An Epic Few Weeks!

G’day all,

Firstly I hope you all had a very merry Christmas and I hope you have wonderful New Years celebrations in the next few days. It has been less than two weeks since my last blog but so much has happened in the last two weeks, so consider this my Christmas present to you!

The day after my previous blog (16th December), I was up early to catch a bus out of Byron Bay to head to a place called ‘Spot X’ for Surf Camp!! We got to surf camp around midday and we were shown around the place by the stereotypical surfer ‘dude’. The way he walked, talked and looked was exactly what you would imagine when thinking of an Australian or American surfer. After our brief tour we had an excellent lunch and then the fun was to begin.

Following lunch we were told to go and get ready and then meet back outside. We had about a half an hour theory lesson where we were told about how to find the perfect wave and what to do if you got caught in a ‘rip’. We then headed to the beach where we were given an hour lesson on the beach of how to ride a wave, stand on the board and taught how to fall off the board. After the beach surf lesson we were finally allowed to enter the sea with our boards and battle with the waves. I’m sure you’ve all been into the sea and been battered by waves, but trying to get out to sea with waves not only crashing against you but against your board which is attached to your ankle means that it takes a lot of time and effort to get out to a suitable point to ride or attempt to ride a wave back into the beach. The first time I attempted to ride the wave I managed to stand on the board for about one second before losing my balance and falling off in dramatic fashion.

This continued for about 10 more attempts and about an hour into our time in the water I managed to stand on the board and ride a wave for about 10 seconds. I went out and tried again was successful another few times. However, instead of it coming naturally to me, after I had surfed a few waves I began thinking too much about what I was doing and I kept falling off. By the end of the 3 hour session, I was consistently standing on the board. I have to say that surfing was so much fun and being able to stand on a board and ride a wave is so satisfying but it is such hard work, so if you ever try it be prepared to be exhausted by the end of the session! After the surf lesson, we had a huge dinner and I had some drinks with some boys from Bristol who were on my bus and unfortunately all Arsenal fans, so as you can imagine there was a lot of football banter that night!

Standing on a board!

The majority of the next day was spent on a bus going from surf camp to Sydney. I got into Sydney at about 6pm, made some dinner, had a few drinks with some of the people in the hostel and then waited for my friend who is at Nottingham with me and was also studying in Australia to arrive. As soon as he arrived, we went to bed so that we could be up early the next day to go and have a walk around the city.

On the 18th December, we weren’t up as early as we planned to be but we still headed into the city centre at a decent hour. Our first stop was the famous Paddy’s Market where you go to get all your cheap souvenirs and your fake football shirts and clothing etc. It was an interesting experience and for a period of time I forgot I was in Australia with the amount of oriental people there was walking around the market but it is situated in the heart of China town Sydney, so I guess that was to be expected. After spending minimal money in the market, Shravan (my mate from Notts) and I headed for a rather more cultured experience of the Powerhouse Museum. The entry fee was only $5 and after seeing the museum, I did feel a slightly guilty for paying so little for a really awesome museum. There wasn’t any particular theme to the museum, there really was a bit of everything and it was all very interesting! After a few hours in the museum, we went and got some lunch walked around the city for a few hours before coming across the Sydney Aquarium. I personally love aquariums and so I was pretty excited about this and it didn’t disappoint. Obviously there were loads of tanks with all your usual fish that you would find at any aquarium but there was two sections of the aquarium where they had built an underpass under massive tanks one containing loads of different types of sharks, turtles and stingrays which was awesome and the other containing two huge dugongs amongst other fish!!! From the aquarium we headed back to our hostel, had a very satisfying Indian meal for dinner before chilling out in the hostel and then off to bed.

The following morning (19th December), we were up early and headed into the city. Our first stop was the incredible Sydney Opera House and the equally incredible Sydney Harbor Bridge. Our first view of both of these global icons was from the train station where we got off the train and the only way I can describe the site of them was jaw-dropping. We walked around the harbor for a while and from every angle the Opera house looks slightly different! To be honest, I think the bridge is a little underrated and I personally think it is more astonishing than the Opera House.

