Cairns - Captain Matty's Barefoot Tour

CAPTAIN MATTY'S BAREFOOT TOUR WAS AN EXCEPTIONAL DAY.  Pickup at 7:30am on a Sunday morning came a bit early but knowing that the day was going to be great once I was up I got excited (like getting up for skiing).  The van holds 17 passengers who were mostly German girls, my two Irish friends, Dave and Jeff, my two new English friends, Jenna and Sarah, a French Couple, and a woman from Sweden.  The five questions Captain Matty asks everyone over the loudspeaker was age, where you are from, when you are leaving Cairns, your relationship status, and finally and most importantly, whether you scrunch or fold your toilet paper after going #2.  People were a bit more awake after this early morning bus passenger interview.  I am a folder.  Sam, my British work counterpart, and I were smart enough to buy a case of beer for the group the night before (we got the trip for free due to working at Koala Adventures) as it was the nice thing to do.  With beer on ice in the back being closely guarded and eyed by the Irish at 8am in the morning, we headed into the hills for the Atheton Tablelands.

First stop was to be the Cathedral Fig Tree (500 years old) but unfortunately closed for maintenance.  We blew by that exit and headed to Lake Eacham for breakfast and an early morning swim.  This lake was basically inside of a rainforest and before we reached it, Captain Matty described to us the dangerous snakes that may encounter as just last week someone reported running into a King Brown on the east bank of the lake on the pedestrian trail.  Captain Matty is certified in CPR, first aid, and snake bite first aid.  He proceeds to describe to us how it will go down if we are bitten by a venomous snake (the King Brown, or my favorite is the WILD and AGGRESSIVE Taipan snake).  Apparently the first thing to do after being bit is to remain calm.  Yeah, okay, I am sure.  Totally, I will just kick my feet up and pour some tea to drink and read the morning paper with two small holes in my shin dripping with juice that can kill me in an hour.  Anyway, remaining calm is so that your heart rate doesn't rise resulting in higher blood flow which results in the venom moving through your body faster and faster.  Once relaxation has been attained by the bite, he or she will then give his credit card to Captain Matty.  The credit card would then be placed directly onto the bite and the Captain would start wrapping the bite very tightly.  After wrapping that area he would then continue to wrap the entire limb (apparently 90% of bites happen on a human limb) from top to bottom.  So, why the credit card?  Firstly, some doctors in smaller medical centers (where it is best to take you as the large hospitals do not have the ability to help you quickly enough) won't help you until you have paid up front.  By having the credit card under the bandage, he has to unwrap it, resulting in major blood/venom flow, which in turn he would need to help you right then and there or watch you die.  Secondly, the credit card keeps the venom from hitting the bandages which would result in the venom being soaked up and much harder to take a sample of so that the doctor could identify which snake anti venom needs to be used to save your ass.  Thirdly, that credit card will make for a great bar story/souvenir.  That is, if you don't die before treatment becomes available, and if you make it through the 3 week sickness/hangover that the anti venom causes.

LAKE EACHAM WAS BRILLIANT; quiet, tranquil, and relaxing.  Only a couple of cars in the parking lot, our 17 travelers pretty much had the place to ourselves.  Picture a lake in the middle of a rainforest that has no shore waves, no ripples, and turtles and fish swimming in the shallows at a rate of .5 MPH.  The fish that saw us and we could see them basically were treading water and just chillin out not scared of a soul in the world.  Some lizards were on the bank too staring at us like we were welcome, but wanting to know who the hell we were and where we came from?  The core of our bus group (younger English and Irish and German people...oh yeah, and the one American like every trip; me) changed into our swimwear on the swimming dock and one by one took the plunge into the fresh, bath water temperature, water of the quiet Lake Eacham.  It is always funny how an early morning swim can wipe any past-night alcohol cobwebs right out of one's head.  After taking a group plunge shot, we dried off, and hiked back up to where Captain Matty was so kindly cooking bacon and eggs that he had bought for the group.  Some brown bread, ketchup, and bbq sauce later, we all were chomping down bacon and egg morning sandwiches.  Captain Matty is one of the best hosts I have been around in as.  From New Zealand, his long goatee and dreadlocked hair, combined with his tan, tattoos and beads, results in a seasoned and weathered 30 year old who knows two things; how to to make people feel comfortable, and everything about the Atheton Tablelands around Cairns.  Oh yeah, and he casually has guided people on white water rafts for over 7000 hours.  7000 hours.

