Vacation rundown 5 - Dolphins, seagulls and sand in my mouth

The Tuesday of my one week holiday in Brissy was pretty uneventful, as I spent it mostly at my cousin Evie's place to recuperate from the previous three busy busy days. On Wednesday though, the two of us were on the ferry heading to Moreton Island, about an hour's ferry ride away from the mainland, at 10am. Our day there was without doubt the most fun part of my whole holiday. Not only was there plenty of fun stuff to do there, but we got to spend time together getting to know each other and doing some pretty silly stuff, as the photos will soon show. Coming from a family where our relatives usually only meet up about twice a year - during Christmas and Chinese New Year - I hardly ever got the chance to know my cousin. But I did get to know her a lot better during our week together at the Hillsong conference at Sydney this July, and again during my stay in Brisbane. And it's been interesting getting to know her as a friend and not just as some cousin I see twice a year. And we both get along superbly well, and I know I will miss hanging out with her when I get back to Malaysia coz' Evie doesn't want to stay in Malaysia. This gal has such an adventurous spark in her, she wants to travel all over the world. And she's one of the few people in my family who actually lives her faith in Christ, which I hope she continues to do as she heads out into the big wild world. Some of the stories she's told me about how she came to trust Christ were pretty cool, like how before she became a Christian, she had had certain thoughts or sentences in her mind. When a friend of hers showed her some parts of the Bible, the words corresponded exactly to what had been in her head, and she knew without a doubt that it had to have come from God. And coz' of that, she believes the Bible completely, even going so far as to say that if anyone were to put her gun to her head, telling her to say the Bible wasn't true or else she'd get shot, she wouldn't do it. Hope it never comes to that, but if it did, well, I wouldn't have to worry about anything coz' I'd know where she'd go if it did.

Anyway, back to Moreton Island. We reached the island and got off at the jetty where the dolphin feeding would be happening later that evening. First thing we saw was a bunch of water birds and big pelicans, at least 8 of them, hanging around the jetty, hoping to catch some fish being tossed out by a girl working there. Pelicans are actually quite cute when they're not trying to snap each others heads off getting at fish...

Evie and I had signed up for a desert tour of the sand island, so we could go sand toboganning, but had a little time to kill before we had to go for that at 1.30pm. So we decided to lay back on the beach and munch down on the sandwiches we had packed for lunch. Soon a little seagull came hopping up to us and gave us that cute seagull look and a little squawk that said "Give me some food, or I'll peck your eyes out...please!".



Well, birds aren't exactly the friendliest looking creatures...But being the softie for animals that I am, I tossed it a little bit of my sandwich. And as you would expect it, after a couple of seconds, a whole flock of seagulls were hanging around us trying to get a share of our sandwiches. And to look even more menacing, they all turned left to stare at us with their gawdy left eyes....



Ok, I'm crapping. They were standing like that coz' the wind was blowing strongly from the left and they face upwind so prevent themselves from being blown over. It was a pretty cool shot though, if I do say so myself. And yes, they got quite a bit of our sandwiches. Even took a video of them, which I will watch over and over for many years to come and laugh sadistically at how I had those birdbrains in my hands...bwahahaha! :Þ

*Ahem* After we finished our sandwiches and I satiated the birds a little more with bits of banana, we got into our bikinis, slapped on sunscreen and laid back on the beach for a while, which wasn't much of a good idea coz' the wind was so strong, we got more sand than sun on our skin. And if it wasn't bad enough on the beach, once we were taken out to the desert in the middle of the island, the wind had even more sand to blow into our faces.

Some folks back home may be wondering how the heck a desert got onto an island. Well, I'm not much of a geologist, and though I can't really explain how it happened, I can show you that it really was there!



That tiny little thing in the middle of the photo is the bus that took us to the desert. Yup, it was a pretty big desert. And pretty hot.



Very hot.



But that didn't stop us from getting out there and having a little fun sand toboganning! And for those who're wondering how you do sand toboganning, well, it's exactly like snow toboganning, except that it's a lot hotter and if you scream on the way down, you'll probably get a mouthful of sand. And we use an amazing piece of high-tech techonology as a toboggan...a piece of waxed-down wooden plank. And here's my cousin and I with our toboggans!



