Time seems to be going so quickly and we seem to be doing so many great things that I find myself chasing my blog! Thus, time for another update.

Although I was sad to leave Pete and Janey, I was also excited as we had finally been successful in finding our first couchsurfing (CS) hosts: Andy in Maroochydore (Love some of the names of the towns in Aussieland) and Brydie in Coolumn Beach. These places were very close to the well known, must see Noosa Heads so we decided to combine Noosa with some couchsurfing in the nearby towns.

On Monday morning we left our new found little nest of Burleigh Heads and headed towards Andy in Maroochydore. However, we could not by pass a visit to Steve Irwin's Australia Zoo on our way up. We spent the most enjoyable day seeing many different animals (including my new second favourite animal Koala's) We also got to see a croc show ( I was very glad that I was a good distance away and that there was a large fence between us and the crocs) and the most adorable otter feeding session! Man otters are cute, and very clever, especially when they are hungry. We spent basically the whole day at the zoo and enjoyed every moment. At the end of the afternoon we headed to our host Andy for our first ever couchsurfing experience as guests.

Andy lives with his son Michael in Maroochydore in the most clean and tidy house I have ever seen. Andy was the definition of a perfect host and probably the neatest and one of the most active people I have ever met. He cooked us some great dinners, showed us plenty of beautiful spots, took us walking (he took lex on a 5am 10 km walk whilst I mentally envisioned the walk in a horizontal state on the couch), took us cheese/wine/liquor tasting, took us to the local solbar for open mike night, and to two national parks. He also took us to the famous Eumandi Market which has all sorts of things on offer from clothes to food. I was even introduced to something called a willy washer (I'll leave that one to your imagination). Andy really pulled out all the stops to show us all sorts of great things and we really got to see some spots that we would not have even thought of otherwise! This is another reason why couchsurfing is such an awesome concept. Andy was great and really looked after us so we left his house on Thursday afternoon already knowning that we had been very lucky to have found such an awesome CS host.

On Thursday we headed to Noosa for a night. We booked a night in the historic YHA hostel, Halse Lodge. It is the oldest Queensland style house (or Queenslander as the aussies call it) in Noosa and it is therefore a must see and stay accomodation. We met some great people there including sisters from Melbourne who were keen to get us married so that they could throw us a party. However, we also met Bibi who already looked vaguely familiar when I introduced myself to her. Turns out we both studied in Maastricht and were part of sororities that shared the same Wednesday night student bar. I've got the song ' it's a small world after all' stuck in my head now. On Friday a group of us went for a walk around Noosa and a swim in the sea. We ended the day off with a burger before saying our goodbyes and heading to our second CS host Brydie.

We arrived at Brydie's house in the late afternoon. Brydie lives with her dad on the edge of the Coolumn bush. Hence, there is a resident koala (unfortunately we were not able to spot him), some resident possums, and about 1.2 million resident mosquito's who thought that they would give us a warm welcome when we got out of our car (bloody little vampires (pun intended)). We sort of ungracefully burst into Brydie's front door with backpacks and mosquito's in tow and sat down and covered ourselves in deet (mozzie repellent so strong that it eats your nail polish and blotches your skin) and anthisan. Brydie was the most warm person and her house was extermely cozy so it didn't take long before we felt right at home. We spent the evening and next day chatting to Brydie about many interest things and hearing about her extensive time travelling ( I had allot of respect for her). Seeing as it was also the easter weekend I decided that I wanted to cook a roast chicken (Anni/Niquey style) for everyone on our last night. We were just getting ready to serve our roast when another couchsurfer Jackson joined us, completing our easter feast with delicious ice cream and beer. We had the greatest evening sharing experiences and talking once again about all sorts of things! Once again how awesome is couchsurfing.

On Sunday we left Brydie for our next destination: Tin Can Bay. We decided it was now time to give tweedledee (for those not yet introduced, tweedledee is our tent) a bit of tlc again so we booked ourselves in for some camping. We spent two lovely nights in Tin Can Bay where we spotted thousands of crabs and went for a walk on the beautiful Rainbow Beach.

It was now time to do some travelling aussie Island style!

xoxo Jaime and Lex