Hey all,
Well we last wrote a week ago before our surfing lesson and I'm sure you've all been waiting with baited breath to hear how good we were... Well we were bloomin awful! Seriously terrible. Carl spent more time under the water drinking the ocean and I ended up with the contents of the sea bed in my bikini bottoms after the lesson! However we had a great time - all 4 hours of it - and I did get to stand up twice.. But I promptly fell straight off! Surfing is in fact incredibly difficult and we had huge waves too so I'm sure that's the only reason we were so bad! Mmm. The next few days our whole bodies ached!
From Byron Bay we headed to Surfers Paradise - or hell - as we re-named it. Bit like Magaluf or Benidorm. Not really a paradise although nice beaches. Only stayed 1 night and headed to North Stradbroke Island where we spent a couple of seriously relaxing days and nights doing very little. We camped in a great campsite on the beach and at 4pm every day there was a group of dolphins who fished off the beach. Pretty awesome.
Our next stop was Maroochydore and a trip to Australia Zoo to pay tribute to Steve Irwin. Having been to Singapore Zoo it didn't really compare but the World Famous Crocoseum was pretty incredible.
Noosa Heads was next - like the Kings Road by the sea - a bit too posh for us but we used it as a stopping point for a day trip to Fraser Island. Fraser Island is one giant sand bank but is nearly 130km long. You can only access it by 4WD and so we paid for a days trip in a great moon buggy with a group of 15 people. It was a great day from meeting the ferry to get over to the island by just driving along the beach and onto the ferry to swimming in Lake Mackenzie. This lake is a freshwater lake 100 metres above sea level and has no streams or waterfalls running into it. It is called a perch lake because the base of the lake is made up of vegetation which has been compressed over 100s of years and so the water sits on top of the vegetation on top of sand.. Quite incredible.
After Noosa we visited Bundaberg and got to watch hatchling turtles in Mon Repos at night. We saw 107 tiny weeny turtles coming up from their nest in the sand and making their way to the sea for the first time in their lives. Amazing. We also visited the Bundaberg Rum factory and had a few tastes... Quite nice for non-rum drinkers.
We arrived in Airlie Beach (the Whitsundays) on Thursday and booked ourselves on a tall ships trip from Fri-Sun on a 70ft boat called the Alexander Stewart. We departed at 830am on Friday and motored to Whitsunday Island in the rain... Pooring rain actually and we were all soaked through! Whitehaven Beach on the island is world famous for its white sand beach but sadly it was pretty grey and overcast when we got there... Day 2 we went for an incredible sail - speeds of up to 8.5 knots. We also tried snorkelling for the 1st time on a fringing reef off the Great Barrier Reef. It was one of the best things we have done so far... It really was like swimming through a giant aquarium and the fish were so close you could touch them. So colourful.
Day three we went for another snorkel and saw jelly fish and lots more bright coloured fish and a giant Wrass called George! Afterwards we set sail again and headed to shore. A great three days although the campervan felt like it was gently swaying last night!
We are currently staying in Airlie for another day or so and then we'll head North again towards Cairns. We're hoping to bypass Cairns and go to Port Douglas and Cape Tribulation before returing to Cairns and the end of our Wicked campervan rental... v sad.
Love to you all,
Scuba Carl and Sailin' Becs xx
