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It took me a while to write my first blog post, but here it is! After a great send off at the airport, the long waited for adventure started. I left The Netherlands 3,5 weeks ago and flew to Singapore. It was all a bit blurry at first as the jetlag had kicked in and I just had one day to see the city. Did a boat trip, and had a walk through the city with some people from the hostel. The heat was nearly unbearable after the last cold days at home, but I got used to it pretty fast. Even though I only had one day I did get a good impression of what Singapore looks like. After that I headed to the airport to catch my flight to Australia, finally!
It was another overnight flight, so when I finally arrived in Cairns, after 4 flights, 2 nights on a plane, and a total of 27 hrs travelling, I was pretty exhausted. Got picked up from the airport by the hostel van which brought me to my new 'home' for the next days. At first Cairns wasn't that nice, it was raining, I was tired. But already on my first day I met so many cool people (one of them who I am still travelling with now!). The hostel, called Travellers Oasis, was really an oasis to arrive to. I decided to book some tours with them, because 'that's the thing you do in Cairns' and did a snorkeling day trip to the Great Barrier Reef, with a Canadian girl from my room. The only down side was the weather, as it was raining and very windy which made the trip to the Reef very unpleasant, to say the least. By staring outside and listening to our Ipods we managed to not be sick, but for 90% of the boat this wasn't possible. There were even people there who didn't go into the water all day, as they were so ill! I was a little hesitant to go into the water at first. Picture this, open water, bad visibility, hundreds of fish waiting for you to jump in. As you may now, I am not that comfortable in the water, but I survived the boat trip, and paid for it already, so there was no way back. We had to wear stingersuits agains sting ray's and jelly fish, and they provided us with our snorkeling gear. Once I got into the water I was a lot more comfortable than on the boat, the amount of fish was unbelievable! I found Nemo AND saw a turtle so my day was complete.
Cairns is in the Northern part of Queensland and borders the Tablelands Rainforest. On my 4th day in Cairns I decided to do a trip called 'On The Wallaby'. I think it still is the funniest day in Australia so far. We got picked up by a van at 8 in the morning, being welcomed by the driver, o no excuse me 'Cousin Rohan', as he wanted to be called. We were all his fellow cousins, and he was taking us on a 'trip we would never forget' in the Queensland tablelands. You may think this sounds a little weird, that's what I thought too after being on 'Wally the Wonderbus', for 30 mins, but Cousin Rohan was a real entertainer. He even made us do karaoke on the bus, took us to Millaa Millaa waterfalls (think about the Herbal Essences shampoo adverts), did a rainforest walk, saw a cassowarie (endangered specie, google it), AND a python, which was 'just' lying on the side of the road. At the end of the day my stomach was hurting so much from laughing all day, that it was a good time to leave Cairns.
As I was still travelling by myself at the time, I had a Greyhound buspass. The funny thing about this bus pass is, that you keep bumping into other travellers who travel from North to South. Joel, a guy from my hostel, had the same plan as me, and also took the Greyhound nightbus to Townsville, from where we took a boat to Magnetic Island, or as the locals say 'Maggie Island'. We stayed in a place called Bungalow Bay Koala Village, and I managed to get my photo taken with a koala. Mission 1 accomplished. I also held a snake and kissed a croc, what more do you want? Went to the full moon party on the beach at night, with some more people we met in the hostel and already had to leave the next morning to catch our next bus. Tight schedule!
From Maggie Island we went to Airlie Beach, which was about 6hrs on the bus. Stayed in a hostel there for one night before getting on a sailing boat to sail the Whitsunday's for 3 days! The boat I was on was called Wings III and it was an 18month old catamaran with flat screens on the toilet. Who says backpacking has to be cheap? I got talked into doing a dive... I had been thinking about it before but I never thought I would do it. The instructor confinced me to try, as we were only in a group of 4 and would start on the beach, to get used to the equipment. I panicked a little, as when we went down to 10meters, my ears wouldn't pop and my mask kept filling up with water. When I got back up I thought I would never ever do it again, even though it gave me such a rush. But I reckoned, if I wouldn't do a seconded dive now, I would probably never do it again. So the next day I went again (we just had to let ourselves fall backwards from the boat though, no fooling around on the beach anymore!) and caught myself thinking how relaxed how was, and how beautiful the reef was. We encountered a turtle which was about 90cm long, sleeping on the coral, waking up and swimming in front of us for a bit. It was magical! The diving was quite expensive so I decided to snorkel for the rest of the trip, which was also very good. The crew on board was really nice and helpful and the food and the beds were amazing. I hadn't slept that well since I arrived! They took us to Whitehaven Beach, the beach you see on all Ozzie travel brochures and on the photo attached to this post. The sand was so fine I'd never seen something like that before. You could wash your hair with it!
