Wednesday 10th February.

Although I wasn't properly asleep, we were woken up about 2am for a supposed 30 minute break at a services and to swap drivers. The current driver told us McDonald's was open across the road so me Kirsty and Julia walked over. It definitely wasn't open after we spent ten minutes trying to work it out, but it seemed they had a drive thru which was open but strictly no pedestrians allowed (we were going to try this). We went back to the petrol station and I ordered a thick shake after much thought about whether I wanted to spend $6 on it. Literally as i ordered it the new driver came in to the shop and shouted she was leaving. It had only been 20 minutes so I was stressing about waiting for my shake. Kirsty and Julia went back to the bus to make sure it didn't leave and I ran back with my shake, when the new driver then said I wasn't allowed to bring it on. Only screw top drink lids are allowed on apparently. This was new news to me so I was fuming I had to leave my drink behind! We finally got off the bus at 07:30 and had to get a taxi with a few others to the hostel. We were staying in Base which was merged with Nomads, so was really big and had two pools. A lot of our friends were staying here too. Check in wasn't until 1pm but they let us check in early and upgrade from a 6 bed to a 4 bed room for an extra two dollars each. Kirsty was really tired and weepy so we paid it and went to the room and slept for a few hours. We got up around lunch time we had a look for somewhere to eat. We both liked somewhere different so went off on our own for some food. I went to the cafe at the back of the magnum hostel and saw Emil that we met through Jacob back in Brisbane. I sat and spoke to him whilst I had my steak baguette then went to find Kirsty. We had to go to a travel shop to check in for our Whitsunday islands boat trip tomorrow, then walked over to the beach. It was the nicest beach I had seen so far but wasn't very big and was really hot. On the way back to the pool I bought a new bikini, since it's what I spend most my time in here, and was on offer for $22 so it would have been rude not to. The hostel asked us to move rooms when we got back as they needed to do maintenance on ours, so we packed back up and relocated. There were six beds but no one else was in the room. We sunbathed by the pool for the afternoon as there was a breeze unlike at the beach, and just relaxed. Later that evening we went to the bar next to the hostel called 'down under bar' and met back up with some of the Fraser Island crew. Vicky, Dave, Yael, and Adam were there. I also met up with Jess who we made friends with back in Noosa. Jess brought along her friends that she met in Fraser Island too, Des, Sanna and Koen. They were all originally travelling alone but the three of them had made friends at surf camp and were now travelling as a trio. Sanna and Koen are also from Holland as is Jess, and Des is from Austria. Me and Koen played against Jess and Des at pool and managed to beat them. I got round to speaking to everyone in the group and caught up with what they had been up to before I headed off to bed. It was another great night seeing old friends and meeting new ones.