We went to the Botanical gardens situated right next to the opera house and all around the gardens you can see the opera house and the bridge and as I said before they look different from every angle. The Botanical Gardens were actually beautiful but it was over shadowed a week or so later by the one in Christchurch (Ill write about it later in the blog).

After a few hours of soaking up the atmosphere in the harbor we headed to the place of the first European settlement in Sydney a place called the Rocks. But before that I dragged Shravan into the Contemporary Art Gallery. I personally love modern art but not when I have someone asking me ‘how is that classified as art?’ every two minutes! We got the Rocks grabbed a bite to eat and then walked around. When you get to the Rocks the European influence is very obvious; the streets are narrow with cobbled paving and the buildings have a very European and Italian feel to them! We stumbled across a very cool market in the Rocks, unlike Paddy’s market everything at this market was authentic and hand made and stuff that you probably wouldn’t find anywhere else in the world! We killed a lot of time here before heading to Darlington Harbor for a ‘pre-Christmas’ fireworks display and if that was anything to go by, then I’m very jealous of anybody who is in Sydney for New Years eve!!

The following two days were rather more relaxed than the previous two. We met up with one of my mates from college, had lunch with him one day and dinner with him the other and walked around the city some more. We also went to the famous Manly Beach which was really cool but far too commercial for my liking and it was slightly overcast the day we were there which wasn’t great!

A lot of people have very mixed opinions about Sydney and I was pretty skeptical about it before I went there, but after 5days there I fell in love with the city. When I first got there I was pretty over whelmed with the hustle and bustle of being back in a big city but I soon felt at home there! However, there were far too many Indian and Asian people there which I hadn’t really encountered for the 6months prior to Sydney. I still have Melbourne to visit, so I’ll give you the verdict on the Melbourne or Sydney question in a few weeks time!

On the 22nd of December, exactly a month in to my travels, I left Australia to go to the butt of all Australian jokes, New Zealand! I was up really early to catch my flight and got on board the plane only for the plane to wait an hour on the ground to take off! Once again on a Qantas flight, the service was awesome but they screwed up my veggie meal and compensated for the screw up by giving me a business class meal! I got into Christchurch on the South Island of New Zealand and got on the bus from the airport to meet one of dad’s cousins (Bindi) who I would be staying with for a few days. I met her and we went for a little drive around the city and then just out of it to the fabulous mountain ranges and then to a nearby lake and at that point I realized that my trip to New Zealand was to be the most scenic two weeks of my life! It was so nice to sleep in my own room for a night and get some home cooked Indian food.

My first view of New Zealand

The next morning I woke up feeling very well rested and then headed into the city centre! I walked around for a bit, before I found a market. I walked around there for an hour or so before having an amazing meal at a vegetarian restaurant. From lunch I went to a museum and an art centre which were both pretty mediocre but then my day was made when I entered the Botanical Gardens. I’m not really into flowers or anything but these gardens were beautiful and I spent two hours there and took almost 100 pictures! I got home to another lovely Indian meal, I chilled out with Bindi and then got an early night for the start of my tour the next day.

The Botanical Gardens

The next morning I was up early for the start of a tour around some of the South Island. We set off from Christchurch and headed for a place called Franz Joseph. On our way, our first stop was to a Lord of The Rings filming site. It was a part from the second film when they were going to Helms Deep in preparation for the big battle and they were attacked by the people on horses. At the end of the scene Aragon falls of a cliff but survives! It was pretty cool because I actually recognized the set(as shown in the next picture)!

Lord of The RIngs site

We get to our hostel after a long but beautiful drive, freshen up and then go for dinner at the hostel restaurant and that was the moment when a week of stupid drinking began! It was Christmas Eve and the bar was packed so naturally we were all drinking a lot and with me being the youngest by some way in the group I was always encouraged to drink. That night there was a pool tournament in the bar which I decided to enter. It wasn’t your normal game of pool; they called it ‘Killer Pool’. I won’t bore you with the rules but basically I came third out of 22 people and as the top two didn’t have time to take the prize, I was given this $250 cannyoning trip in Queenstown for free! When the bar shut we were taken by one of the guys that worked there to see some glow worms. I’m sure you have all heard of them and probably have no idea what they are, I guess the best way to describe them is as if someone has put hundreds of tiny but very bright fairy lights deep into a bush.