THE WEATHER STARTED TO TURN FOR THE WORSE.  As we head to our 2nd stop, Dinner Falls and The Crater, the overcast and dry morning began to be a overly gray and wet morning.  Not a probably though as everyone was having a great time.  This stop had a very large sink hole (kind of like a cenote in Mexico) that was created by volcanic activity over 50,000 years ago.  We brought a large rock so that we could throw it off the viewing deck and into the The Crater.  We all remained quiet as this poor rock plummeted for a few long seconds and broke a big hole onto the green algae film covering the surface of the deep water.  By this time it was time for lunch and beer.  We zoomed into a town called Millaa Millaa (means water water) which has a population of 350.  At the only pub in town everyone ate steak sandwiches with chips, and cold Australian jugs of beer (two of which Captain Matty was so nice to buy for the group for his appreciation of having a full paying van that day).  I played a pull tab machine for a $1 and won $5.  Only gambling I have done this country and left a winner.

AFTER PUTTING SMILES ON THE LOCAL'S FACES AT THE MILLAA MILLAA PUB, it was time to move onto 6 more stops, Millaa Millaa Falls, Zillie Falls, Ellinjaa Falls, Crawford's Lookout, Josephine Falls, and Babinda Boulders.  Captain Matty doesn't wear a watch and is different from other tours as he doesn't say "okay you have 15 minutes to take pictures then be back at the bus"...we simply leave as a group when the concensus is it is time to leave.  Captain Matty doesn't wear footwear either (hence the BAREFOOT TOUR).  So back to the highlights.  The best was swimming under Millaa Millaa falls with my friends.  It was like something out of a novel.  Pouring down rain and a gorgeous waterfall in the middle of a tropical rainforest and I am swimming with people I have befriended in the past 3 weeks/days from all across the world.  One of the British girls and I kissed briefly under the falls just because it seemed like the thing to do.  Ellinjaa Falls was spectacular as well but no swimming, just pictures and a soft mist on the face.  Crawford's Lookout was cool to see that far into a gorge, happy we didn't attempt the 1.6KM many meter decent as we were mainly all in sandals and half drenched from the rain.  That hike would be a whole day.  Josephine Falls was near the end and was POWERFUL and INTIMIDATING.  Many young men have died here (27 since 1979 when the famous German people took the photographs that had faces in them...look it up on your own for the story).  People will swim in the top pool and be swept down the river and try to stand up and get their foot wedged into a rock gap and the raging water will break their knees/back and they will lunge forward and drown.  Captain Matty has taken two tourists out of the Tully river due to this very accident on a rafting trip that a brother raft company had lost (apparently a guide will not remove his dead as it will rattle him to much to continue his job).  So the guides help each other and dig out each other's dead.  Um, when is my rafting trip again, oh yeah, it is in a couple of weeks.
WE ENDED THE BUZZED, FUN, AND EPIC DAY with Captain Matty cooking up a sausage sizzle at the Babinda Boulders.  It was dawn and pouring rain so rather than hiking in to to see the boulders, our group stayed under cover and listened to Captain Matty's stories as we scarfed down sausage and grilled onion sandwiches, again, on just good ol' brown sandwich bread.  The stoves are cool at these places...all through these World Heritage locations, National Parks, etc, their are solar powered bbq grills that can be used by anyone.  You don't need charcoal briquettes or light fluid.  You simply hit a button and it runs on a timer and you can just leave it for the next person.  Such a novel idea I was a fan.  Captain Matty left us for a moment and went into the dark jungle and after 5-10 minutes, he came back with a Cane Toad.  The Cane Toad apparently is RUINING ecosystems as its back has a poison on it that kills anything that tries to eat it.  The Australian government has put a bounty out on this young toad's head and allows anyone to kill as many as they like.  Captain Matty does not demonstrate this killing on his tour in case it offends an animal activist so he more told us about in his backyard how he plays TOAD GOLF here and there with mates and a lot of times the toads are on fire before they are 9-ironed into the darkness of night and out of his backyard.  Overall great trip as it was great to get out of the city and away from work.  One more thing, for all of you who know how I can sleep...I took 5 naps on the bus that day (twice the amount of most of the rest of the group).  Trust me they were all very needed :)

