Blue Mountains

Just a quick post from the Blue Mountains! (We have free internet at this hostel, although facebook is blocked!)

We are staying in Katoomba (right in the Blue Mountains). It is a very cute little town with lots of hills throughout. We spent one night at my favourite hostel ever, No 14. It is like a cute little wooden mountain cabin/lodge. There are rooms with fireplaces (it's colder here than on the coast) and comfy couches, and I was very excited to see they had PUZZLES so I started one last night :). They even have a bathtub! (That doesn't look gross.) And the shower stalls look like saunas. Oh, and there's an oven too, which is rare in hostel kitchens we've been to. Very interesting, friendly people too. Enough about the hostel...

Yesterday we went for a 3 hour hike from Echo Point (lookout for the 3 Sisters), down by the 3 sisters, down the "Giant Staircase", i.e. a 1000 step staircase of small, steep, warn down rock steps down into the valley (Mike had to walk down sideways because his feet hung too far off the edge of them), through the rainforest, and back up another giant, less sketchy staircase, and back along the top ridge of the cliffs (nice lookout points). It was raining the whole time (thank god for our amazing waterproof jackets!) but I think that it was more gorgeous seeing it in the rain. It really was beautiful. I am on a very slow computer right now so I can't put pics up now. Heading back to Sydney this morning for the remainder of our trip. (Already have spent one day and night there.) Wish I could have more time up here for more hikes, but I think I may have already killed Mike on the last one :).

Byron Bay and Mount Warrigal

Launching point for hang gliding!





It took us a little while to warm up to Byron Bay (our hostel was quite messy...saw a cockroach crawl underneath my bed!) but in the end we liked it. Byron was basically a relaxed hippie surfer town. We hang glided our first day, which was awesome. We each launched off a lookout point up by the lighthouse in Cape Byron park and had about 30 minutes in the air with a hilarious old Aussie hang gliding vet. I got to steer for a bit (was pretty pleased about that!) Our second and third days we went surfing...or tried to at least! We found the waves MUCH harder to surf than those in Hawaii...needless to say after two days we only surfed a few waves successfully! On our last night we went out with 2 Swedish guys and a German girl who were staying in our room. We went to a few club/bars in Byron and guess what! We saw Kyle Kilburn (my old neighbour/schoolmate/Mike’s old soccer friend) at the bar!!! It turns out he’s been living there for 9 months! What a small world! Anyways the night out was really fun, and we were sad to leave our new friends the next day when we caught a 9 pm Greyhound to Sydney.

After a 13.5 hour bus ride and a 2 hour train ride, we arrived in Mount Warrigal to visit some family friends of Mike’s, John and Debbie and their two kids (about our age) Marla and Sean. They have been super nice and very good to us. Marla took us snorkeling our first day at a local bay. It was no Great Barrier Reef, but we still saw 2 sting rays! Today John and Deb took us to Kiama, a cute little town by the ocean about 15 minutes drive from Mount Warrigal. We also watched Sean’s “footie” game, which basically is the Australian version of rugby. That was pretty cool to see. We’ve been enjoying the break from the hostel scene...nice to have a bed to ourselves, a washing machine, home cooked meals and free internet time (and of course, the excellent company of our hosts)! Tomorrow we are going surfing with Deb and then heading to Sydney for the remainder of our trip! (Hoping to go to some markets tomorrow!)

Noosa and Brisbane

Noosa
The date now is about March 23(?)...the date then was...March 19?

In Noose we stayed in a very cool old Lodge that was made into a YHA. We liked it a lot...big common area with a ping pong table (which we played every night). Noose is very pretty. It's got nice beaches and lots of little hills and trees. The first day we went for a walk through the National park there along a board walk just off the beach. It was really gorgeous, although it poured rain for parts of it! We saw a wild koala!

Second day we caught the bus to the Australia (Steve Irwin) Zoo! It was quite good, had animals native to Oz and Southeast Asia in large, nice enclosures, and we definitely enjoyed ourselves. We really liked the Tasmanian Devils (which didn't look at all like the Tazz!) They were little, round, dark furred animals and they were very active...ran around their large enclosure all day, occasionally play fighting (I think?). Saw a show featuring crocs (of course), birds and a few others. Got to feed an elephant and pet a koala, oh and we got to pet LOTS of kangaroos and joeys.

