Day 9: Saturday, March 22nd

Today was our day of leisure! we started off the morning by applying new layers of aloe followed by sunscreen. at about 9am we went to go read in the shade. laying in hammocks and under thatched umbrellas. we wanted to enjoy the beach, but our skin couldn't handle more sun exposure :(

BUT a baby wallaby came out to join us! he was just hopping around, munching on leaves, right in the middle of the action, and was adorable. my sister was afraid if she got too close he'd jump away, but he hung out long enough for us to take probably 300 pictures of him. and the ugly bush turkeys. and those crazy long-legged birds.

we went to the cafe for lunch, and every vegetarian item maily consisted of cheese. we settled for nachos, and felt way gross afterwards. even tho they were slightly better than those of the tex mex restaurant in Airlie Beach, they were still odd.

we then played some ping-pong and then it was time for the daily 4:45 bird feeding!

we went over to find a small group of people smearing some sort of oatmeal substance on their hands and dozens of rainbow-colored birds (i don't do well with identification of birds) chomping away. my sister got right in the middle of it and soon she had her own bird posse clamping on her arms and nibbling of her hands... and resting on her head. one lady got bird poop on her shoulder. it was funny. then we saw an adult wallaby!

the island, Long Island, boasts of multiple nature walks, so we thought we should do something active (other than ping-pong) and we chose the path named Humpy Point. we saw it was getting darker, but it was only a 600 meter walk, so we thought we'd be ok. we were both wearing sandals and some areas of the "track" was muddy, but we made it through. and we saw another wallaby! we got to the end... and it was just... a dead end. no amazing view, no photo op, just a dead end of a wall of some rocks... and if you tried hard you could look through the trees to see a neighboring island... but that was about it. we turned back and then the sun started to go down. and it got dark. very very dark. and we were in some fairly thick "bush". but we finally got back and no scary bush animal attacked us! hooray!

so now it was dinner time, and we returned to the cafe to order some of the pizza they have on their menu... but they don't do pizza for dinner! say whaaa?? so we had more nachos. barfola.

and we sat next to a group of middle-aged women out on the patio area who thought it was funny to feed those long legged birds. even though those birds were annoying, and loud, and fairly aggressive, these stupid women kept feeding them until the cafe worker came out and tried to shoo the birds away. those women were stupid. and loud. and tacky.

then we went to bed early and didn't move while we let the aloe vera work its magic.