Less Drinking, More Diving and BREATHING

LESS DRINKING and MORE DIVING has been the last week or so in Cairns which is a good thing if you have read how the first couple of weeks went.  I also got a job the other day which is great as I can now budget and have something steady.  The job is with Koala Guest Houses and its amenities are a bit above a hostel and just less than a resort/hotel.  I will be working the front desk, booking tours/trips, checking people in and out, opening/closing the front area etc.  I am stoked for this job as it was explained to me to be a 'cake' job and the pay is good and the hours are decent.  Plus, I get to call the companies we sell tours for (i.e. Skydiving) and let them know I am the new Koala Resorts trip booker and can I come on your excursion as a famile (free trip to familiarize myself with it so I can sell it).  Hopefully will lead to some cool events and journeys around Northern QLD.

DIVING IS INSANELY FUN and slightly dangerous.  Hard to explain what it is like when you are down there.  The world of the ocean is a world like none other.  Picture when you go underwater as a kid to dive in the pool for, say, loose change, or someones sunglasses; it is great down there and you wish you could stay down longer but unfortunately your little lungs need to surface for air and you rifle to the top.  Well diving is strange in that you do not have to rifle to the top and you can do whatever you want for a good amount of time.  It is so bizarre because your mind is saying this doesn't feel right but your lungs say "yeah, we're cool."  I can't tell you how much more respect you have for oxygen after going through a dive certification course (trust me as this is coming from a chest breather who has had slight anxiety in the past).  I have always been fascinated with being underwater but I hate holding my breath and cannot do it for very long.  I knew this course was going to take some mental focus and determination.  Let me put it this way, one person started drowning in the deep end on the first day and two instructors had to dive in to save him.  He was right next to me.  Wow.

THE COURSE I AM DOING is the 5 Day Open Water Diving PADI Certification which involves 2 full days of classroom and in the pool with a Dive Instructor and 3 days aboard a large vessel with other divers to complete your open water training dives and exercises.  A lot of the pool on the first day is in the shallow end on your knees and the class (around 12 people) are in a semi-circle facing the instructor.  We are all geared up with our regulators in, O2 flowing, etc.  The best way I can describe these classes under water is like a kindergarten class for deaf kids.  The instructor uses all sorts of hand signals to make us pay attention to him, demonstrate, number the exercises we are doing, join up with our buddy, etc.  So the first thing we learn is how to throw away our regulators (the big black thing that is always in your mouth allowing you to breath) and find them by reaching back behind us.  Sounds simple but let me tell you it is INTENSE.  3 or 4 in our group had to get up out of the water to breath because this idea of taking o2 away from their lungs made their brain say NOPE.  Crazy.

THE FIRST DAY after lunch everyone is told to get into the deep end (16 feet) and tread water for 10 minutes.  No more than 3 minutes went by when this beginner swimmer next to me started going under water as he paddled to try and stay above water.  Both instructors jumped in to rescue him.  Why someone would try and take a scuba diving certification course and can't swim or tread water is mind blowing.  Rest of the day was exercises to get comfortable with the BCD (buoyancy control device; inflates and deflates your jacket), the regulator (the black thing that goes in your mouth and provides air), the alternate air source, the tank, the primary and secondary air stages, etc.  This day for Ryan McLeod in Australia was the best yet as I was instantly addicted to diving and couldn't wait to get under water again, and when I got dropped off for my final job interview at Koala Guest Houses, I was already on the schedule and was told I would start Tuesday.  Had a couple of beers to celebrate and then went to bed early.

