Lamington National Park

WOW, I just got back from Lamington National Rainforest and it was one of the coolest places I have ever been to. We stayed at this place called O' reilys. It is located adjacent to Lamington and they have been running a hotel-like resort since 1848. On our first day we did a hike out to a huge lookout and it was beautiful. We were surrounded by lush sub-tropical rainforests with huge Liana vines wrapping around the trees. The plateau across from our lookout was the inspiration for Sir Arthur Conan Doyles "the Lost World." Lamington was also the source of inspiration for Fern gulley. We stayed in a huge cabin where all 32 of us slept. It felt just like camp. The rest of O reilys is actually a resort, which is very high class. We would eat dinner in the restaurant where we got multiple course meals, always followed with an excellent dessert. The birds at Lamington were amazing. There were huge flocks of crimson marsellas (the red parrots in the picture) and king parrots (the greener ones). In the center of the complex you can feed the birds with seeds which was really cool. On the first morning I got up early to go bird watching in the jungle with some people, and our Prof John Hall. John is simply amazing. He is one of the most enthusiastic and passionate educators I have ever met. He's great at lecturing and knows tons of stuff about the rainforest. He is a botanist and actually makes plants really interesting. John took us to the bird walking platform in the middle of the jungle. Basically it was a giant raised boardwalks around 30 meters above the forest floor that led to a huge tree that has latters you can climb. At the top of the latter is a lookout that is above all the trees and you can see the whole park!!! On the second day we hiked to a huge waterfall and stood around 10 ft from the edge of a 30 meter shear cliff that looked up a giant valley. We watched flocks of parrots from the point and enjoyed the amazing view. There are tons of woody vines called lianas and you can swing around on them just like Tarzan. Orchids are everywhere and we even saw some in bloom even though spring just started. After our hike to the waterfall we came back to Coot (the name of the house we were staying at) and John told ghost stories. It was the best setting for ghost stories ever conceived. We were all in an old cabin, the lights were out, and a huge rainstorm was raging outside with the wind howling and the house creaking. Someone even left open one of the windows and during one of the stories the drapes got blown off. John is an excellent story teller and I am amazed at all of the details he used to make the story spooky. The next day the storm was in full force with pouring sheets of rain. That didn't stop us from doing a 17 km hike through the jungle during the peak of the storm. I have been on a lot of hikes in my life and this one was one of the most extreme ones I have ever done. We were trekking through the mountains in the pouring rain, climbing over fallen trees, crossing rushing rivers, going past huge waterfalls, and all while we were all soaked head to toe. However, the rain was not the only thing we had to worry about there were also leeches! Most people got at least a couple bites, one person had 11! Somehow I managed to not get a single one. People would untuck their shirts, or take off their socks to find them soaked with blood. The leeches don't carry and diseases so they were more of a pesky nuisance. People got them everywhere from legs and arms, to face and lips! At the very end of the hike we ate lunch in the pouring rain under a huge waterfall. It was really fun because halfway through the hike we had all accepted our wetness and then we embraced it. We stopped avoiding puddles are just marched right through them. It was truly amazing to experience a rainstorm in a rainforest to the fullest extent. When we got the the higher latitude we walked through an Antarctic beach forest and it was unbelievable. These trees were 2000+ years old with huge bits of moss growing all over them, and mist floating around the whole forest. When we got back from the hike we were all FREEZING. We spent the night in Coot working on our field notebooks. We did various activities such as comparing vegetation type at different latitudes, drawing rainforest profiles, and learning tons on all our hikes. On this trip we had two tutors; Claire and Rob. Rob has been coming to Lamington since he was 3 years old and Claire is the worlds leading expert on glow worms! She was an advisor for the "caves" episode for planet earth!!! She is super passionate and one of the happiest people I have ever met. She gave a lecture on glow worms and then we went on a night hike and saw them with our own eyes. I have never seen anything like it. There were literally tens of thousands of glow worms littered along a ravine. It was like staring at the night sky. One of the hypothesis about why the worms actually glow is to attract the insects with their light, and then when they are in huge colonies the insect might believe they are flying towards the night sky and then get caught and eaten. THe glow worm is a really cool creature. Its worm stage eats and grows, then when it turns into its adult stage with wings it loses its entire digestive tract and gains reproductive organs. It then flies away, reproduces, and starves to death. The light reaction the worms use is extremely efficient and being researched for as a more effective lighting technology. The reaction produces 99% light and 1% heat. A typical light creates only 10% light an 90% heat. WOW! The sound of the stream flowing through the forest while watching the glow worms flicker was definitely a moment to remember. We went for a final hike on our last morning to another amazing lookout. We were on a point with shear cliffs on both sides that stuck out into the valley. We had 5 minutes of silence to take in the scenery and then John started reciting poetry. On our bus drive down we stopped at the O' reilys winery and went wine tasting. It was very interesting and it was nice to taste wine that wasn't out of a box, which is the drink of choice for our group since its only $9.99 for 4 liters. We have Monday off and two days of lecture. Then we have a 4 day weekend and everyone from the group is going to Frasier Island. Check it out if you want: http://www.fraserisland.net/
Talk to you guys soon!