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Week 2: One Day of classes then off to Cairns

Monday, real classes started!! We had a long day of lecture, but it wasn't too bad since we were all excited to leave for Cairns on Tuesday.

Tuesday --travel day!!! I thought traveling with a group of 20 with softball was intense, but try 48 plus teachers/tutors! †Everything went surprisingly smooth. We landed in Cairns (pronoun "cans") and broke into our randomly assigned two groups (Bandicoots and Wallabies). My group, the Bandicoots were headed off to the Daintree for the Mangrove ecology unit of our forest unit, while the other group headed to Yungbarra for the Terrestrial Forest unit. After 4 days of classes, we would switch and complete the other part of the course.

There is a little ferry across the Daintree River, providing the only way to cross the river in order to limit the people visiting and preserve the rainforest.

Here is the little hostel we stayed at called Crocadylus:

We started off our Mangrove unit Wednesday morning with a Daintree River cruise down the Daintree River, learning all about the 30+ species of mangroves (actually just trying to write down everything our professor was saying really, really fast cause I actually had no clue what was going on and how I was going to remember the difference between all these different type of mangroves?),

cool little crabs,

and of course dangerous crocodiles

inhabiting the river.

After this cruise, we headed to lunch where I had my first experience eating kangaroo!!! †We had kangaroo burgers and it was surprisingly good! †Apparently we get to try marinated kangaroo and crocodile later in the trip!

We had some free time and a group of use took a jog to this gorgeous beach then went for a little swim!

For the rest of the course, we were broken up into our fields groups, including 8 students and a tutor. †How KL, Liz and I all managed to be in the same group of 8 is unbelievable, but im not complaining! †Each day, we set off into our "Troopies" (below) and headed into the field where every group was studying a different aspect of the mangroves. †The other 2 groups looked at the water and forest conditions, and we got to look at the fauna or animals in the forest (the best one if you ask me -- but it was also the one with the most hands on time in the mangroves with long hours and lots of mud!!) †On Thursday and Friday, we were out in the field from 8am to almost 6pm, conducting 4 mini experiments at 4 different sites. †I won't go into too much detail, but we look at epifauna (life in the trees), infauna (life in the ground), leaf teathering (basically tied leaves to strings and tested to see what leaves crabs like to eat more, which included a component where we had to catch as many crabs as possible in 15 minutes), and hebivory (how much insects eat the leaves).

Colony of fruit bats

Partner shot holding our "mangrove bible" (written by our professor)

Let's just say we got pretty dirty...

and of course since its a tradition, we had to spell out "beat cal" (which actually might happen this year considering Stanny football is currently undefeated in the Pac-10...of course the year im not there..great timing!)

It was a lot of work, but it was also a lot of fun...and because of the long hours both our tutor, Alex, and our professor, Norm treated our group to ice cream (amazing local Australian fruit flavors) both field days. †

Saturday we presented our data (yes, I actually learned a surprisingly large amount) and Sunday we headed to Yungbarra where we will finish the course in the rainforest!

What a weekend! I'd say we made the most of these 3 days off...

Friday, about 10 of us rented cars and drove out to hike the Glass House Mountains. We arrived around 2, under the impression that this hike would be a mildly difficult but overall, pretty easy hike.

The sign at the beginning stated: "steep, irregular surface and loose stones"

After about 10 minutes of very steep hiking (what we expected), the hike turned into a rock climb. Obviously it wasn't straight up, but the hike definitely required hand and foot climbing up the face of the mountain, maintaining "3-point contact" by keeping 3 body parts on the rock at all times. I've never done anything like this before and it was absolutely amazing. After climbing Half Dome this summer and today's hike, I'm really excited to get some more hiking in during this trip. Here are some pictures from the hike. It was just gorgeous!

Saturday morning, we still had the rental cars, and joined a larger group heading out to the beach! We left at 6am for Byron Bay, this gorgeous beach about 2 hours away, ready for our 9am surfing lesson!