Port Stephens.
The most questionable $400 I have EVER spent.
Where do I even begin?
On Friday night around 7pm half of our BU program shuttled onto a mega bus with Dingo Tasha, yes, that IS what we call her for our trip to Port Stephens for the weekend. Little did we know we were also joined by an equal amount of students (mostly from UMass) in a different abroad program called Capa. What this stands for I have yet to find out as none of the students I talked to could accurately explain it to me. We drove 2.5 hours up the coast to the town of Nelson Bay and ended up in this tiny area by the ocean in an adorable apartment complex that is pretty much nicer than our Melbourne hotel AND where we live in Sydney.. nbd.
We were all exhausted still from just returning from Melbourne and so Bess, Kelly and I retired to our rooms "early" and read til we fell asleep. Thrilling I know. I started (and finished) "The Ex-Debutante" that night and it is really good. totally entertaining and has a happy ending, just what I like.
The next morning we had an extremely early start (645am) in order to get breakfast and caffeine before loading up on the bus again and heading to the Australian Shark and Ray centre- or as Bess would say "the animal cruelty warehouse." It was basically this building with huge wading tanks with tons of different sharks [BIG and small] sting rays, schools of fish and one plastic crocodile.
^the fake croc^
We had to put on plastic shoes (in my case CROCS..barf.. because they were for children and I have midget feet) and gloves in order to wade into the tanks with the sea creatures and feed them shrimp in varying stages of life.. As you can imagine the smell was horrendous. I'm also terrified of sharks but I figured now is as good a time as any to "face my fears" or whatever.. So in I went..
It was actually pretty cool, once you got over the smell and I made friends with a particularly slow stingray who was having trouble finding the shrimp on the end of my stick. The GIANT stingray in a cage by himself, named George, also seemed pretty friendly because he swam over and sucked on my shoes for a few minutes even though the shrimp I had was too small for him to eat.
I petted the beige sharks in another tank, which looked like they had been given some Xanax because they were the most docile creatures i've ever encountered. Their skin was really rough and hard like sandpaper and they didn't seem to mind, or really even notice, that we were "petting" them. The little sharks on the other hand seemed to be ravenous because they attacked the shrimp on the end of my feeding stick like they'd never eaten before.. Slightly worrisome since we had no bodily protection on AT ALL.
Also, one of the first instructions they gave us was to NOT harm the animals in any way and 2 of the guys from the Capa program got reprimanded, one got actually kicked out for doing just the opposite. One, named Devon, held a stingray pinned to the floor of the tank w/ his feeding stick (obviously kicked out immediately) and the other [I didn't bother to catch his name] tried to bear hug/ wrestle a shark in its tank. ARE YOU INSANE? whatever you do, don't anger the beasts. This was the beginning of the downhill relationship we had with the Capa group.
After feeding/ petting the sharks and rays we headed up to a nearby mountain for a little hike. When I heard that this was part of the itinerary initially I was pretty concerned and had a mild flashback to Academy outdoor adventure trips in Bear Canyon, but it was actually not too bad.
Guess who was the first to the top? Yours truly :)
Guess the incline workout on the treadmill at Sydney Uni has actually been worth the effort.
We took some pics at the top which had a gorgeous view!
^views from the mountain top^
It overlooks the beaches and whole marina area. After this little adventure we went back and showered to get the shark/ dead shrimp/ sweat smell off us and then headed to the dock for lunch and then onto a "moon shadow" cruise boat for a 3hr journey to whale watch.
I have never been so grateful for the fact that I don't get motion sickness. The boat was pitching around like a roller coaster on crack cocaine and it was basically negative degrees. Approximately half of our group got terribly nauseous and the bottom level of the boat looked like a scene from a disaster movie, people laid out looking inches from death.
We sailed for the full three hours and we saw probably a total of 5 min of actual whale. There were 2 adult ones that breached (aka only their fins came out of the water) right in front of our boat and then on the way back we saw a mother and newborn calf which was pretty cool.
^at the Vineyard^
After the whale watching we headed to a winery/ brewery near Nelson Bay for dinner and a wine beer tasting. It was nice and the vineyard was pretty, but not really anything that riveting.
When we got back to the apt. Kelly and I headed into town with Peter, Joe, Tom, Alexa, Bryna, Greg and Sarah for a beer at the local pub, which happened to be hosting not 1, but TWO "hens" parties (aka bachelorette parties) that night. God help me if I ever have my bachelorette party in a place like that.
We woke up the next morning (aka today -Sunday morning) to a torrential downpour and grey skies. There was no indication that it was going to let up and so Dingo Tasha asked the entire group if we wanted to go bowling first and wait to see if the weather cleared up (since all our day's planned activities- camel riding, dune boarding and go-karting <--to replace the jet boating which had gone out of business) and GUESS who ALL voted to not do that, and go in the pouring rain in the middle of the tundra in the early morning? Yep, EVERY SINGLE person from the capa group. They have 2 more people than our group and therefore had the majority. I wanted to kill them.
So we drove out to Anna Bay where we split up into groups and rode the poor poor camels out along the beach then switched and went dune boarding in basically torrential downpour. Both activities would have been really fun had the weather cooperated but unfortunately we got SOAKING wet and had to walk around barefoot and Bess is pretty much dying of sickness now because of it.
My camel was named "trooper" and he DEFINITELY was one. He was also the only one who growls insistently but the guide forgot to mention this while I was mounting him.. fml
^me and Trooper^
The Capa group was chugging boxed wine and yelling "liquid courage" while dune boarding. So classy.
We did get some good photos out of it though, so for that I'm excited.
After this debacle we all changed clothes-- I literally hopped into the underside of the bus where the suitcases were stored (aka it was nice and dry) to do so-- we got lunch in the Nelson Bay Marina [delicious fresh fish & chips] and headed off to bowling since it was STILL raining (aka no go-karting, thank baby jesus!!!)
This turned out to be really fun, partly because we were actually dry, but mostly because we played in lanes of 6 and our group was finally separated from the Capa group. I felt SO bad for Dingo Tasha, who is the sweetest lady ever, and was totally second-hand embarrassed for them because they all complained about EVERYTHING, the weather, lunch, why we didn't stop more for food, the choice of movie on the bus, you name it they yelled about it. It was so bratty and rude. Our group wanted to apologize for them. Peter told me that UMass is renowned for being nicknamed "the Zoo" which is totally fitting because the people we met were behaving more like animals than actual college students. It was mortifying.
Clearly this intense dislike from our group towards theirs led to a fierce competition during bowling to see who would have the person with the highest score. We obviously won-- Tom pulled through and got a 165 for the BU program-- I have never been so proud. I bowled a 112 exactly both games which is weird because 1- I'm not a very good bowler and 2-I haven't bowled in FOREVER. so that was exciting. Cal and Caroline --two of our program leaders-- were also on the trip and on my bowling team and I got to know them both alot better and have decided I ADORE both of them.
^bowling^
Anyways after we gloated just a teensy bit [ok, maybe more than a "teensy" bit] about our group's bowling triumph we finally headed back to Sydney. I have never been so excited to exit a bus, take a shower, see my bed, have internet or leave a group of people behind in my entire life.
Lets just say it was a weekend full of highs.. and very lows.. but entertaining none-the-less. Now I'm exhausted and we have a whole week of finals coming up which I just cannot wait for.. :/ If you want to see all the rest of the photos check out my tagged pics/ my new album!
Okay, my novel is over for the moment..
More soon!
*I*
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