SURFERS PARADISE, BRISBANE AND FRASER ISLAND

Heyyy guys. Lets get on it. Here's some more experiences, and the rest will be up soon as well. I'll just continue where I stopped I guess.

The next morning we got up, checked out and walked to the bus stop. Christina mixed some cereal in a bottle of milk we had.. Looked funny haha. We were then off to Surfers Paradise, a 5 hour bus trip away. When we arrived we were both chocked. I don’t know what I expected Surfers Paradise to be, but it was definitely not what it was. Coming from Byron Bay I thought it may have been something like that, but maybe a bit bigger, but that was far off! Surfers is a big city, or at least it’s got some really tall hotels – and that’s all there is. It’s very touristy, something I don’t like that much. The beach was gorgeous though, and there were plenty of stores to look at haha. We stayed at a place called Backpackers in Paradise, which was located very central and had a pool, weeee. Here we actually had a 20 people dorm, which more or less reminded us of a scout camp haha. But it was not bad at all, and it was a really nice place. We went for a stroll down to the beach, got a smoothie and just hung out. We made pasta with meat sauce for dinner, which was awesome, since it was the first real meal we’ve had in a while ish. It felt like it anyway, and it was really good. We stayed at the hostel that night and just chatted to the people in our dorm.

The morning after (I have no idea what the days were anymore, I’ve totally lost it…) we went for a run around surfers paradise. It was really nice to get some exercise again and I felt aesme after running about 7.5 km. After that we just went down to the pool to chill for the day. We also bought a bar crawl for the night, which included some free drinks and free entries at different clubs and stuff. For dinner we went and got pizza since we didn’t feel like cooking anything. This is bad thing about me and Christina traveling together. We both love food. We both love sweets. We both love ice cream. So we’re really bad at coming up with excuses to why we need this food and are allowed to buy it hahaha. Usually it is “we haven’t bought something in a while” – which usually also is a lie. But oh well, we’re on holiday. We got ready for the bar crawl, had a few drinks at the hostel bar, and played a fun drinking game with some other people from the hostel as well. We then headed off with about 100 other backpackers, and went to the first bar. Here we randomly ran into the English group from our dorm in Byron Bay, who we had no idea was there as well. It was quite fun, and we partied with them all night. We went to several bars and just had a really good time. On our way home we decided that we needed another pizza (see we’re even worse when drunk), so we got another one and went back to the hostel to eat it haha.

Next morning we had to check out and we didn’t feel too well.. We decided to stay at the hostel by the pool until my mom’s cousin Karen, who lives in Brisbane and who has offered us to stay with them, came and picked us up around 3 pm. Karen lives here with her husband Neil and their daughter Sophia. They came and picked us up and we drove to their place a bit out of Brisbane. I then spend an hour or so skyping with my great grandma and Karen’s parents, which was really nice. It’s hard to talk to her when you’re that far away, so it was really good to have a chat. We got chicken from the BBQ for dinner, and oh my… it was probably the best thing in the world. Proper food is so good when you’ve been living of crap for so long haha! Before we went to bed we got some washing done, which basically included our entire backpacks. And then… here we go… the best thing ever… we went to bed in a nice bed in our own bedroom with no snoring people (or more than that…). It was so good.

The next day was a Sunday, I remember that haha. We slept in a little, got up, got a nice breakfast and talked for a bit, and then we caught the train into Brisbane to see the city. We walked around for a bit looking at stuff, then walked down to Story Bridge and walked next to the river where you could really see Brisbane’s skyline – it was quite beautiful, but I must say that when you’ve experienced one big city in Australia the rest of them are quite similar. We went and had a nice lunch with a view of the river and the bridge, and after that we went to catch the train back home. Before dinner we went and had a swim in the pool attached to the place Karen and Neil are staying at, and we then had dinner with Karen and cute little Sophia.  

Monday we got up early to go to Australia Zoo (Steve Irwin’s zoo). It’s located a bit out of Brisbane and is kinda hard to get to without a car, so Karen and Neil let us borrow their beacjh car for the day, and we then drove up there. We spend the entire day in the zoo, which is huge. Christina got to feed kangaroos and we both got to hold a koala. I haven’t done that yet mainly because I didn’t want to pay for it but also because I don’t know if I think it’s good for the animals to be photographed like that all day. I don’t know, I just didn’t want to support it, but I did anyway. I excused it with the fact that koalas sleep most of the day anyway, so whether they sleep on a human or in a tree doesn’t matter thaaaat much I guess hah. I still don’t like the thought of it though. We watched a show with crocs and birds and just walked around and looked at all the animals. I really wanted to hold a red panda, like so badly, but apparently you couldn’t do that anymore :( we also watched a tiger show, and Australia Zoo is one of the only zoos in the world where they get so up close with their tigers and have such a strong bond with them. Oh my god, watching it my heart was bleeding. I want to do that so bad. I actually think training a tiger is my biggest dream. That is the ultimate dream job for me. I honestly felt like crying listening to how they raise them from 3 weeks old and build such a strong relationship with them. Also the only reason they have them in captivity is to raise awareness about tigers and how they are becoming extinct. There’s less than 3500 tigers left in the wild! Isn’t that crazy?! It makes me hate humans so much, how can be so greedy and cruel? I donated money and decided that at one point in my life I will fight for tigers, help raise them and raise awareness too. I would be so happy doing this and feel so good because I would wanna make a difference.