Day 2 INVOLVES THE POOL ALL MORNING until lunch at 1pm then classroom after that to take the final exam and do final lessons.  9am, everyone in the pool to do a 200m swim.  Everyone passed.  Now into the deep end to learn descending and ascending, how to get air from your buddy if your regulator goes out of if you are an idiot and run out of air, how to find a neutral buoyancy, how to let your mask fill up with water and then blow it out, how to take your mask completely off under water and put it back on (more on this in the ocean later).  Finished the written exam around 5:30pm, passed, headed home and took it easy again as we were to be picked up at 7:45am to head out on the liveaboard

THE OCEAN WAS SURGING that day.  Some rain, wind, people puking into bags, BIG sways and medium sized swells.  Guess who has 4 training dives to do in what looks to be a Wet N' Wild wave pool on crack?  Our team of 12 innocent travelers that just want to find Nemo on a coral reef.  The snorkels that come with the course suck and so you can picture 4 guys and 8 girls sucking down sea water and smashing into the side of the boat as our instructor is explaining our surface training exercises.  Some of them involved rescue swimming/carrying of our buddy (pushing and pulling).  Some of them require swimming a certain distance, some of them are buoyancy tests.  Picture trying to find neutral buoyancy in the conditions described above.  It was insane, at one point I just started laughing to myself;  is this really happening?  I am in the middle of the Pacific Ocean smashing against a large boat and large anchor chain/rope with 11 people I have never met and we are being judged on how well we can not drink seawater.  LOL.  It was awesome.  At this point, I felt as if I am on that new Discovery Channel show, Surviving The Cut.  After being battered around over like a bear on a bunny and accomplishing all of our surface exercises, we dive to 12 meters to start underwater exercises.

THERE ARE A LOT OF TRAINING EXERCISES to get your certification but I am going to focus on the one that is the scariest and everyone is afraid of.  If you don't know already the open water dive certification is to get to a level of diving where you can go WITHOUT A GUIDE OR INSTRUCTOR.  You can dive with a buddy anywhere in the world if you can show your license and log book (describes each dive in detail; depth, bottom time, surface intervals, etc).  So from the pool over 2 days to the 4 training dives in the ocean, you are required to gradually practice life threatening situations.  The main one is if you lose your mask underwater.  This may sound like no biggie in a pool or a lake but let me be the first to tell you that at 15 meters underwater in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef, it is a little bit stressful.  So, at first the instructor points at you and runs his pointer finger horizontally up his dive mask half way.  This means grab the top of your mask and let water in half way up filling your nose and mouth.  To clear, you simply lean back a tad and hold the top of your mask and exhale hard through your nose and you have 'cleared your mask'.  Somewhat easy.  Then, next dive, he signals for you to fill up your mask to the brim with very salty water from the Pacific Ocean, which isn't exactly like chlorine water if you open your eyes.  Then, the final test, yes at 15 meters, or around 45 feet on the ocean floor, you are to COMPLETELY TAKE OF YOUR MASK to simulate it being knocked off while diving, and put it back on.  Not exactly something you are excited for, especially when you can't see 20 feet around you, there is sand coming up all around you, underwater currents are trying to move you on your knees to the left and right.  IT IS THE MOST FRIGHTENING THING A LOT OF US HAVE HAD TO DO IN OUR LIVES.  On training dive 3, I forgot to fill my mask from the top and filled it from the bottom...well...I drank a half a pint of seawater (breathed in through my nose on accident) and spit out my regulator (yes the item that gives you oxygen to stay alive at 18 meters).  Due to great training from the days before I remembered to continue to blow out of my mouth everything and Lewis, my instructor, who sees this type of thing all the time and is right there in front of you to make sure you don't drown, put my regulator in and blasted me a breath of air I will never forget for the rest of my life.  We have all had panic moments swimming/jumping bridges/etc as a child but this trumped anything I can remember in any deep end of any pool.  I couldn't not think about it all night, couldn't get to sleep that night, had dreams about it and woke up every 2 hours.  I talked to Lewis about it and he says to me "yeah mate, you don't want to spit your regulator out at those depths...very bad things can happen."  I thanked him for putting my regulator back in, and, basically saving my life, and he said "no worries mate, happens a lot on the mask fill test, that is why we are here."  Really?  Okay so you just keep people from drowning every week that is cool.  So, to conquer this new fear of being under, on training dive 4 (our last training dive), before the full mask take off test, I told him I want to do the partial mask fill, full mask fill, and THEN, yep, do the whole mask off.  A little bit of saltwater later and some zen like breathing I had practiced all night and morning to Florence And The Machine's Between Two Lungs, I dominated all three and overcame any fear I had the prior day.  Again, he was right in front of all of us with his hand on our arm and his other hand right in front of our regulators just casually waiting to make sure you stay alive on the ocean floor.  Unbelievable experience.  Another girl in our group who was doing well like I was through training also had a small slip up where when we were descending on the last training dive.  She went to fix her mask a bit and inhaled/drank about a pint of seawater, had to go back up to the boat and was RATTLED about going down again.  I talked to her about it a lot and one make up dive later with her buddy and our instructor, she conquered her fear as well and overcame.  This certification is probably the most scariest, fun, intense, and nerve racking thing I have ever done in my life (close second is canyoning in Interlaken, Switzerland).

