friday october 30th.

i am still not a morning person, however i manage to convince myself 7am is really 10pm back in the states, so this sounds much more appealing- and struggle to get myself into jan's car. kate and i are headed to currumbin sanctuary- which i latter learned that kate had no idea what a sanctuary really was, in fact she thought we were going to a museum--- jan showed us to the entrance and generously treated us to a day at the sanctuary-unfortunately it was off to work for her. we however, are informed that it's our lucky day, we have made it just in time for the lorkeet feeding. awesome, birds being fed? immediately after entering this sanctuary (which we have now learned is a more formal way of saying zoo), we are handed small dishes with milk on them. picture alfred hitchcock's film 'the birds'... with the scene where she is litterally attacked, yes this is an understatement of what happens to us. pictures can't do justice, however they do show how incredibley SHOCKED we were. wow. what a way to wake up... we wandered around the place for most of the morning, running into all the 'australian' animals. we were brave when we were offered to hold a baby crocodile... 

and managed to get lost for a good 45 minutes in a circle just trying to find the tazmanian devils- in fact i don't think we ever found them? my favorite animal i had been dying to see were the kangaroos. i do believe we spent a good hour with them. side note: one of them managed to attack me--thinking my hand was food, he bit it- not breaking any skin, thank goodness, otherwise i would have had another odd 'simon' disease i'm sure of it.

so, the typical american-touristy thing you have to do when your in australia is hold a koala. so wherever you go it costs at least $25 to hold the animal, just long enough to snap the picture. it's worth it-every person must hold the koala...  

after seeing the entire sanctuary, we made our way towards currumbin beach. this was our time to vege out. the day prior we had seen so many dead jelly fish on the beach, i was a little freaked out, however knew i wouldn't be back anytime soon to be in the ocean i started to muster up some courage to get into the water. imagaine the wave pool at noah's ark. now, mutliple that by 10... and you still aren't seeing the waves or the undertow that occurs at these beaches.
   
an hour later, and almost missing the top to my swimsuit in the ocean... i had surived the waves, witnessed a whale swimming miles from where i had just been, and had no signs of being stung by a jelly fish. operation pacific ocean complete. 

another perfect day in the gold coast came to end after kate's sun burn took over her entire backside. and was dreading the next morning's flight up to cairns.

thanks to jan's local experteese we saw the sunset up in the rainforest of mt cougal park, where waterfalls, and rock pools are more common to the locals than lakes are to us.... seriously. why do i live in the midwest again?

xoxo, 

simon