For $45 I booked a spot on a 2-hour glass bottom boat tour of the reef. As we were boarding the boat, they were feeding these large fish which had problem swimming in 1-foot deep water and getting right up next to us! Ningaloo Reef is one of the biggest in the world I believe. Australia is the only continent to have reefs on both coasts too! On this 2-hour tour we got to snorkel at two different spots, for a total of at least an hour. It was so much fun! The view under the boat was pretty darn good, but my pictures didn't come out so well. But I was really glad I got to snorkel again. I hope to do a lot more in the future! 
(That's me on the boat with Brittany ["Pearl"], Brittany ["B$" - pronounced B-money], Nikki, Molly, and Nick - they all go to U Wisconsin Eau Claire)
After the snorkel boat tour, the lot of us went back for lunch in the hot, hot sun before going back out to the beach and having a good time floating around, throwing a football and frisbee. We were all very excited for happy hour at the local bar though, so we only stayed a few hours before going back to camp to shower and get ready for happy hour.
Happy hour at the bar was from 5:30 to 6:30, and it was my first happy hour ever (which makes sense since I haven't been of legal drinking age for that long). My friend Laura (from Clark) and I split a pitcher of beer, which was decent, before splitting a pitcher of cider (below; me holding the glass, and Laura with Justin, who is also from Clark). I was rather enjoying myself. It was a great atmosphere (there had to have been at least 25 of us there!), gorgeous weather (sunset below), and great cider. Let's just say by the time I went home for dinner with everyone at 7:30 I was very happy and tipsy.
In the picture at the table there is Ebba (from Sweden), Bri (from UW Eau Claire), Paul (from BC and Massachusetts) and my sassy self. Gosh I'm tan!
At dinner I had one and a half awesome veggie burgers. By far, it was most people's dinner of the trip. Very scrumptious indeed. After dinner, I had a delightfully tipsy conversation with a French gentleman on the beach about international soccer. Apparently my French accent is still good. I was happy with that. After a few hours, I went to bed. Great afternoon and evening!
Tuesday, March 9th: 9
However, my great evening ended, starting around 2:30 in the morning. I went to bed around 12:30 and woke up at 2:30 feeling sick. Naturally, I chugged a lot of fresh water and immediately felt worse. After a night of drinking, water always makes me feel better. I went back to sleep and woke up a few hours later and drank more water only to feel worse, again. I went to the bathroom very slowly and ended up throwing up. Dammit, I was pissed. I admit I drank a fair amount, but before bed I hadn't had a drink in over 5 hours and was well hydrated. Barry thought I was hung over but goddammit. I wasn't. I had food poisoning. To further make my case, I had stomach pains throughout the day like I've had with food poisoning in the past. I don't get sick from drinking alcohol because I'm not stupid. However, I didn't want to jump up and down and yell out food poisoning because my friends had made dinner. Justin, who also had the veggie burgers and had very little to drink, also felt a little sick from the food. I also had two different burgers which would have made it more likely for me to get food poisoning. Not that I'm pointing fingers, but I could see one of the cooks using the same turner to flip raw meat burgers and veggie burgers (which you're not supposed to do, especially since some people don't cook the burgers the same length of time). Either way, I was very sick and very worried and pretty embarrassed.
To make things worse, Wednesday was one of our biggest travel days (almost 900 kilometers) as we made our way to the Outback: Karijini National Park. I actually started to feel better halfway through our trip and was okay by lunch time, but I almost got really sick again on the bus. At lunch we saw grasshoppers that laid across the full length of our palms. Pretty big. Before getting into Karijini, we stopped in the last town before nowhere called Tom Price (named after some American). Tom Price was fairly cute, but very depressing. Not many people lived there and it was in the middle of nowhere. But they had a Coles! And I got a Monster energy drink. When I drank it outside the store, sitting on the sidewalk, it was one of the most pleasurable drinking experiences I've ever had. I'd rather have one of them than a good beer. Monster drinks make me so happy! :-p
On the way into Karijini National Park we saw a lot of cool hills from the bus. We got into the park a little while before sunset and were able to set up camp. Karijini, like most of the Outback, is covered in red dirt which will stain everything. Furthermore, there were a lot of poisonous (deadly poisonous!) snakes around, so we had to be careful. Dinner was alright that night, and I spent the night sipping extremely warm boxed wine with two of my friends. Wednesday could have been A LOT worse.
Wednesday, March 10th: 6
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