A reflective Lake

On Christmas day, we were up early for Christmas breakfast and then by 11am we were drinking! I had bought a crate of 24 beers and my aim was to finish them off on Xmas day which I did with ease and it wasn’t until I was given two shots of vodka by random Polish guys that I felt wasted! Christmas day was very odd but I had a very good day with the people that I was with. We had a barbeque and a water fight on Christmas day and we were outside the whole day, how many of you can say you did that for Xmas ’09?! We went to bed at like 1am after a pretty good day.
The next morning, I was up early feeling a little hung over but I had to be up early to go for a hike on the Franz Joseph glacier! We got our hiking equipment and then headed to the glacier. Where we got dropped off it was about a 40minute walk to the glacier and the closer we got to it, the more spectacular it looked! We started with a difficult walk up on to the glacier and then we had to put our ‘cramp-ons’ on to give us grip on the ice. We walked around the glacier for 6hours in total and covered about 12km. The glacier was beautiful and because it was raining the whole time we were on it, it made the glacier look a very vibrant blue colour. We walked through some very narrow crevasses and climbed some steep ice stairs which our guide carved out for us as we walked around it. The walk on the glacier was amazing despite the poor weather but I just feel that when we were walking around on it, we were so cautious about how we were walking that we didn’t really have time to soak up and appreciate just what we were walking on! As soon as we got off the glacier, we got onto the bus and headed for an over night stop in a town called Makarora. We got to the town, had dinner and we ended up in the bar until 2am getting drunk for the third consecutive night! On the Glacier!

The next day we were up early and we departed the town to go to Queenstown, the adventure capital of the world. It was a long drive with some spectacular views and we stopped many times to have a look at the incredible scenery! We got to Queenstown, freshened up and went for dinner. We had some drinks at this place and we were all considering leaving until one of the barmaids picked up the microphone and sang the most amazing acoustic version of Alicia Key’s ‘falling’ and I kid you not, the whole place stopped what they were doing to listen to her. She carried on singing for about an hour going from Bob Marley to Eric Clapton to AC DC, she was amazing and as soon as she stopped the place emptied! I had a relatively early night of 1am so I could be well rested for what would become the most exhilarating experience of my life the following day!

On the 28th December, i woke up early even though I didn’t need to but I was just too excited to sleep I was sky diving from 15, 000 feet that day – the highest legal tandem sky dive in the world! We got to the sky dive centre, signed our lives away and then headed to the site of the skydive. I was so excited but I was made to wait about 2 hours watching other people land until it was my turn to go up! After two hours they called me in, got me prepared and told me how the jump was going to happen and then we were off in the plane. The plane was tiny and cramped but the whole way up I was excited and not nervous at all (my instructor told me I was the most relaxed person he had jumped with in months!) and I was happily looking out the window as the plane climbed higher and higher above the mountains! The first girl jumped out at 12,000 feet and that was pretty high but I went 3,000 feet higher. When my time came to jump, I got to the door took up the position I was told to and didn’t really know what to expect. My camera man was out of the plane but hanging onto the side of it, my instructor started a count down but instead of finishing it, he jumped on two instead of three!

We exited the plane and immeadiately did a spin and then he told me to spread my arms. It was an amazing feeling, you’re falling so fast through the air (about 200 km per hour) but you don’t have the chance to think about it. The force underneath you feels like when its really windy and you’re walking into the wind, so its pushing against you but you’re moving too quickly for it to stop you or blow you away. Then all of a sudden, the instructor opens the parachute and it feels like you’ve stopped but really you’ve just decelerated big time! The journey on the parachute goes quite quickly but the views you see while you’re parachuting down are incredible! You have snow capped mountains on one side, mountains with forests on the other and a massive lake between them! After the skydive I was buzzing the whole day and even doing my laundry at the hostel I was still buzzing! The sky dive was easily the most amazing thing I have ever done in my life!
The next day (29th December) was rather different to the previous one. I was up early for a day trip to a place called Milford Sounds in ‘Fiordland National Park’. I won’t go into detail because I’ve probably bored you enough with this long blog but it was beautiful. The dive there was unbelievably scenic and then when we got on the boat to cruise around Milford Sounds, it was amazing. The clouds were really low down and covering the mountains and in places, it looked as if the clouds were coming down the mountains like an avalanche in slow motion (see below)! On the cruise we saw loads of dolphins and seals and despite it being very windy, it was well worth the long drive there and back!

