Ethan Dylan Siegel's Website

May 23. Hello from Oz, everyone! We're in Cairns for a couple of days before we head off to Hayman Island. Our last two weeks have been great. We spent a week on Dunk Island, which is off of the northeast coast of the country and very close to the Great Barrier Reef. The resort was totally cool, a bit like Fantasy Island. The island itself is a rainforest in the middle of the ocean. There is nothing on the island except the Dunk Island Resort, a landing strip, and a small artist's colony. All of the buildings are below the tree line and you can't see anything from the water other than forest. We flew to Dunk from Adelaide. The final leg of the journey was in another tiny plane that could land on the small landing strip at Dunk. We were greeted at the plane by two people from the resort, although neither was Ricardo Montelban. Dunk had an unbelievable number of activities to participate in and we took full advantage. At one point, the woman at the activities desk said "I love active people like you." That's the first time in our lives we've been called active, I think. We went on two full day cruises to the Great Barrier Reef and learned how to scuba dive. Our first trip was on a boat called Calypso and was a great introduction to diving and the Great Barrier Reef, which is made up of over 3,000 individual reefs. The boat trip was a little more than an hour and took us to a cool diving and snorkeling spot called Eddy Reef. The fish and coral were out of this world. Lane even saw two sharks resting near the ocean floor. Our next trip was on Hayley's Comet, which was a two hour trip to the Outer Reef. We stopped in two different places at the far edge of the reef. The coral and fish here were also quite amazing. In addition to the diving and snorkeling, we also did a lot of other things on Dunk. We took a two hour jet ski tour around the island with a guide, who taught us about the island and pointed out a lot of wildlife, like sea turtles and various types of birds. Dunk is also surrounded by a bunch of smaller uninhabited islands, called the Family Islands, about a half hour away by boat. One day, we packed a picnic lunch and they dropped us off at one of these islands to enjoy the beach and tranquility of having an entire island to ourselves. The day went very fast, the beach was awesome, and we saw a GIANT manta ray in the water as we were getting ready to leave. The ray was at least six or seven feet wide and we had no idea what it was until the boat picked us up and we went closer to get a better view. We were both glad we didn't see that while we were in the water. We also went on some smaller adventures, like a night rainforest walk with the resort's naturalist, and Lane went horseback riding in the rainforest and on the beach. Dunk Island turned out to be a great place, and, once again, the weather was perfect. After Dunk, we went to Port Douglas for four days, which is about an hour north of Cairns. Port Douglas is also a great spot to explore the Great Barrier Reef, and we took another scuba/snorkeling trip on a catamaran. This trip was also fantastic, stopping at two spots for diving and snorkeling. The second stop was at a place the crew called "The Playground" and there were times where we were surrounded by at least a few thousand fish. We made a couple of friends on the trip and a couple of days later, we hired a guide with a Land Rover to take us to the Daintree Rainforest. The guide was awesome, with a lot of knowledge about the various plants and animals in the rainforest. The Daintree is the oldest rainforest in the world, having never been destroyed by the ice age. Some of the species of plants there are more than 100 million years old. The guide took us on a good walk through the rainforest where we got to sample some of the flora and fauna (including ants) that were edible, and learned about all the poisonous plants and medicinal plants in the rainforest. The guide also took us to a secluded swimming hole and we went for a swim in the cleanest, clearest water imaginable. After Port Douglas, we traveled to Cairns, which is a short stop for us (two days), and is where we catch our flight to Hayman Island on Friday. Hayman Island is the northernmost island in the Whitsunday Islands, which is a group of islands near the Great Barrier Reef. We'll probably go for another diving trip, and explore some of the other islands in the Whitsundays. We plan on being less active and to use Hayman to rest up. After Hayman we have about two weeks in Sydney, then we're off to Thailand. We hope everyone is getting ready for the unofficial start of summer back home and that everyone is doing well. We miss you, so keep in touch!