And that's how you eat sand....April 19, 2006

We spent Easter weekend at Tangalooma - it is a large sand island off the coast of Brisbane. The island started out as a little bit of lava and grew into an island from all the sand that blew off the coast of the mainland. We needed a bit of a break, but as Tim's been on the road so much, we wanted someplace pretty close. The island is only about an hour ferry ride away.

There is not too much on the island. It is 98% National Park. The other 2% is the Tangalooma Wild Dolphin Resort. If I am very advanced, I may be able to post a link. (hmm...guess I'm not quite that advanced...) It was either stay at the resort or camp in the wilds with the mosquitos and the brown snakes - not much choice. As a guest of the resort, you can feed wild dolphin. Dolphins started to come to the docks to eat the leftover bait the fishermen would throw out at the end of the day. The dolphins really are wild, so there are a million rules to follow. No touching, no petting, no sunscreen wearing. The dolphins are fed only 10% of their food needs, so they still retain all their hunting/fishing instincts. It was pretty cool to see them so up close - I have to admit I really wanted to pet one! We also saw the dolphins swimming around where we snorkeled. They have sunk about half a dozen ships to create a small craft docking area off the coast of the island. There were very cool fish to see and some interesting coral. (The Bahamas are still pretty hard to beat...but it was very cool!)

Our other exciting excursion was to go sand toboganing in the Great Sandy Desert. Australia hasn't caught on the to American way about health and safety...basically, you sled down the giant sand dune head first on a bitty piece of plywood. I had to do it just to prove I wasn't a total chicken. As I launched myself off down the mountain, Elliott heard the guide say "And that's how you eat sand!" I found twice down was plenty; Tim and Elliott made it 7 times.

Other news: we have stopped paying rent on our house in the hopes that they will actually finish off what needs doing. We'll see. The builder showed up to cart away his tools after I threatened to throw them out in the street. Needless to say, he didn't actually finish any of the work he said he'd do before he left. We did have the electrician in and he changed the light fixture - sorry to all those that voted to keep the cherubs. And just FYI, everyone who voted wanted us to keep the hideous thing.

Critter update: only new item in the house was a little gecko. Very cute and not too scary, but pretty hard to catch. Elliott wanted to keep it in his room. I've heard that at first you think one is cute, but soon it turns into a whole community of geckos and they are pretty noisy.

Not much else to post. Really enjoyed the weekend away. Now we are back to the reality of work, school and land lord issues!