The folks climbing up the slope at the back are going to the top of the hill where we of course begin our toboganning trip down. It's more tiring than it looks walking up there...ain't easy climbing up a hill with sand sifting under your feet! But eventually I did get up there, and so here I am coming down!



Ok, I'll admit, I wasn't really coming down the hill in that one. Just posing for the camera. Could've bought a photo taken of me actually coming down the hill, taken by a professional photographer, but it costs a hefty $15-plus, and I had the silliest look on my face which I decided to spare everyone else from seeing. :) Only managed to get 2 rounds down the hill before I decided I was too lazy to go for another climb up the hill. Apparently the record number of rides down by one person was 27! Damn, that's a lot of energy... I was happier off spending my energy taking some other funny photos...:)



After about an hour and a half in the desert, we went back to the beach, where Evie and I decided to rent a couple of kayaks and get some exercise. After my traumatising kayaking mishap a few days before, I was a bit hesitant, but went for it anyway, and made VERY sure that I kept close to the shore. My second kayaking experience was much better, and we had fun racing across the shore, drifting around a bit, and giving wolf whistles to the hot guys playing volleyball on the beach (actually, that last part was just me. :)). Also got a bit of a scare from a wise guy swimming in the water whom I was paddling past. He went underwater and just as I was going past him, he jumped up and gave me a scare! Would've whacked him on the head with my paddle if I weren't laughing so hard...:)

It was getting close to evening, so Evie and I had our dinner at the beach resort and enjoyed the sunset. And yes, the seagulls came back again, and yes, we fed them again and took a few more cute photos. Here's one of a gull snatching a french fry out of my hand. And they're really quick snatching food out of our hands, so I reckon this was the perfect shot!



Evie also caught a cool photo of some gulls fluttering around with the sunset as the backdrop. One of those "ooooOOOoooo..." photos!



Finally, it was evening and the best part of the trip was about to come...dolphin feeding! The dolphins were in fact already at the jetty long before we were scheduled to feed them. There were about 8 adult dolphins, and at least 2 cute little calves. I'd seen dolphins before in Aussieland, but never so up close and personal. It was a joy watching these dolphins playing and rolling with each other in the water. Even saw some catching a live fish that was frantically jumping out of the water, trying to get away from the dolphins! Not quite sure if they caught it. Soon the time came for everyone to line up for their turn to feed the dolphins. And I was really dying to get a video of us feeding the dolphins, but we weren't allowed to take cameras near them for fear of having too many flashes going off in their faces (but of course, they had one cameraman with his flash going off, so they can make even more money off us poor tourists by selling us super expensive photos!). Would've loved to touch the dolphins as well, but wasn't allowed to as well for fear of stressing them out from too much petting. it was still an amazing experience, having a real live dolphin pluck a little fish out of my hand. Apparently the dolphins we were feeding were named Echo and Nari. And even though I couldn't get a photo of me feeding them, I got plenty of photos and videos of the dolphins from the jetty. That's Echo and Nari in the pic below. Don't ask me which is which, coz' I can't blady tell.



And another dolphin!



And a bunch of dolphins!



Also took a video of the final feeding when all the dolphins were grouped together, but too bad I can't put that up here. Was very cool. Makes me love these fun and friendly fellas even more than ever. Definitely an experience of a lifetime.

Even then, the fun in the trip wasn't over, coz' on the boat ride back, it wasn't as smooth as the ride there coz' of choppy waters. In fact, the boat was bouncing up and down and tilting left and right so much as it went forward, that even I felt a bit uneasy... and I never get sick even on the wildest roller coasters or rides! To make it even more fun, I was in the boat's toilet getting changed into dry shorts since it got wet from the dolphin feeding. And I'd never had such a tough time changing my clothes in my life! Needed quite a bit of balance and arm strength so I could hold onto everything in the toilet to keep me from falling over! When I somehow managed to do that and get back to my seat, holding tightly onto a lot of things along the way, Evie was giggling herself silly coz' she was having so much fun! So I think we were the only two nuts laughing like crazy on the boat while everyone else was getting queasy. It was kinda like a free hour-long motion master ride, and we were both loving it! Haha, definitely the best boat ride I've ever had!

So like I said before, it was the most fun trip of my holiday, with all the little free things that happened, like feeding seagulls and funny photos and a crazy boat ride, that made it so much more interesting. Gives real meaning to the saying, the best things in life are free....:)