After 3 days on the boat, I was reunited with my travelbuddies, all of us having difficulty walking straight after 3 days on the ocean. We had to catch another night bus so we killed the day in RAINY Airlie Beach with other people from our boats, and then it was off to Hervey Bay!
The trip to Hervey Bay was a little less fun, as it took us 15hrs on the bus to get there. When we arrived it was still raining and we were exhausted. Got to the hostel where we had a briefing on our Fraser Island trip, as that was the next trip planned! Fraser Island is a completely made of sand, but there is a rainforest, which makes it so unique. We had a 3 day safari with 4WD trucks. We were put into groups of 8, with whom you needed to buy all your food and drink for the three days (before the trip), and share your tents with. We instantly hit it off well with everyone in our truck, and our car got the name Dingo Dingo Partybus. After the Dingo's (wild dogs) which walk around the island and party bus as we were the truck with the most fun, obviously. We took driving in turns. Imagine me, to drive a right hand drive for the first time, on the sand which could be very rough at times. After I got the hang of it, it was such a rush to drive along the beach 80km/h, looking out over the ocean!! In our truck we had 4 guys, and 4 girls and we had everything very well sorted. The guys put up the tents and did the barbie, we did the rest of the cooking and the cleaning (although the guys actually did that the most of the time, we had a bit of a holiday). At night every truck made their dinner in the camp kitchen and sat out playing games and dancing. Although, we didn't have a shower for 3 days and the weather let us down on the second night, which caused our tent to collapse at 1AM while we were asleep, our moods were positive all the time. I think Fraser must have been one of the best things I've done so far, just because of the people I met and the fun we had.
You may think, reading this, that it was all a bit much to squeeze into 1,5 week. Well it wasn't, but I was pretty tired when we got back from Fraser. Everyone went their own ways again, but most of us will meet up in Sydney for New Years. Joel and I went to Noosa together, a bit of a sleepy town just 3hrs north of Brisbane. We stayed there for 2 days basically doing nothing, also because the weather wasn't permitting us to go to the beach or do a walk. Walked around the town a bit, but sat in the hostel mostly waiting for the rain to stop, which didn't. The hostel was really chilled out, it reminded me of Travellers Oasis, which didn't make it a bad place to just rest for a bit.
On Tuesday December 7th we took the bus to Brisbane, also known as Brissie. We checked into the hostel and went for a stroll around the city, even following a route from Lonely Planet (they would be so proud of us). Met up with 2 girls from our Fraser Island tour, Jenny and Amber, who were also staying in our hostel. Had a few drinks and went to bed in time as Aniek was arriving the day after!!
It was so good to see Aniek, especially as what happened the days before, but her bag didn't come through which was a bit annoying. It was a long day for Aniek as she arrived at 7 in the morning, so we dragged her through town, making her stay awake. We took the City Cat, which is a ferry that runs on the river through Brisbane, and chilled at the Lagoon as the sun was finally out!! The three of us made dinner in the hostel (food is so expensive here!) and Aniek managed to stay up till 9.30, good girl ;)
On Thursday the 9th, Aniek and I were able to pick up our car, which we rent untill we get to Sydney. We were so happy this day had finally come, as we'd been looking forward to driving through Australia for so long! We drove to Australia Zoo (Steve Irwin's home), and discovered our airconditioning was broken. This is really a pain in the backside as we didn't have time to wait in Brissie to get it repaired there. The day in the Zoo was really good, and Aniek got her photo taken with a koala. Again, mission accomplished.
Our first drive down the coast was to Surfers Paradise. Jenny, the English girl I knew from Fraser, came with us. We stayed in Surfers for two days and just hung out on the beach, because that is wat you do in Surfers. You can compare Surfers to a Spanish coastal town, like Salou, as it is all party party party at night. Nobody needed to tell us that twice, so naturally we joined everyone from the hostel to go clubbing on the first night. The second day we had rain again and just chilled and had an 'organizational' day, as we call it (trip planning, washing, tidying up etc).
From Surfers we drove down to Byron Bay, which is a coastal town in the state of New South Wales, well known for its good surf and night life. Went out on the first night and had another beach day to work on our tans (has to be done). Made our own barbie on the beach! We decided to go for surf lessons this morning and we had a 'private lesson' with the four of us (Jenny, Aniek, Joel & me). We all did pretty well and I hope to get the photos up soon. We're staying in Byron for another 3 nights before heading further down the coast for more HEAPS of fun. Will try to put some photos up next time, but untill then please look at my photos on facebook! Oh, and as this is my first post, please let me know if you have any comments!
- comments
Agnes :) AWESOME XXXXXX
Loes Gooood going girl! Veel plezier xxx
yo love love love it and a little bit jealous off course :)