AFTER TRAINING DIVE 4 IS COMPLETE, you are a certified PADI Open Water Scuba Diver.  From here is where the fun started.  We had 6 more dives over 2 days on the boat all for pleasure.  The night dive was interesting as when we plunged into the water their were small reef sharks circling the back of the boat (where we jump in).  Everyone has torches (large gun like flashlights) and it was the first time in my life I ever felt what it would be like to be a Navy Seal.  Visibility like 10 feet, flashlights of divers beaming all directions around huge coral walls and coming over a ridge with my team of 5 and merging into another group of 6 divers and now we have 11 lights spotlighting in all directions as we descend down a cavern.  Hard to explain diving at night.  If you have any claustrophobia or fear of confined spaces I do not recommend going on it.  You have no idea how far you are to the surface by looking, you don't know where you are going (except following the guide), and you have no idea what creatures are around any corner, including our good curious friend, the reef shark.

THE WEATHER CHANGED FOR THE BETTER.  By day 2 the surging was ending and the sun tried to come out throughout the day.  The first pleasure dive is crazy because you have been with your instructor all day (and some evenings) everyday for the last few days and he basically becomes the biggest badass and leader your will ever follow.  Well, your first pleasure dive is without him and no one else with any experience hire than 4 dives (like me and my buddy, Merriam).  So, just like anything else, you remember your training and everything that has been hammered into your head and you set off to go see Troppos (the reef location we were at that day) on your own with no one else.  Merriam did awesome, our dive got to a reasonable 15 meters and were down for about 20 minutes.  The dives just got better and better.  The weather got better and better.  My breathing got better and better (if you breath too much you waste air and can't stay down as long).  By the final dive, today (gorgeous weather on the reef; hot, sunny, blue waters...like you picture or see in magazines) we were down for nearly 40 minutes, covered the entire reef dive location and I came up way far away from the boat as we were cruising through so many up and overs, cold water blasts, warm water blasts, currents that launch you over reefs, so many fish, coral, turtles, and crustaceans that it would take an entire other blog entry to describe.  The diversity is unbelievable on the Great Barrier Reef.  It is something I can only wish everyone could see in their life.  Uplifting, emotional, and real it was one of the best experiences of my entire 29 years of living.  The best part about it is it runs north/south as long as the entire West Coast of the United States...so...lets just say I will probably be back to see another part of it sooner than later.

ON THE SMALLER BOAT NOW (picked us up off of Ocean Quest II, the liveaboard) headed back to Cairns.  Start work in the morning at 8am which is exciting.  Final Hilton interview Friday morning which is great.  Dave and Jeff should have some good new contacts and stories, it will be great to see them.  With a couple of band aids on my left foot, burps of Victoria Beer with some remnant salt water, music in my ears, a tan, a sore upper nose, and a physically/mentally exhausted, yet accomplished mind and body, I am excited to step foot and land and start looking for the next adventure.  RCM