So there you have it guys, my longest and probably most exciting blog entry to date. There will probably only be two more blogs now because I’m home in just about 2 weeks now! Have a wonderful New Years and see you in 2010!

Mihir

Sun, Sea, Sand and...BEER!!

G’day all!

It’s only been like two weeks since I wrote the last blog but so much has happened over the past two weeks that I have a feeling that this is going to be a rather long blog entry!

Last time I left you, I was in Airlie beach, staying in a rather nice hostel and I had been drinking with some Irish guys from my Oz Experience bus! The following day I woke up after the best nights sleep I’ve had so far because I was alone in a dorm for a night meaning no people leaving the dorm at silly times waking me up! Most of the day was boring just sorting out laundry and stuff for my Whitsundays trip. However, in the afternoon I had a voucher for a free didgeridoo lesson which I thought I may as well use. It was so much fun and I’m glad I did it. I have to say though that it really is as hard to play as it looks! I managed to play it with ease but the breathing technique is so difficult and completely different from playing any wind instrument! After the lesson, I went for a well earned beer with some of the guys I met at the lesson and inevitably one beer turned into many! However, I had to call it a night fairly early as I had to be up early to get on board a boat which would become my home for the next three days!

The following morning (1st December) I was up early and got on the bus to the port to board the ‘Southern Cross’ which was a former racing sail boat. We were given some fruit when we got on and then we introduced ourselves to each other. After about an hour of being on the water, we turned off the engine and put up the sails (which was pretty hard work) and went for a sail for a few hours. As I mentioned earlier, this boat used to be a real racing boat, so once the sails were up one side of the boat would tilt upwards which is the side we would sit on. We got to our first destination and went snorkeling around the reef for just over an hour. This snorkeling experience was actually better than the one I had in the Cairns section of the Great Barrier Reef! The coral itself was beautiful but there was so many more fish here and I saw and swam with two sea turtles! As soon as we finished the snorkel, we were given a much needed lunch before sailing around more of the islands until we reached our evening stop off. We anchored for the night and were given a ‘snack ‘ of nachos and then an amazing Thai curry for dinner! We were pretty lucky that the girl working on board our boat loved cooking and was very good at it. After dinner, we cranked up the music, got out the beers and had a small party on board!

The next morning, we were up early largely due to the sun and how hot it got where we were sleeping but also because the skipper decided to turn on the engine of the boat at 6am! We had breakfast and then set off to go to what is often called the most beautiful beach in the world, White Haven beach. I have to say that the beach did not disappoint. We got there and first went to a lookout point over the beach and the colour of the water was so unbelievably clear and next to it was the whitest sand that I have ever seen! We went down from the lookout point onto the actual beach and it was more like walking on talcum powder than sand. The sand at White Haven Beach is 98% silica so it is extremely fine and pure making it incredibly soft and it felt so good to walk on. The water itself was so clear and there were stingrays swimming around with us (apparently there was sharks too but none of us saw any). We spent a fairly long time at White Haven and the only thing that ruined paradise was the amount of boats that got there at the same time we did, the beach was way too crowded to fully appreciate it!

We left the beach and got back on our boat to have lunch and then move on to another place to go snorkeling. Once again, this was an amazing snorkel experience because we saw a reef shark, which are harmless to humans but the sheer size of it and the way it swam next to us was a breath taking moment. Following these two amazing experiences, we got back on the boat and sailed to our evening stop, had dinner and then spent the evening drinking! We were up much later than the previous evening but eventually everyone retreated to bed so I had to sleep on my shelf. I say shelf because my bed was literally like a shelf on the wall, I was so close to the roof that everytime I turned over my arms and even my head sometimes would touch it, but that’s all part of living on a boat!

