ne car goes off the road every week or so. We had a cool guide, a kiwi guy named Sam. He took us to some really neat strangler fig trees, definitely the biggest ones I have ever seen. These trees start out as a seed that germinates up in the canopy of another tree and then it puts down roots and grows around the host tree and eventually strangles it and kills it and it rots away so that the fig stands on its own. It looks really cool like something out of Lord of the Rings, this one was huge, as big as a 5 story building and had a really big base too. It's strange because the whole thing looks like it's made out of roots or vines, just stringy pieces of tree that make up the whole thing. We also went to some waterfalls and got to swim around in a lake after going on a walk through the rainforest. We learned about the stinging plant in the the rainforest that the Aboriginals called gympie gympie, which means 'really really bad'. It sounded terrible, it's this plant that will leave shards of silica in your skin if you brush up against it and it takes 9-12 months for them to come out. Everytime your pores change size (temperature change), it feels like someone is holding a blowtorch to your skin. Sounds really awful, Sam said that a hiker once fell into a whole patch of it and just died from the shock of the pain, and that another guy in the army tried to use it as toilet paper once and then shot himself the next day because he couldn't deal with it. Crazy stuff, so many thigns around this country that will try to kill you.
We also went to see this huge hole in the ground, its literally just a huge pit filled with water that nobody has been able to explore because it is just too deep and too cold to send people, and they haven't gotten around to sending robots or anything like that yet. They explored the top layers as much as they could awhile ago and found 2 new species just in that bit, so there might be all sorts of crazy stuff deeper in. We threw rocks down in it, and they really took a long time to get to the bottom, and it sounded like a gunshot when they finally hit the surface.
We went to a backpacker lodge out in Yungaburra after that where we were going to be staying for the night, it was a really nice place. Very homey and everyone working there was cool. Two Welsh girls and a Canadian were also staying from our group on the bus that day, and they were fun to hang out with. We went out to Lake Tinaroo that night with Sarah the Canadian and a guide from the hostel named Damien to go spotlighting from canoes for wildlife. It was really cool, Damien found a tree kangaroo up pretty high in th
is one tree, and was trying to point him out to us. He got out of the canoe and was shining his light from the land and the kangaroo suddenly fell out of the tree just a meter away from him and jumped away. It was hilarious, Damien said that he had never been that close to one of them and that he was really happy it hadn't landed on him, as they have huge claws and it could probably mess you up a bit on impact. It was really cool looking though, they're furrier than normal kangaroos. I'll put up a picture from Google so you know what I'm talking about. We also saw some pademelon kangaroos that are these little animals that are less than a foot high, and they hop around on the rocks on the shore. They were really cute, just mini kangaroos. There were also some wallabys around and possums. A platypus was also swimming around our boats, Damien said that had never really happened before either, and 
it even ran into Sarah's part of the canoe. We thought that maybe it had some vision problems.The night got even more interesting when we got back to the hostel. I was hanging out with people downstairs and we kept hearing this car honking outside. One guy said he had heard it a couple hours ago and not really thought much about it but it was going off a lot now so we went outside to look around. It was a bizarre situation. We found this guy that was completely naked that had his hands taped to his steering wheel and was stuck in his car, hitting the horn with his face. He said he had been mugged by a guy threatening him with a syringe filled with blood that he said had HIV on it, and that the guy made him strip and then he stole his wallet and some other things. It was kinda freaky, the guy was really weird too, and nothing really made sense about the situation, but we got him freed up and he drove away pretty quick. The police came awhile later and filled out a report, and a bunch of us were downstairs thinking, this place doesn't even have locks on any of the doors (it's in a very small town in the middle of nowhere pretty much), what if the crazy needle guy comes after us?? These people that were camping outside decided to get a room. It was funny, the cop thought it couldn't be a true story because things like that just do
n't happen up there. But it was definitely a bizarre occurrance.The next day we woke up and thanked god we had survived the night free of HIV needle guy attacks and went on a bike trip around the area. It was really fun, we got to go swimming in a lake at the end of it which was really great because it was quite hot out. When we were biking back to the van, my mom turned the wrong way and went up a huge hill the opposite direction and just kept going, so Damien had to go searching for her after she didn't show up at the end for awhile. I guess she just wanted some extra exercise and couldn't get enough of the biking. She said she saw a roadkill snake though, so it must not all have been a wasted extra trip.
We also went canoeing again in the day, I went swimming a lot because it was so hot out. We brought along these 2 French guys too that were really funny. They spoke a little English, enough to communicate, but it was hilarious some of the things they would say. One of the Welsh girls was trying to explain what 'cocky' meant to one of them, and he went, "mmm cookie I love them!" But then she said, no, COCKy, it's a different word, but he still didn't get it, he was like, "cockies are good!" and would rub his belly. It was really amusing. They also would try to sing along with the songs on the bus, but they only sortof knew the words. "I Kissed a Girl" came
on, and they were rocking out to it. They knew the music, but not really the words, it was really amusing. When we were canoeing with them, they were both trying to splash our boat at the same time and ended up leaning too far to one side and flipped their boat. They kept trying to splash the Welsh girls too, and the one girl kept trying to say not to because she had her camera, but they didn't get it. She was like, just ignore them, maybe they'll leave us alone! It was an entertaining trip. We saw a possum and a kangaroo too, but nothing as good as it had been the night before. It was a really fun trip all around, I really liked the backpacker hostel and all the people there. They also had an awesome dog named Jeb that was really sweet that we got to hang out, he even came canoeing with us.Pix are: canopy of giant strangler fig tree, mom and i with view on the way up to the tablelands, waterfall in the tablelands, the backpacker lodge, Jeb the dog from the lodge, and a baby tree kangaroo awwww
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