#2: Rafting and Roos

During the free day in Cairns I opted for Extreme White-Water Rafting.  A bunch of people went Sky Diving and Bungee jumping, but I am saving those for New Zealand (which I am going to on April 8th during my Easter Break).  Anyway though, the rafting was definitely the best I've ever done.  Since we were the "extreme" group, our 6 rafts went ahead of the other large groups of rafts, and we were able to go at a faster pace and stop for swims and for jumping off rocks.  

Within the first 5 minutes of the trip, our guide (Dave) flipped our raft over and one guy, Remy, fell out of the boat and got a bad nose bleed!  It was pretty gross, but we washed it off and were able to get back on track.  I was the only person, besides Dave, in the boat who had been rafting before.. so everybody else didn't really know what to expect.  I think they all enjoyed it though!

      

At the end of the trip the company had pictures available for us to purchase that they took of us on the river, but they were expensive.. so that last picture is a picture that I took of their picture (if that makes sense).  Anyway, but that was on one of the rapids.. I guess I thought I was going to drown because I was holding my breath in every picture! 

The next day we hopped on a tour bus at 6:30 am and drove all over.  The first stop was the Wildlife Park and I was finally able to see some kangaroos!  The kangaroos were just walking around and we were able to touch and feed them.  I even tried to pick one up.. unsuccessfully I might add.

This was the biggest kangaroo there I think, he mainly just stayed in the corner and ate all of our food.

A bunch of the kangaroos had little baby joeys in their pouches, it was fascinating!  I felt like they were more reserved than the other kangaroos without babies.

I had to get a close-up

Also, I'm not sure what this animal was.. but it had a baby too!

We also saw some other animals at the Park including this bird, koalas, crocodiles, and ... some other animals... but the kangaroos were definitely my favorite!

We weren't able to touch the Koala's here because we would give them "brain damage" apparently... I thought that was pretty funny.  Hopefully we'll be able to get closer to them at some point though.  These particular ones just slept all of the time and seemed particularly lazy.. what a life.