Day 131

Almost everyone I know has left, and for the past few days I haven't been able to muster up the enthusiasm to go do things on my own.  But today I vowed to stop being such a waste of life and make the most of my last few days in Cairns!

I was initially going to have a beach day, but sleeping on the beach still felt like a waste of life.  Plan B was hiking.  I grabbed my camera and donned my new explorer hat (which is pretty snazzy, might I add) and headed out into the forest with the intention of scaling a mountain.  Unfortunately, I vastly underestimated the effects of humidity in the rainforest.  I'd emptied my liter of water after an hour and wisely decided to head home after that.

On the plus side, I found lots of very cool stuff on the trails today!  The highlight of my hike: a GIGANTIC orb weaver spider.  Now, I know I've shown you orb weavers before, and yeah, they were big.  But this one kicks those other orb weavers to the curb.  I could scarcely believe my own eyes, this thing so huge.  This spider was at least 8 inches, but I'm gonna estimate it at 10 inches.  I have half a mind to go back tomorrow with my ruler, tape it to a stick, and hold it up for the camera just to prove it.

Warning: massive nightmare-inducing spiders ahead.

Hello, gorgeous!

See the little spiders?  Those are the males.  They just kinda sit around, eating her leftovers until she's ready to mate.
And then they die.  Not a very exciting life, mate, sorry.

There's those beautiful colours.

I had to duck underneath the web to get the spider's underside.  This web is easily 6 feet across and 4 feet
tall, but I had a nice clearance of about 4 feet.  

Orb weavers often build their webs in the gap between two trees.

See the spider?  Just left of the center?  That spider is the same distance as the skinny tree on the right edge of the photo.
THIS SPIDER IS HUGE.

I think I accidentally hit the web when I ducked back onto the trail.
Whoopsie daisy.  (I'm lucky I survived!)

This spider is bigger than my face.

Beautiful in a kind of terrifying way, don't you think?

But that's not the only spider I found today!  I found a huge communal web of dome tent spiders, too!  The web was so large and thick that I spotted it from about 20 feet away and had to make my own path to get a closer look.  There were about 20 spiders in there.  I think it's getting close to their breeding season because they're all bigger and fatter than I'm used to seeing them.

They have lovely patterns on their backs.

Pretty!

That tiny one is a male.  The size difference isn't quite as great as that of the larger orb weavers, but they
lead basically the same life: wait, eat leftovers, mate, die.

Sick of spiders?  Don't worry, I also found some other nice, somewhat-less-scary bugs.

This appears to be a stinkbug.  It's roughly 5 times the size of the ones in the States.
(No, I did not squish it to be sure.  I know you were wondering.)

And these aren't quite bugs, but whatever, they're cool.

I got a bird photo!  This guy was fluttering around while I was photographing the dome tent spiders.
I don't know what it is yet, Will (my bird expert) is gone.  :(

This is a tadpole, I think.  Except that it's about 5 times bigger than any tadpole I've ever seen.  I want to catch it!

And Ulysses butterflies, which are the Queensland tourism emblem.  They're quite pretty.  I didn't realise what I was photographing at first, because this is what I was seeing:

Meh, kinda boring.

And then this popped up on my camera:

Whaaaaat?  When did that happen?

As far as I can gather, the flash would scare the butterfly into opening its wings, only the movement was too quick for me to see.  Good thing my camera is faster than me!

This isn't pixelation.  This is the actual pattern on the wings.  Photos like this are why I love my telephoto lens:
they let you see things not possible with the naked eye.

The blue is very brilliant, and these guys can be spotted from quite a distance.

I guess you're okay, Ulysses.  But I still don't like your proboscis, it freaks me out.

After returning from my hike, I swung into town to pick up a few more souvenirs, grab some sushi (gotta get cheap sushi while I still can!) and run errands.  I finally found a new plastic cover for my dive computer--it's a tiny piece of plastic, just a millimeter or two thick, and yet it cost me $25.  I also spent my $30 theater gift card on snacks for my flight, since I didn't want to see any of the movies out right now.  I even ran into Gigi, one of the chefs from my liveaboard trip, on the street--it was his last day in Cairns, so I'd definitely call that lucky.  Now it's time to start packing!  Yikes.

My 21st birthday is in four days!  Unfortunately, nobody celebrates Thanksgiving here, and I'll be on a  dive boat for the big day, which means no drinking.  But I trust that I'll have plenty of folks ready to help me celebrate when I get home!  :)

Cheers and see you all soon,

Ashton

P.S.  Scroll down for lace monitor lizard photos and video!  I forgot to link to them on facebook but they're pretty cool.