On our third and final day, we were up early again and we went for an early morning snorkel where we saw hundreds of different types of fish but the water was a little cold in the morning so we didn’t stay in there for too long! The rest of the day we spent sailing and the skipper gave me a chance to drive the boat for a pretty long period of time! We got back in the late afternoon and after freshening up and having a real shower (on the boat we were allowed only a 30second shower in cold water) I met up with the people on our boat for dinner and some drinks. I think that I got very lucky with the group that I had on the Whitsundays because everyone really got on with one another and everyone made the effort to talk to different people so it worked pretty well! Most of the people on my boat left early from dinner as we all had buses to catch the next day but I stayed on with a guy from my hostel for what was meant to be one pint but became 4jugs of beer instead!

The next morning I was up pretty early again because I had to catch a bus. It was pretty weird because for that whole day I felt like I was still on a boat and walking on land felt really strange! Anyway, the 4th December was a pretty boring day because it was spent on a 10hour bus journey from Airlie Beach to a place called Kroombit which is a compulsory stop for those on the Oz Expereince bus. It was a stop that I was pretty skeptical about too because it was a stay on a farm/cattle ranch where we had to do certain activities. However, I was to be proved wrong by Kroombit and I shouldn’t have made an assumption about it before I got there!

Everyone got to Kroombit feeling a little tired and jaded after this marathon bus journey so we were given an hour to chill out before we had to do anything. We were then served dinner where the non-vegies got a horrible looking meal that they all loved and I was given some good old tortellini! After dinner, we were taught how to ‘crack a whip’ which I managed to do pretty successfully and then everyone was given a chance to ride the mechanical bull they had there. As much as I would have loved to do this, I had to say no because of my back and neck injury! After the bull riding, some of the younger staff from the farm decided it was a good time to play drinking games. I was horrified by this not because I don’t enjoy drinking games but because I always seem to lose them (people at Nottingham will vouch for that). However, we played a game called ‘flip cup’ which involved downing a drink and then flipping a cup and hoping it will land the right way up and then the next person on your team can drink, it turned out that I was the hero twice and the team was chanting my name (well It was ‘Lennon’ because that’s what was on the back on my England shirt that night!). After this most people got stupidly drunk but I just headed off to bed and I’m glad I did!

The next morning (5th December) we were woken up at 5.30am by the owner of the farm revving his quad bike outside our rooms telling us that we were all ‘lazy and he had been awake for an hour already’. Luckily we were given breakfast straight away otherwise there would have been several angry people on the Oz Experience bus! After breakfast, we had some activities that were arranged for us including clay pigeon shooting with a shotgun which was awesome and then the very interesting activity of capturing and branding a goat. We were put into teams of three and put in an empty pen, one of our team members had to go into another pen which had about 100goats and shepheard it out of there. We then had to pick up the goat and place it on it’s side and then had to pretend to brand it with a branding rod which was NOT hot! Luckily for me, I had this crazy English rugby player in my team who ran straight into the pen with goats, picked one out and flipped it. All I had to do was ‘brand’ the goat while the girl in our group did nothing! Our time was by far the quickest out of all the groups but it would be wrong of me to take any credit for it! It was definitely thanks to Richie that we won. After this rather strange but fun experience, we headed off on another long bus journey to Rainbow Beach.

Once again I was feeling pretty tired after this long journey but luckily for me there was a familiar face waiting for me at my hostel in Rainbow Beach and she even made dinner for me! I met up with Ali, a mate I had made in Perth and considering it was the last time that I was going to see her in Australia we decided to make it an epic night and we both ended up getting pretty wasted and poor Ali had to get up early the next morning to catch a bus to another place!
The next day (6th December) I intended on having a lie in but everyone in my dorm left at 6.30am to go to Fraser Island and they made so much noise! The air conditioning was also on a timer and it had switched off for the day already so the room was baking and there was no chance I was getting back to sleep. I got up feeling a little worse for wear or ‘sensitive’ as some may call it and after a shower I went for breakfast with a guy I had met the previous night. I had a free day in Rainbow Beach that day, but there is absolutely nothing to do there, the town is just one street of over priced shops targeting the tourists like me who are only there to go to Fraser Island. I had a safety meeting in the afternoon about our trip to Fraser Island the following day and I met the 10 other people who I would be spending the next three days with. The safety meeting itself was extremely boring but the guy that owns the car rental company (I’ll explain about the cars in a minute) was hilarious, he was an extremely eccentric Aussie guy who had some classic lines which I have started saying now. I don’t really know how to describe this guy but he truly was one of a kind!

