The python was named Amanda. I guess it must have been a snake yawn because there were no fangs and she didn't lunge at me. Maybe she found me really boring.
I am at Bungalow Bay Koala Village on Magnetic Island. This is both a YHA hostel (rooms are actually cabins), campground, and a koala, bird and reptile sanctuary. I took the tour of the sanctuary yesterday, during which I held a baby crocodile, touched a Koala, had the little incident with the python, and allowed a bird to stand on my head.
--Did you know that crocodiles have evolved very little in the last 60 million years. They have just gotten a bit smaller as they have gone from eating dinosaurs to eating possums.
--Did you know that of the 42 people who have been killed by crocodiles in australia in the last 100 or 200 years (I can't remember) that 32 of them were drunk, 4 were drunk backpackers and 2 were drunk American backpackers (the other 2 were drunk German backpackers).
--Did you know that Koalas are not bears. They got that reputation because when Europeans arrived, a bear was the most similar thing that they knew that a koala looked like. But koalas are marsupials and therefore are related to kangaroos and wallabies. They evolved completely independently of any bears.
--Did you know that baby koalas eat their mother's poop for their first 5 days of life. And they must do this so that they can develop the bacteria in their stomachs that they need in order to eat a diet consisting 100% of eucalyptus leaves.
OK enough facts. I also saw an echnid, many lizards, a talking cockatoo, and the crazy screechy colorful birds below.
I arrived on Magnetic Island on Wednesday morning via a ferry from Townsville after a horrible night in a hostel in Townsville. The night was kind of reminiscent of a Saturday night in a freshmen dorm, except that I had 5 roommates instead of 1, they were Irish, and I was no longer 18 years old. OH and my top bunk with no ladder was concave enough to qualify as a hammock.
Anyway, after departing my new drunk Irish friends (who woke me up several times including one purposeful one around 330 am so that john could find out who I was, where I was from, and apologize for waking me up), I put half my stuff in a locker at the ferry terminal and skedaddled out of Townsville on the 10 am ferry. Magnetic Island has a population of 2000 people. It also has wild koalas. I arrived at the koala village and immediately realized I needed to stay more than just the 1 night I had originally planned. Maybe the experience from the night before was getting to my head but I just did not want to leave this place. So I changed my bus from Thursday to Friday, pushed back my reservation at my next destination and I am staying another day.
Last night I treated myself to a personal pizza and a beer and sat down with my little keyboard to send some emails. As always, you are never really alone for long around here because before I'd finished my pizza I was in the middle of a conversation with a couple from Manchester, England, a grandfather from Newcastle, Australia, and a (humorously drunk) guy from New Zealand. We discovered that we all had the experience of initially waiting for our "mates" (friends) to want to travel with us and then finally deciding to stop waiting and just go on our own. But once we'd arrived we discovered that this is the best possible way to go about it anyway! (The girl from England had been here for 6 months before her boyfriend joined her.) Traveling alone means you never have to compromise because every decision is yours. And you make more of an effort to meet new people if you are alone--hence finding yourself in a conversation with people representing almost all of the major English speaking nations of the world.
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