They were soooo cute! Very tame too. At the zoo they had a "Koala walk", which was a path through trees that koalas live in and there was just about a koala in every tree. It was great to see them in such a natural habitat. When we stopped to look at one koala, he turned and stared at us, and then started climbing down the tree towards us! He stopped to pose for a few excellent pics right at eye level,

and then to our surprise, continued to climb down the tree until he was on the ground! He then mosied over to us and started nibbling on a guy's shoe who was standing right beside us!!! Eventually the zoo keeper realized when a crowd had gathered and came and grabbed the koala lol. It was so funny!


The next day at Noosa (our last) we had planned to go surfing, but I guess the cyclone was affecting the surf that day and the waves were huge, so we couldn't go :(. I still went swimming, which was pretty crazy as it was. We spent the afternoon instead watching the crazy good people surf and boogie board, since we weren't able to change our greyhound to an earlier time. We left for Brisbane that afternoon.

Brisbane

We stayed in a very modern, nice hostel in Bris called Chill Backpackers. It had a gorgeous rooftop terrace and a movie room with a huge TV, so we spent our first night watching movies and drinking wine on the terrace.


We really liked Brisbane, it is a very beautiful city, combining old pretty buildings with new modern ones, with lots of trees and cool city squares and a gorgeous botanical garden. I could see myself living there, I think. It was really nice.

Our second (and sadly last) day at Brisbane we went on a walking tour through the city, and stopped in some of the free galleries and museums (they were all free there! Crazy!). We would have liked more time there, but in the end it was just a city, and we have those in Canada. We left for Byron that afternoon.

Will update more on Byron and post pics when we visit some of Mike's family friends just south of Sydney! Miss you all!

Fraser Island

Hello everyone!! I have 14 minutes of internet left so this will be a quick one! (No pics yet, will add later - sorry!)

Fraser Island - March 15-17

We went on a 4x4 self guided tour with 6 other people in our bright pink 4x4 lol! It was really fun, although our group was mediocre (although we really liked some people we met in the other 2 pink groups travelling with us!)

Fraser Island, we learned, basically would NOT be accessible without 4x4s. The roads through the inner, forested part of the island are TERRIBLE...like Cat Lake road but 10 times worse! Huge drop offs and pot holes...tons of fun to drive on, but not so fun to be the passenger in the back seat haha! We spent a lot of time driving on the beach as well which was really fun. You can go up to 80 at some parts!


First day we went to Lake Wobby, which we found out halfway along was a 30-45 minute walk...oops, shouldn't have carried a cooler full of beer! Mike and the only other guy had to carry it most of the way haha. (I helped for about 5 minutes.) The lake was really nice though, beautiful green in colour and sand dunes on one side. Full of giant catfish that nibbled your toes :) hehe. After that we went to our first camp site on the side of the beach. That was pretty fun, no toilets or anything, everything got pretty sandy, but that night it started to POUR (and when it rains here, it REALLY pours) right in the middle of cooking our veggies for dinner! We all just scattered into the tents and only came out a bit later to try to save the veggies and anything we left out. Was pretty funny, but kind of ruined partying outside for that night haha.

Next day we went up to Indian Head and took a 30 min walk to Champagne pools,


basically sandy tidal pools that get a misting splash from the waves crashing into the rocks separating them from the ocean. Those were really nice. Then we stopped and looked at "The Pinnacles", cool coloured (red, orange and brown) formations, then a cool shipwreck

and a creek that you could walk up and float down. That night camped in a campground inland (with washrooms and sinks!) and partied with some other groups we met. Was really fun.

Last day spent at Lake McKenzie, a very large, gorgeous lake. Got a bit burnt.

St Patty's day went out with some really cool Irish and Scottish we met on our pink 4x4s to an Irish pub in Hervey Bay. Was tonnnns of fun, although went to bed at 4am and had to wake up at 7 for bus!

Whitsunday Islands

March 13...
Just returned from an amazing sail around the Whitsunday Islands!!! We had SO much fun. We stayed on a catamaran with 17 other people and 4 crew. It had lots of deck space outside, a "saloon" for lounging in/eating, bunks below with bathrooms... We were very lucky, we decided to just show up in Airlie Beach and try to book a cheap stand by cruise. We stopped at a stand by travel agency right when we got into town, and found one leaving that night! It was a 3 night 3 day, so it meant we didn't have to book a hostel that night, and it was super cheap (for the Whitsundays)! We also booked a Fraser Island trip through them for really cheap. It pays to be last minute in low season here!

