AWESOME Weekend

This past weekend we went out to the island because every month when there is a full moon they have a full moon party out on the beach on Magnetic Island that goes from 5 pm to 5 am.  Most people were excited because it was a party, I was excited because it was Magnetic Island.  A few of us didn’t have class on Friday so we went out to the island for the day before the party.  The mission was simple: find a sweet reef to snorkel at off of the beach.  We headed out hoping that visibility would be better like everyone had promised, and luckily it was this time.  It helped that we came at low tide so that the reef was in even shallower water than normal.  The snorkelling was really good, the coral is awesome and we saw lots of fish.  I also saw the biggest lobster I have ever seen, it was freaking huge.  Tons of stingrays too, I swear we saw about 50 of them throughout the afternoon.  A lot of times we didn’t even see them until we had kicked them up and they were swimming away.  At one point I was snorkelling in about two feet of water admiring an especially sharp 5-foot stick in the sand before I realized it was attached to a huge ray right underneath me.  Bit of a shock.  We also made it out to the wreck this time, which was really cool because it was not too deep to snorkel around.  It was covered with coral and a pretty sweet spot.  I didn’t take the camera out because the water still wasn’t clear enough for good pictures, but soon enough I’ll be able to hopefully.  I’m still waiting on seeing some of the sharks that I hear hang around these reefs.  The full moon party was a good time as well later that night.

            Saturday was the real highlight of the weekend as I went camping with a big group about an hour north of school.  There were about 15 of us, including two girls from the group I came with and a bunch of Aussies we’ve met here.  Our camping spot was right on the beach, and it was an awesome place.  We were out there from Saturday morning until Sunday morning hanging around the fire and screwing around in the beach.  At home people mess around with their 4WD trucks in the snow and mud, here they do it on the beach.  They also had a dirt bike that we got to ride around-first time I have ever done that.  Learned a little bit of rugby and cricket, and got laughed at for my homerun style cricket swing.  My favorite part was skim boarding.  We attached a rope to one of the trucks and got towed on a skip board on top of the water, just like you would with a boat except that we were only riding on about half a foot of water.  Which made it hurt if you ate it and were going pretty fast.  I had a blast doing that, I was able to get up for a while a couple times but spent most of the time getting a face full of sand.  At night we chilled around the fire and got to see the moon rise, something that I didn’t even know happened.  We even got a little excitement when a ton of paramedics and cops went flying past us on the beach.  Apparently some guys camping a little ways down were messing around in their 4WD truck and one guy fell off the back and got run over.  Luckily he survived but it was a pretty bad situation.  We didn’t even need a tent for sleeping, just a blanket or sleeping bag in the sand.  It was great.  We even caught some crabs for breakfast in the morning.  I can’t think of a much better way to spend a weekend in Australia.