small sting rays (but didn't get too close!) and tons of fish. I went of the first of two snorkeling tours (in order to get the whole group out we split into two groups) and went in again after I took pictures and warmed up with Laura (Clarkie, left in picture) and Allie (from SC, right in picture). Sadly enough, they were the only two who wanted to go out again, but the three of us felt it was really worth it and had even more fun!

After lunch, only a very small group of us went out on one last bike tour of some of the self sustainable items on the island which was pretty interesting (I'll talk more about this in my video). The bike ride was gorgeous and a good way to get out and ride with more intensity (because there were only a few us of we got to go fast :-p). After we got back, the few of us got coffees with Paul (I had a delicious iced chai) before hanging out on a different beach near the harbor. It was cold there too, but a nice enough place to hang out with everyone.

After passing our bikes back in, we hung around a little longer before taking a group picture and leaving for campus. I was really excited when Paul took such a silly picture with me.

After this trip, we won't be doing a whole lot as a group anymore which is a little sad. Tomorrow we have orientation for our student village (which sounds wicked lame), Saturday I'm going to Caversham Wildlife Park (where I should get to see some kangas!), and Sunday I'll prolly get ready for classes and go to the beach, because classes start on Monday!

I suppose the whole trip to Rottnest (Rotto) was fun overall, and I gained an appreciation for the island in the last few hours of my stay. Today certainly made up for the previous lackluster day. This trip made me want to take up biking again and snorkeling! I think they'd both be really fun things to do especially throughout my young adult life.

YouTube video! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSXCYc3W9so

Wednesday: 6

Thursday (today): 8