Hi everyone,

Here is the much belated blog for Mooloolaba, our next destination after our visit to Jack and Lena's. Needless to say we were reluctant to leave the luxuries we had after our stay with them and return to the backpackers hostels. We hadn't heard much about Mooloolaba but it was recommended by Jack and Lena so we thought we would give it a try since we had to make the decision to miss out Brisbane due to the floods. We arrived in Mooloolaba early afternoon on the greyhound and were dropped at our hostel door, the only backpackers in the whole place. The hostel was nice with free brekkie, surf boards, kayaks and international phone which was a bonus. We unloaded our bags in our room which was a 4-share but we had the whole room to ourselves during our four days there. Quite a few of the people on our floor worked at the hostel and as we found out over the next few days they were messy, dirty and loud!

We decided to have a walk down to the marina which was lovely with all the boats and yachts by the water's edge, and then we had a walk to the beach and down to the pier. A few of the locals were fishing and we sat down on the rocks at the end of the pier overlooking the sea. We had only been there 5 minutes when we noticed wild dolphins jumping in and out of the water. It was great watching them and then they swam out of sight after 10 minutes. Although I was unaware of this and thought I was watching loads of dolphins for the next half hour, I then said to Adam wow this is amazing I can't believe how many dolphins there are! Adam starting laughing and said what you on about, turns out what I thought were still the dolphins were actually just waves breaking far away haha I should of gone to Specsavers!

The sun started setting so we decided to have a walk back along the beach front then finished with a visit to trusty Coles to stock up on food! Next day we made full use of the free kayaks and thought we would take a relaxing ride through the rivers. The river was only a minutes' walk away, it was the longest walk of my life I've never carried anything so heavy and now Adams muscles have disappeared he was even finding it a struggle haha we dragged it to the riverside and just about managed to get both of us in without tipping over although we nearly drowned in it and were soaking wet before we started. The current was pretty strong and at first we were struggling to get ourselves anywhere. I was getting soaked by Adams paddle and asked him to oar a different way, he said it was just the way the oar worked and get used to it, I splashed him he had the camera and got mad so splashed me back, a few profanities were exchanged and to cut a long story short I ended up in the back of the kayak with the nose pulled up on the bank side and Adam saying he was going back to the hostel haha after about 10 mins we tried again and enjoyed a paddle down the canals and looking at all the posh houses with boats outside choosing which one we would want to live in. That night we had a laugh about our little 'fallout' and had a BBQ on one of the outside BBQs near the beach front.

The following day we went down to the beach, Adam with surfboard in tow. We spent the day chilling out there and then had a stroll down to the other end which has a brand new boardwalk area with BBQ facilities and loos with a view over the beach. Adam went straight in to try them out! That evening a truck load of Koreans arrived at the hostel on a tour and we had a laugh watching them. It was great being able to use the phone to talk to Hails and Mam too!

Then the ultimate day came......... The Steve Urwin Australia Zoo! It was brilliant made even better as we found a voucher in a travellers mag so got 20 dollars off our tickets each and a free photo of us with one of the animals. We had high expectations after the zoo in Melaka with free roaming monkeys and we weren't disappointed. The kids had gone back to school which meant nearly empty zoo and no crying kids woo hoo. We hand fed the elephants a few times and went to the good old Crocoseum show! All the crocs at the zoo had been caught by Steve from lakes and brought to the zoo for different reasons; one named Mosman had eaten some body's dog when taking it for a walk so was brought to the zoo. My favourite story was that Steve had named his daughter Bindy after his favourite croc Bindi not the other way round haha. There was a massive wall with Steve Urwin tributes on it and when I found Adam there he actually had tears in his eyes haha I couldn't believe it this is the second time I have ever seen him shed a tear (the first being when he watched the film click), he will deny he was emotional but I could see he had to take a moment to gather himself haha Our best part of the day was feeding the Kangaroos, a couple had baby Joeys in their pouches too. I had to tell Adam I had a Kit Kat chunky for him in my bag just to get him out of the Kangaroo land. We were on a high still that night so splashed out on some burgers for the new BBQ area which was superb! It was a nice cool evening and after we had eaten we lay on the grass next to the beach watching the waves and other families enjoying picnics on the boardwalk.

The next day we packed up and checked out. We strolled back to the beach for some more sunbathing and purchased some new bargain sunnies since our Malaysian buys had crumbled. We finished off our trip with a Maccy D's 50 cent ice cream special and boarded the greyhound early afternoon for our next destination...Noosa! Mooloolaba was beautiful and we didn't want to leave but were excited about our next stop.

Love Adam and Louise xxx