Geoff met Amanda, Anne and I the next day for Brekkie (that's Australian slang for breakfast). Aussies are all pretty obsessed with their breakfast, in case you missed that from the earlier blog entry. Geoff told us the entire history of Fraser Island before walking us down to the colorfully sandy beach that gives Rainbow Beach its name. Talk about going above and beyond on his tour guide duties! I'm pretty sure we made a lifelong friend. We snagged our new f...

We awoke from our second straight night in a tent. I really miss having my own camping gear by this point…who says that you can't be comfortable while roughing it? After breakfast, Geoff attempts to "rally the troops" to pack up camp. Before he finishes his sentence, I already know that this is going to take a good amount of time. Nearly everyone in the group (with the exception of Anne, of course) looks half dead and ready to curl up into a ball for a lo...

Because of my past experience facilitating groups, it has been entertaining to observe different tour guides and see what kind of group dynamics they can create. Keep in mind, I dealt with troubled youth but guys like Geoff deal with obscenely drunk backpackers with serious language barriers. We were his 88th group and apparently the first 87 groups had eaten up all his patience! I commend his no nonsense approach! After all, he's a tour guide - not a careta...

We woke up with anticipation for the adventure to come: heading out to camp on Fraser Island! We started the day with a frantic search for our car keys, but since we were in such a time crunch before heading out to the island, we needed to give most of our luggage to the hostel for storage until we returned from Fraser in three days. We were thinking that we'd need to get a locksmith as the keys may have fallen into the trunk after locking up the car. Regardles...

Since we'd unpacked most of our gear in our Agnes Water condo (to make it feel more like home), we had to once again extend our check-out time (which we haven't had any difficulty doing anywhere we are), before heading to our next destination: Rainbow Beach. It was supposed to be a 4.5 hour drive, but with all the construction going on, we arrived at our hostel after 6 hours - late for our Fraser Island orientation (which we'd have to make up in the morning). S...