10
Location: Townsville
Blaise, today’s captain, woke us up at 5:30 AM by banging on a metal door and probably waking up half the harbor. We ate breakfast and hopped in the taxis that were taking us to the bus station. We boarded our Greyhound Bus and started our drive to Townsville. After a relaxing 5-hour bus ride, we finally arrived. The shuttle taking us to our hostel could only fit ten people, so Jack, Tres and I waited for the second one. When we got to the hostel, I was brought to my room, and we all started to unpack our dirty clothes, which we finally had the chance to wash. We were all very happy about that. We gave our laundry bags to Jack and headed out to the aquarium, reefHQ. We arrived just in time to watch the feeding of the fish and sharks. It was great to see how they ripped apart the squids and other feeder fish. We then continued to a private viewing of starfish and stingrays. We learned a couple of things I did not know and were also able to touch the starfish. We watched a presentation about reefHQ’s Turtle Hospital and got to see the turtles they are currently treating. We were all very sad to learn what was happening to the turtles and are now more aware of the impact we have on these cute and lovable animals. After the aquarium, we went to Woolworth’s to get food for tomorrow and the ingredients for our pancake dinner that we had planned for Canada Day. It was fun going through the supermarket and working in teams to get everything we needed. On our way back to the hostel, we realized we had forgotten the maple syrup, so James had to return to the store. We helped James cook our pancake dinner, which was amazing. Our pancakes had Nutella and Canadian maple syrup on top with strawberries and bananas. We cleaned up from dinner and called our parents one last time before we had to give our phones back, but not before listening to some throwback tunes and repacking our bags. At the end of the night, we had no lows during the daily check-in of our high and low points of the day, which is great! We all had an amazing day in Townsville, seeing the town and getting to know each other even more.