Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Tales of Fraser Island - Part 3. The Epicness Peeks and Unfortunately Ends


It’s now time for the long awaited conclusion to my most memorable trip here so far, by far.
Now where were we?  Ah yes, we made the sky cry.  We did not know it at this point but everything was about to go “austral, yah”? (Credit to my good friend Tom for coming up with this beauty.  “We’re not worthy!” Austral: relating to the south.)

...and that's where I'm writing from
By the time we got to the tents, it started to really pour down.  We parked the truck, grabbed everything we needed and went to the biggest tent to spend our evening.  Thankfully, we checked all the tents and we had closed them before leaving in the morning so everything was still dry (including Nicol’s guitar, WHICH HE HAD STILL NOT USED).  We hung out in the tent for most of the night and eventually it stopped raining.  It’s a pretty great thing that Nicol and I were staying in the same tent because eventually, everyone went to bed except us.  Absolutely not ready to stop our evening dead in its tracks, we headed to the beach with an ipod and some speakers.  We spent the evening rekindling with music I had listened to profusely in high school (Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and the likes).  Let’s just say that chilling right by the ocean, which only hits land again in South American, hours away (or days, depending on your mode of transportation), listening to some sweet tunes, you feel insignificant.  Oddly enough, that feeling makes me feel alive.  When I stand there, looking out into the ocean, my worries seem as important as a grain of sand on the very beach I am standing on; basically, they disappear.  Euphoria.

Next stop, South America! (and with that raunchy beard, you're sure to score some chicks)
But it gets better.  A kilometre or two down the beach, Nicol and I spotted some lights.  They were moving from side to side on the beach at a fairly good speed, creating lines of light… Curious, we decided to walk over and possibly:
A)     Make some new friends.
B)      Make some new enemies.
C)      Discover a light new creature of the light emitting variety.
D)     Walk onto the set of a crazy light show setup for the filming of a music video to be aired on MTV.
As we approached, we discovered the source of the light.  Battery powered, rainbow lit, glow in the dark FRISBEES! I swear, I was like a kid in a… Battery powered, rainbow lit, glow in the dark Frisbee store. What’s the bonus I hear you asking? The people throwing around the Frisbee were all Canadian.  WHAT! UP! (Thank you Barney for associating words to that feeling).  Unfortunately, they were heading to bed, but they let us play with their Frisbee for a while.  After a short burst of total content, we also got sleepy and headed for the tent and went to sleep.  I got up at a certain point to go get something in the truck.  So to my own surprise, when I got to the truck, I could not remember for the life of me what I had come to get.  Since the tent was pretty far away, I decided to simply sleep in the truck. ZZzzzz!
A couple hours later, I awoke to the sound of frantic exchange students all trying to get into the truck as fast as possible.  To their surprise, I had already won the race! Hehe… “What are you guys doing?”, I asked. “Can’t you hear the rain?” I then turned my attention to outside.  I kid you not, I have never seen rain like this.  It seemed like a solid curtain waterfall, yet it was falling out of the sky.  The only words to describe it are Monsoon type rains!

Everyone bailing on the incredible rain.
-Why are you all coming in here?
- The rain collapsed our tents!
-Hold on, where is Nicol?
Joël: I’m on it!

I tore my shirt off to reveal I was simply in a bathing suit and dashed off into the distance to go check on our Scottish friend.  As I arrived to the tent, the zipper was… How do I put this? Open. For who knows how long, it has been “waterfalling” into our tent.  Nicol was sound asleep, and surprisingly dry.  We had set the tent up on a small slope and all the water had collected on my side of the tent.  I now had extra specs to add to my sleeping bag: “It soaks up water GREAT!” I considered waking Nicol up but my attention drifted to his guitar.  It was in the tent and minutes away from coming into contact with water.  So I grabbed it and ran it back to the truck as fast as I could. STUPID GUITAR!  When I got to the truck, they had made me some room to sleep.  I, being the stubborn person that I am, told them I had to uphold the Canadian in me by going to sleep in the tent… Even though, I was already passed out in the truck earlier… Nobody caught onto that.  Don’t worry my Canadian friends, I’m representing us as rugged, unphasable outdoorsmen.  However, before heading to the tent to attempt to sleep, I took the time to crack open a beer and bask in this rare rainy paradise.  Since the temperature was still fairly hot, I didn’t get cold standing in the rain.  It was probably the highlight of my trip.  Afterwards, I spend the rest of the night basically holding our tent up from the inside while Nicol slept.  When he finally awoke at around 6 am, we victoriously climbed out of our crappy tent, strutted over to the truck and claimed our 20$, very basic tent to have outlived all the other fancy, expensive tents (with a little work, but still).  Admittedly defeated, what they didn’t know was that we had about 5-6 litres on water inside our tent and that the only sleep I had gotten was curled up in a ball in a corner for about 30 minutes.

The little tent that could.
Visibly tired, we spent our last day on the island visiting a few lakes, creeks while baking in the sun.  My favourite part of the day was on a 5 km walk to a lake, we had to cross these hug dunes and while standing in a dip in the middle of the dunes, all I could see around me was sand and blue sky; amazing that this island contains so many different climates.

"Meditating on the beach"
On the drive back to the ferry, I decided to try driving the big 4x4. It’s INSANE to drive on sand and is definitely not for low confidence drivers… I felt like I was driving a boat.  The long trek home was only interrupted by the fact that we missed the last train back to Brisbane in a town about 2 hours drive away.  Next train, 4:30 am the next morning.  We sat at the McDonalds, eating away our pains with crappy food and pondering our next move.  Thankfully, when I called my roommate Renn, he offered to come pick us up; super Renn and super Kim to the rescue!  They really saved the mood of the end of the trip.  I am eternally grateful and in debt!

Lesson learned – NICOL NEVER PLAYED HIS GUITAR!

That’s not so much a lesson as it is an outburst of anger, but you will understand.

Did I not promise epicness?  Just in case you're not satisfied, I got this epic shot of me failing to hold a handstand and falling off a post:

What a pretentious idiot.
Australianly yours,

Joël

P.S. Shout out to my one and only Estonian reader in this post!  That's awesome!

4 comments:

  1. haha it's a bad sign when you have to explain your entry line. hahaha

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  2. HEY! That entry line was gold...

    SO....pretty epic epicness right there! Sounds like a lot of fun (I'm jealous for the glowing battery powered frisbee...also standing in the rain and not being cold).

    Les intras sont demain...FML

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  3. It's been nearly two months since your last confession and you're leaving in a matter of days. Update damn you!

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  4. tots jealous of you and your "crack open a beer and bask in this rare rainy paradise" moment... caca

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