Keepin track of Kezza: Diving on Magnetic Island (Take 1)

Decided to head out to Magnetic Island, which is just off the coast of Townsville, this weekend to do some diving. Karen, Ben and Jaime wanted to get certified, and I needed to get my Advanced certification done for my thesis work. When I booked in they said they would need more than just me to sign up in order to run the course, but I figured I'd find something else fun to do if I couldn't do it. So we headed out Friday evening, checked into our hostel, and walked about 10 minutes down the road to a little pizza place. After hanging out in the cute little courtyard for a while we headed back to our "camp-o-tels" which are like permanent teepees. As we were about to go to bed, and Jaime and I are chatting, he stops talking and says "Hold on, there is an animal in here." "What kind of animal?" "A big rat or something!" OK, I would have been fine if he said gecko, lizard, possum, spider, or snake... but something about a big rat. Oh, and it was under my bed so I couldn't see it. Next thing I know it's jumping on my bed and I just FREAKED and leaped while screaming onto Jaime's bed. Turns out it was a possum, and normally I wouldn't be so freaked out, but it was just the combination of "big rat", not being able to see it and such close quarters. So then Ben and Karen come to check out what I was screaming about. Apparently they thought Jaime and I were fighting. haha. Karen is about to open the zipper, and as she does, the possum runs out the door and scares the crap out of Karen, who also screams. So then we just start laughing so hard we're crying and spent a bit of time before going to bed "possum-proofing" the teepee.

The next morning I woke up early, hoping to start diving, but the place we were at was totally disorganized and noone else had signed up, so no diving. I was kind of bummed, but ended up going out to the other side of the island and going horseback riding through the swamps and bush and beach instead. We even swam with the horses in the water which was pretty awesome. Oh, and we horse-surfed, which basically meant standing on the horses' backs while they were in the water, so that if we fell we fell into the water - no biggie. It was kind of cool to stand on top of a horse tho. I ended up rescheduling my dive course (with another company) for Tuesday, but decided to be a good student and come back Sunday night so I could go to class today. Sunday was a super lazy day, spent lying on the beach, reading and working on my tan. :-) I head back tomorrow morning for some awesome diving! On a shipwreck! woohoo!

This one's for you Flo!!

On the ferry to Maggie

Walking to the pizza shop

Cute pizza shop courtyard

A curlew... the most crazy sounding bird ever. Sounds like a woman screaming at night!

Guess which bed is mine, and which is Jaime's??? ;-)

The deserted Picnic Bay mall. Magnetic Island is in a transition phase at the moment... all the old shops are going out of business, and not much of the new development is finished yet, so it can be tough finding a place to eat/shop/etc... Should be interesting to see how it looks in 10 years!