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12/1/10

We woke up in the morning at around 6 am not because everyone was well rested and ready to go more about Dave setting off his car alarm and making a load of noise so everyone would get up. He was hard to read he said at least once the night before that everyone would be awake early due to sleeping in a tent and how early the sun comes up. I guess he forgot to mention that he would be helping mother nature. The said reason was that we needed to get a early start due to the high tide time of the day which was set for like 3pm. If we were not back by then we could be in trouble and maybe not be able to make it back to camp. I did not sleep very well and I kind of wish I had spent the $9 to hire a sleeping bag for a little extra cushion from the ground all I had was my hooded sweatshirt which I used as a pillow. We made our breakfast which for my group was pretty simple with bread, jam, peanut butter and Nutella as spread options. One of the other groups had brought bacon and eggs and were grilling right away. Matt who is a big guy (6'7") from California was at the grill doing the bacon. Then we also each needed to put something together for our lunch since we would not be back at camp. By 7am we were heading out in the 4X4's for the day and the drive up the sand beach coast was very long and everyone was quite and a few people were sleeping even with the bumpy ride. We traveled like 100 Km up the coast to our first stop which was the Champagne Pools. When we arrived Dave looked at the site with disappointment and said instead of swimming here we would swim somewhere else. This area is usually covered with sand has some great pools to swim in with waves crashing in. Currently it was shallow and full of sharp rocks which the sand would normally cover. The weather and the storms of late had pushed out all the sand so it was not much to see. I have seen the pictures of what it normally looks like and it would have been great. Oh well we took some pictures and then got back in the vehicles and Caroline started to drive ours. I think she enjoyed doing the driving and we headed the short distance to Indian Head. When we arrived here most of us got in a swam a bit in the ocean and out a little way was a big sand bar and Dave was out looking to see if he could spot any small rays or small tiger sharks that like to hang out in this area. No luck today with that but we had fun messing around. Then we got out and hiked to the top of Indian Head where you could see two turtles swimming not far off the point and you could also see a couple of tiger sharks. The weather was very overcast and the visibility was not very good because I guess on a good day you can see loads of sharks and turtles. The next stop was the Colored Sandstone I went and looked took a photo or two and then headed back to the vehicle. It was my turn to drive and I was worried but everyone was very nice and convinced me to give it a go. I had James in the passenger seat giving me some extra help and guidance. After stalling out right away going into first gear since I did not have the RPM's up high enough the second attempt I was off and going. It went fine once I got going and I was happy to be driving since part of the experience is all about driving on this unique sand island. I drove us to our next site which was the Maheno Wreck. I found this to be awesome and I was geeking out checking out every angle and such I could find. The basic details of this ship is that it was built in Aberdeen, Scotland and was the first three prop steam ship or something. The ending story of this ship was that after it had been bombed in the ocean for training and not having sunk it was sold to Japan for scrap metal. They gutted down and started to tow it back to Japan but on the way they got caught in a big storm and the ship had to cut it free from the tow and the beach on Fraser is where it ended up. Since it is so large and heavy with shallow waters no one had any way to get it out so it just sits here. We took a few group pictures in front of this and then we headed to our next spot working our way back down the coast towards our campsite. I once again drove and our next stop was Eli Creek which is a kind of freshwater lazy river. I think it was at around this site where we saw some small 4 to 8 seater planes that are able to use the beach as a runway. That is pretty sweet in my book and I was interested in watching a couple take off and land while we were at this site. If I had more time I would have taken a flying tour of the island. Seeing the island from that vantage point has to be extra special and the Irish guys who I did the Whitsunday sailing trip with said it was quite good and they would do it again. This was also where we would be having lunch so we had a longer time to chill out and relax. I took a picture of the sign for this site and then gave my camera to someone to hold so I could float down the river. It turned out to be less of a float and more of an army crawl in one to 3 feet of water. We went down as a group Stacey, Jeppe, Caroline, Richard, Matt, and myself. It turned into some wrestling and foolishness with Inge walking behind us and Judith walking parallel to us taking occasional pictures using Richards camera. This is also the time when I learned my new favorite Dutch phrase. Laffe Haas. Which translated means scarred rabbit and was now what Jeppe, Stacey, and myself were refereeing to Richard. It all started when Richard was goofing around with Jeppe and had tried to tackle him or something and then Matt went after him and Richard was scarred and took off running saying something like "come on look at the size of that guy". We got to the end of the river and a section was left that emptied into a pool and I decided that we should have a race to the end. Matt was at the end so I yelled to him to tell him that he was going to be our finish line. The race participants were Richard, Jeppe, Caroline, Stacey, and myself. We all took off at the start and Jeppe didn't take long to crank it up and pull away and Richard and myself were pretty even for most of the race but he edged me at the finish and I ended up splashing down in the water after the finish since a big dip was right at that location where the water got deeper. I was told the girls ran hard but were at somewhat of a disadvantage since they needed to run with one hand holding their bikini tops while running. I sat in the water for a bit as my feet were killing me and even though it was my idea and a lot of fun it took me about 5 minutes to recover enough from the throbbing pain to go back to the vehicle and get my lunch. Richard.....I mean Laffe Haas as we would now refer to him going forward drove next, I think. We had one more stop but it was a bit lame and not worth any more then a quick snap shot. Then we drove back to the campsite and about 10 minutes before we got to our campsite it started to down pour rain out. When we left the last site Jeppe and Stacey switch vehicles with Fiona and Bex and rode with us. Upon arriving at camp in the rain we all in our group decided to just stay and chill in the 4X4 and stay dry and have a party. The beer was already in the vehicle and we just stayed and had fun. We ended up having so much fun and we ended up getting 12 people in our 4X4 which rides 8 people by cramming people in. We even got the two German girls in one up in what we referred to as the German love nest which was the area above the front cab that is where Sally went. The other spot Jenny took was in the cage where the esky and all are bags are kept (built so the bags will stay in place with the rough terrain instead of being thrown around) this spot was then refereed to as the cage girl spot. We played the Towey bird, and what I will bring on holiday games in the 4X4 that some of us had played the previous night and we had a blast. We stayed in the vehicle a long time even after it started to rain and Richard left to go start dinner but I think he may have also been going for a smoke as well. When I finally went later to check to see how dinner was going I was amazed to see Richard rocking the barbie like a pro. He had everything done at the same time and was using the grilled corn on the cob as a warming spot for the burgers that had just been done. I would find out later that he has worked in the hospitality industry for many years and has worked with some very good cooks but I was seriously impressed. Food was good and the rest of the night was more having fun and hanging out. It was also funny since Dave disappeared from like 5 pm to 9 pm because he crashed and slept that time. Maybe if he didn't get up at 4 am and slept a bit more he would not have to crash for so long. Once we got him up he was done for partying it up with the rest of the crew. We ended up seeing like 3 dingos come near our campsite this night which was interesting to see. A little camp drama happened later that night as Daniel from Switzerland had came and told Dave that he could not find his backpack that he had left outside by his tent. Dave asked him if he remembered that nothing was to be left outside since the Dingos would get it. Daniel said it did not have any food in it. The entire group started to walk around the camp area with flashlights looking for this backpack. We were able to find it a Dingo had carried it about 20 to 30 feet away towards the beach and had figured out how to unzip it and scattered about the contents of the bag which was just shoes and some other small things. No big deal he got it back and nothing was missing but he was not about to let that happen again. Today was such a fun day and my group just seemed to bond even more with the party in the 4X4 while it rained.