There were many cool people on our boat from all over. It was a nice change from the usual backpackers you see at hostels. Everyone was reallly interesting and unique. There were two Belgium couples who were hilarious and a lot of fun. One's name was Stijn but apparently noone in Oz could pronounce it, so they always joked around and called him "Stijj-n" (ie pronouncing the j). There was a Scottish couple who we got along so well with. The girl was a riot! She pulled out some bag pipe music one night and did some highland dancing for us! (after a few drinks that is...) There was also a Swedish lady who was hilarious, a really friendly Singapore guy, a cool German couple, several British girls, some Canadian girls, a Kiwi guy, and a boring American couple haha. It was really fun getting to know and partying on the boat with them.

We went to a few snorkel spots which were pretty cool (though nothing close to the reef snorkel trip we did in Cairns!) At one place schools of fish surrounded you hoping you would feed them. Unfortunately we didn't get out to the outer reef because it was so windy during our trip. We tried an intro dive as well. I have to say, I'm not sure I liked it very much. We didn't get to see all that much other than what we had already seen snorkeling, although we did see these cool Christmas worms whose feathery things disappeared when you flicked them. I didn't really like breathing through the tank though, because I am much more of a nose breather than a mouth breather. Mike liked it though.

Food was plentiful and good (lots of snacks, which was good for me :) ), beds were small but cozy. Oh one thing that I did NOT like was not being able to use shampoo. You had to use soap to wash your hair. Something about shampoo being bad for the reef? I can't remember. But my hair was DISGUSTING. And we were only allowed one minute showers a day, but that wasn't so bad. Spent our days snorkeling, sitting in the sun and visiting with our fellow travelers, and reading. The first day we stopped at Whitehaven Beach on Whitsunday Island (there are actually 74 islands in total), which apparently has the whitest sand in the world, very very fine sand made of pure silica. Made a squeaking sand when you walked in it. There near the shore we saw baby tiger sharks and sting rays. The baby sting rays were a foot or two long! Full grown they can be 1-4 metres!

The way back was pretty rough. Mike got very sea sick, and it didn't help that he was hungover from partying the night before hehe.

All in all we had a really great time, and were sad to say goodbye to all the great people we met.

Oh I don't think I mentioned our last day at Magnetic Island yet. We went to the wildlife reserve thing nextdoor to the hostel. It was ok, we got to hold lots of animals so that was cool (koala - so cute!, wombat, bearded dragon and blue tongue lizards, python snake, little crocodile). Then we went to a beautiful waterfall swimming hole. Spent the night playing euchre with Boris and our new American friend! Left early the next day, very sad to say good bye to Boris and Ryan. One of the sad parts about travelling :(

Magnetic Island

Sunday, March 7...
We decided we wanted to get out of Cairns, so we last minute bought a bus pass and booked a bus ticket for Townsville. Originally we were planning on staying at a hostel in Townsville for Sunday night because we had thought that the place we wanted to stay on Magnetic Island was full. However, when we arrived in Townsville at the ferry/bus terminal we decided we should just give the hostel on Magnetic Island a call, and turns out they had a spot for us, so we bought a ticket for the next ferry and were off! We LOVE this hostel. It's the Bungalow Bay YHA and it is set on a wildlife reserve. It's a big property with A-frame cabins scattered about, has a big pool surrounded by large trees and hammocks, and there's always lots of wildlife about. The first day we arrived, we came across about 30 brightly coloured birds - green, blue,red...looked like parrots. They had just been fed and were on the path right in front of us!


Everyone in our cabin is very nice. There are 2 English girls, 1 guy from Belgium, and a German guy. We have been hanging out with the German guy a fair bit, his name is Boris. Last night we went for a walk in the dark and found tons of animals on the hostel land! We saw a couple wallabies, numerous cool birds and over 10 possums (although we didn't know what they were at the time)...including a mother possum with a little baby hanging on to its back! She couldn't move that fast and so when we walked by she came very close to us - within 2 feet! SO CUTE. I don't see how New Zealanders could hate them! We have also seen a large toad, some small tree frogs, and a couple snakes.
Unfortunately no koalas yet...


Monday, March 8...
We have decided that we LOVE Magnetic Island and are very glad we are here for 3 nights. It's a gorgeous, small island (only takes about 7 minutes to cross it by car!) that kind of reminds me of the gulf islands, only tropical. It was originally formed by granite pushed up by volcanic rock, so it's very rocky, with huge neat shaped boulders everywhere. The whole centre of the island is made up of rocky mountains (although more like hills) and the roads and houses are around the coastline, so the only way to some of the bays are via hiking trail. Today we hiked over to one of the bays and it was GORGEOUS and remote, and when we arrived there was noone there! Fortunately we had rented a stinger suit so we could still swim there.