Okay enough about tigersss. We got to see the animal hospital they have attached to the zoo as well, and there was some nice quotes and stuff in there. There was a box which on the outside said “Open to see the most dangerous animal in the world”. When you opened it there was a mirror inside and you saw yourself. How good is that!? It’s so true.

We then had something to eat before we drove back to Karen and Neil’s place. We went for a swim again and then had another really nice dinner with the family. We then packed our stuff because we were on a bus at 7 am the next morning. So we had to get up at about 4.45. Neil took us to the bus terminal in the morning, and we then had about 5 hours in the bus until we would hit Rainbow Beach.

When we arrived at Rainbow Beach we quickly checked in and found our room. We then had a safety briefing for our Fraser Island tour at 2 pm. The trip to Fraser Island was the main reason we were in Rainbow Beach, which is a smaaaaaall town with nothing to do pretty much. There are two hostels that both have tours to Fraser Island, and because one was booked up we stayed in one hostel but were with the other hostel on the tour. We went to the briefing and got assigned the groups we were gonna drive in. Fraser Island is the biggest sand island in the world and on the tours you drive jeeps with 8 people in each across the beaches and the inland tracks, which are all sand. We had to watch a safety video that sucked, but we had to, and then we went to have a good nights sleep, since we were leaving at about 8 am the next morning. But that didn’t happen. We had a guy that snored so loud you would think he was about to die every two seconds, and we didn’t really sleep the entire night. Holy shit I’m so tired of snoring people. So so so sick of it.

The next morning we were off. There is 4 cars in each group and one of them is the lead car with your guide/driver in. We had a driver called Muzza and he was absolutely awesome haha. Our group was so good as well, we had two English guys, two English girls, two Swedish girls and then me and Christina. We had so much fun on that trip. First you caught the little ferry thingie over to Fraser and then we started driving. We stopped and had lunch, and then Christina was going to drive. These cars had gears as well so it was a bit harder than what we were used to, but we managed. Christina drove the first and hardest bit on the inland tracks. Then I took over and drove on the inland tracks as well, and it was so much fun! Like you really had to push the car and work the gears to not get stuck and it was just amazing. We went to a lake called lake Mckenzie, which was so beautiful. We stayed there for a bit swimming and just enjoying. The weather was good as well, so it was so good. We then drove back to the beach and continued to our camp of the night. The camp is where everyone else on the tours stays, so we were a lot of young people. We had to cook our own dinner and stuff in the groups and afterwards we had a few drinks and then went to bed early. The next morning we got woken up by 7 am, made our breakfast and then got going. We drove to the Maheno shipwreck that’s on the beach and then to Eli creek, where you float in the creek for a couple of hundred meters. We stayed there for a few hours and then went back to camp to have lunch. After that we drove to India head, which is a view point and is very beautiful. We continued to champagne pools, which are rock pools by the ocean. The waves break over them and fills them with beautiful, clear water. We swam in then for a bit as well, and just enjoyed the sun. Afterwards we drove back to the creek to have a rinse (these were our only showers for the 3 days haha). We headed back to camp, cooked our dinner (steak, it was so good), and then played drinking games and drank goon. Muzza took his car down to the beach and blasted music, so we all had a giant beach party in the moonlight. It was so good, and we danced in the sand all night haha.

The next morning we had to get up even earlier because we had to go back that day. Oh I forgot that my sleeping bag had been soaked wet from something the first day, so it was all nasty and I threw it out (yay, first thing thrown out!). In the morning I was standing next to our tent and was brushing my hair when I felt something on my arm. I brushed it away and looked down. Meh. Can you guess what it was? A huntsman. A giant spider. I almost had a heart attack. It wasn’t really big though, but it was big enough.. ewwww. Bvadr. We had our breakfast and left to go to a huge sand dune and a lake in the middle of the island. It was a 40 minute walk there and we were all hungover, so it felt so horrible. We stayed a bit at the lake and then walked back. We had lunch and then drove back to the ferry. Driving on the beach was so much fun as well, just going 100 km on sand in a four wheel jeep. Oh my, so good!

We both agreed that we had now had enough sand for the next many years. We had so much sand everywhere, it was crazy! When we came back we had a shower (it felt so good), a nap and a cheap burger at the hostel, before we went to the other hostel to hang with the people from our car and have a beer or two.

The next day we checked out and spend the day at the pool until we had to catch out bus at 3.30 pm. Then we had 2 hours in a bus, 4 hours waiting and then 12 hours in a bus again haha. So much bus riding. When we waiting for the second bus we had wifi and talked to people back home, which was nice. 

I'll post the last 1.5 weeks as soon as I have it written down....