From the safety briefing, I went to a huge sand dune near the hostel. It was pretty odd because you could walk from one end of the dune to the other and at one end was the sea and at the other was a forest. We stayed here and watched yet another beautiful sunset before heading back to the hostel for a $5 dinner! I had dinner with two of the girls in my Fraser Island group who I ended up becoming really good friends with and hopefully when we’re back in the UK we’ll all meet up! After dinner I had a few beers and then hit the sack early because I had to be up early the next day.

Ok, before I describe the actual Fraser Island trip, let me tell you a bit about how the trip is meant to work. The day before you head off to Fraser Island which is the largest sand island (meaning that there is nothing but sand here, no mud etc yet vegetation still grows) in the world, you have this safety briefing where you are put into groups of 11. Everyone who has been to Fraser Island will tell you that how good or bad your experience is purely depends on the group you have because you do pretty much everything together and you have to work as a team because there is no tour guide with you. In my group, there were 9 girls, myself and one other guy but we seemed to be the youngest group of the 5 that were setting off the following day. In your group of 11, you’re given a big 4 wheel drive jeep and everything you’ll need for the trip – food, tents etc. The company give you an itinerary but it is up to you and the group whether or not you stick to it, but once on the island it is about you and your group!

So the next morning, we were up early and after a free breakfast of pancakes we were ready to go by about 7am but we didn’t actually leave until about 10am because we had to load up the car and then the drivers had to get taught how to use the car. As much as I love driving, I wasn’t allowed to drive because I’m not 21 so the insurance wouldn’t have covered me to drive on the island. Finally, we left Rainbow Beach and got on a ferry to Fraser Island. It didn’t take long for the 5 cars to separate (there were 4 other groups leaving at the same time as us) but eventually we ran into them (not literally because that would have been a disaster) again on the beach when a jeep full of Irish people had lost a wheel… It could only happen to the Irish! We felt bad for them for about 5minutes before we headed off to Eli Creek for some lunch and we soon learnt what being on a sand island meant. Sand gets everywhere and we were literally having SANDwiches for lunch! After a few meals there, you get used to the crunch of sand in whatever you’re eating!

After lunch we stopped off at a really cool ship wreck on the beach before heading to a place called Indian Head. This was a really cool lookout point at the top end of the island where you could see into the water and see stingrays, sharks and turtles swimming in the sea! We spent about half an hour here admiring the scenery before heading off to find our campsite and set up camp for the night. We got to the campsite and it was getting dark pretty quickly so we had to put up the tents quickly and get cooking asap. By the time we had dinner it was pitch black and the only light source we had was one torch between 11 of us! After dinner we started playing drinking games and a lot of the group got pretty drunk. We met an Irish guy from one of the other groups who started doing impressions of Merv (the guy that owned the cars) and he was hilarious! Most ofour group went to bed early (probably the smart decision) but four of us stayed up and went and sat on the beach under the stars for an hour or so.

The next morning, we were up really early because of the sun rising and how hot it got in the tents by about 5am! We had breakfast, packed up the campsite and headed towards Lake Mackenzie where we would spend the day. The drive to Lake Mackenzie was amazing, it was through really thick soft sand, something that most people struggled to get through but we had a Dutch girl in our group who was amazing at driving through the soft sand and got us through it with minimal problems. A lot of other people struggled with the drive and I know of some groups that never made it to Lake Mackenzie, which meant they missed out big time. I said earlier about how amazing White Haven Beach was but honestly, I think Lake Mackenzie was more astonishing. It was a lake high up on the island with a beach and the clearest and purest water I have ever swam in. The water is so pure that you can drink it with no dramas. We spent the whole day at Lake Mackenzie and to be honest, I could happily go there everyday for a week because it was so amazing!
We left Lake Mackenzie in the late afternoon and headed to our campsite for the night. The drive back was harder than the drive there and we did get stuck twice and we had to push the jeep out of the sand which was fun but hard work! We got to the campsite and made some dinner and then the drinking began. I bought a crate of 24beers before we got to Fraser Island and I vowed that I would not be taking any of the beers of the island which meant that I had to finish them all that night. I finished them with ease but then two Irish guys asked me to help them finish all this Vodka Lemonade they had bought and after a few of those I was wasted. I went and sat on the beach with the two English girls for a long time. I saw at least four shooting stars that night, it was really quite amazing!