After a hot hike back we spent the rest of the afternoon swimming in the pool and relaxing in the hammocks at our hostel.

What else...some annoying things...somehow my watch didn't make it here :( I put it in my bag the night before I left but couldn't find it in my bag once we were on the plane! So far we have just been using my Ipod as a clock haha. Also...having difficulty uploading pics to the computer but hopefully will figure out soon!

First stop - Cairns, Australia

After a very long flight (13 hours to Hong Kong + 7 hours to Cairns), we finally made it! We flew Cathay Pacific which was really nice...individual TVs with tons of movies, video games, music and TV shows, packages with comfy socks and toothbrushes, and lots of food! Arrived in Cairns, Australia at 9 am in the morning on March 4. Fortunately we were able to sleep a fair bit on our flight, so we had the energy to look around Cairns.

First day (March 5)...

We took a bus from the airport straight to our hostel, and fortunately we were the only two on it, so the friendly driver took us on a quick tour of Cairns! Cairns isn't all that exciting, although the Australians that we've met so far have been super friendly. Cairns is definitely a tourist town full of young people, and it has a great night life (although unfortunately so far we've been too tired to take advantage of it! Hopefully tonight!) There are no beaches but there's a “lagoon,” which is basically a big, free outdoor pool. We swam in that our first day and looked around. Cairns basically reminds us of Waikiki, Hawaii, for a younger target group (hostels instead of hotels) and without the beaches. There's a nice waterfront walkway and grassy area and a strip of little cafes and souvenir shops along the street. While we were exploring our first day, we came across a strip of huge trees with some sort of very loud animal noises coming from it. We looked up and realized that it was filled with bats!!! Apparently they were actually flying foxes. There were hundreds! Very cool to see.

Our hostel is very cute and cheap. It has a nice shady area with palm trees and gardens in the back, with a pool, lawn chairs and a pool table. It also comes with a free meal at a local pub, which is pretty good!

The second day (March 6)...

We rented a car (very cheap! Only $50 including insurance!) and drove up to Cape Tribulation. We had to take a cable ferry, followed by a VERY EXCITING windy, narrow drive through the rainforest. I (Sandra) drove, and had a GREAT time doing so. Driving on left side of road was a bit scary at first and took some getting used to. Good thing we didn't go for the standard. We stopped at a few beach lookouts and walks in Cape Tribulation,

and then went on a couple of boardwalks through Daintree National Park. We saw a couple spiders that were almost the size of Sandra's hand, some cassowaries (birds), a lizard, very cool trees and rainforest plants. We really loved exploring the tropical rainforest here!

On the way back we stopped at Mossman Gorge. Unfortunately the suspension bridge was closed for repair, but we were able to swim in a river swimming hole very similar to Lynn Canyon, but warmer!

It was perfect because it is HOT here, 30 degrees by 9 am!! We stopped in Port Douglas for dinner and thought it was a very cute town (too bad we had already booked our hostel in Cairns for another night!!) But WOW is dinner expensive here! Even a pasta dish is $25! Guess we'll be using our free meals and eating in the hostel as often as possible...

Today (March 7)...

We went on a reef tour today and it was AMAZING!!!! We went snorkelling at 2 outer reef locations. At the first one, we found (all by ourselves!) a reef shark, moray eel (it poked its head out for a while and opened its mouth...not sure if it was eating, getting its teeth cleaned by a little fish that hovered around it, or trying to scare us off), tons of colourful fish and a shark-looking fish about 3 feet long with spots that was hiding in the coral...going to have to figure out what that one was! At the second spot we saw a ray of some sort (with spots), a school of spotted squid, a crocodile ga? Ma? I can't remember what and couldn't quite decipher the Aussie accent, but it is a long, thin fish with big teeth; a school of huge fish (about a metre long) with humps on their heads, and lots of sea cucumbers!! This place was FULL of little white jellyfish, and at first we were really scared they were poisonous (although we were wearing stinger suits), but we soon found out they were harmless. Thank god, because you pretty much had to paddle them out of your way to get around!!

Heading out for our free meal...last night in Cairns, next stop – Townsville stopover and then Magnetic Island for 2 days! Will post pictures next chance we get!