We went to sleep at about 2.30am and by 5am I was awake again (still a little drunk) thanks to the sun. We made scrambled eggs for breakfast and then drove around the island for a few hours before getting back on the ferry home. I have to say, that as amazing and beautiful as the Whitsunday Islands were, my three days on Fraser island have been the best 3days of my travels so far. I think this was largely due to the amazing group of people that were with me and I’m hoping that we will all stay in touch with each other for a very long time! I have failed to mention some key details about Fraser Island including there were no showers for us so we spent three days covered in sand, there were no toilets at the campsites we stayed at so everything had to be done outside and there were wild dingos roaming the campsites at night looking for any food they could find! As disgusting/scary as you think that all is, Fraser Island is a MUST DO trip on the East coast of Australia!

When we got back to the hostel at Rainbow Beach, I went for the most satisfying shower I’ve ever had. I spent the rest of the afternoon with Anna and Jess (the two English girls) and then in the evening the whole group got together and we made dinner together which was pretty cool! After dinner, most of the group went to bed as they all had buses to catch early the next morning but I had a free day the next day so naturally I ended up at the hostel bar drinking with people from my room. The next day was a pretty boring day, I spent the morning with the Fraser crew before they all left and in the afternoon I did the fun tasks of laundry, facebooking etc. In the evening, there was a bush fire about 20km away from Rainbow Beach which had burnt down some power lines nearby meaning a power cut for most of Rainbow Beach. I spent the evening listening to music whilst lying under the stars. It’s little things like watching the sunset and seeing the stars every night that makes me love Australia so much!

The next morning (11th December) I was up pretty early to go on a short journey (short being 3hours) from Rainbow Beach to Noosa. I got to Noosa, had a shower and then went back into the town centre for a walk around. I decided to go for a walk in the National Park which was beautiful! I took the longest walk and I had been walking for almost 2hours when my worst nightmare occurred… I was walking on the footpath minding my own business when something moved about half a meter in front of me. I looked down to see a brown snake about 4ft long slithering right across my path. I swore so loudly that it scared the snake, the snake looked at me and was probably as scared of me as I was of it and it quickly slithered off. I stood for about 10minutes calming myself down and convincing myself to carry on. I eventually did continue with the walk, but I was walking incredibly quickly and not really taking any of the scenery in because I was so scared! I made it back to the town with no more snakes being spotted and I went straight to the pub for a beer to calm myself down. I stayed in town for a while and met up with Anna and Jess, who were also in Noosa, for a very tasty and cheap Mexican meal. We were joined by a Swedish guy who I had met in Cairns and been running into everywhere I had been since. After dinner, the Swedish guy and I went back to our hostel and the girls went to theirs and we ended up drinking with some crazy Aussie guys!

The next day (12th December), I was up early for a day that I was very excited about, a trip to Steve Irwin’s zoo – Australia zoo. I spent the day walking around with two Scottish girls that I had met in Rainbow Beach and I have to say the three of us were extremely disappointed by the zoo. It was just like any other zoo, there was nothing special about it apart from the pictures of Steve everywhere. We went to several shows and they were so bad, it seemed like a bunch of pretenders trying to be Steve Irwin. I saw loads of cool animals but they are animals that could be seen at any other zoo. I guess I just had such high expectations for the zoo and they disappointed big time! I would like to have seen what the zoo was like before Steve died, because I’m sure everything would have seemed a lot more authentic when he was around!
I’m currently in Byron Bay and tomorrow I head off to Surf Camp tomorrow for one night, so in my next blog installment (whenever that may be) I’m sure I’ll have an interesting story to tell about my surfing experiences!

Other than that, I’m home in a month now so I’m on the final straight of my trip which as you can imagine I’m not happy about! I hope all is well back home!

Mihir