East Coast- 1

 

This is blog post number 1 of our Cairns to Sydney tour.

After swimming alongside sharks and stingrays in the

Great Barrier reef we made our way south towards mission beach.

Mission beach is famous for it's skydives as it's one of the few

which allows you to land on the beach. It's hard to describe what it feels like

to freefall in the sky for 60 seconds but all we can say is

it's a must to add to your bucket list.

There's little time to be scared as your up in the plane in
no time and the next thing you know you see your best friends

willingly (or not so willingly) being thrown out of a plane from 14,000ft.

First thoughts are:

Megan “did I actually just jump out of a plane?”

Erin “mother mary have mercy on this blessed soul”

Robyn “ARRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHH (30 seconds later)

…..RRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH”

After getting over the initial shock of actually jumping out of a plane

your head soon comes back to reality and you're finally able to enjoy

the views from above the clouds. Before you know it

the parachute is pulled and your gliding and twisting through the air.

A 6am start was worth it to see the incredible sunrise which enhanced

the view of the rainforest and surrounding islands.

We were even trusted to drive the parachute for a small amount of time

and whilst your twirling through the air below and above

you parachutes are circling the sea.

Once you've landed you're on such a high for the rest of the day

and no feeling can replace that.

Our trip continued south taking us on a bus and a ferry to Magnetic Island-

one of Australia's hidden beauties.

First thing we noticed when we landed on this Island was

that it had a strange familiarity to Hawaii.

(or how we imagine Hawaii seeing as none of us have never been)

We were lucky enough to have a real Aussie experience as we learnt and

held animals from all over the country, a personal favourite

was the flying squirrel because they were just so darn cute and fluffy.

Another lesson of the day – Wombats have hard bums so that they can

crush a dingo's skull if in danger

(how does evolution even do that?)

Magnetic Island is known for it's excessive amount of Barbie cars,

which i'm sure many of the annoyed locals will tell you

although they looked cute they are probably the slowest cars going.

We were reduced to driving 5mph whilst going up a hill because

the poor car just couldn’t take the weight of three travellers.

(We swear we haven't eaten that much, they say

as they currently carry 72 cookies between the 3 of them, aha oops)

 

 

 

Our final adventure for this blog post is the Whitsundays / Airlie Beach.

We had a 2 night/2 day boat trip sailing and snorkeling

around the islands. This included sleeping on deck and seeing turtles emerge at 6.30am after sleeping on the sea floor all night- Erin being chief turtle spotter. We also fed 'George' a big-lipped fish while at Manta Ray reef while the crew played the 'Jaws' soundtrack in the background - a reassuring sound. The evening consisted of lots of seasickness the first night due to choppy waters, but the second night was a party with all our foreign friends- music, goon and a pod of dolphins showing off. Being in middle of the sea, the solitude is a welcome friend and to lay on deck watching the unreal sunset and subsequent view of the Milky Way above you was what we expected travelling to be like- no worries, no stress, just floating through life.

This is supposed to say Tongarra

meet george

Once we were back on land we were eager to check into

our room because waking up early twice in a row is a real struggle when you're used to starting the day no earlier than 10am. However, we soon learned our new room mates were like no other.

We were lucky enough to be put in a room with two German guys,

Malte and Jan. Malte especially was a fan of hugs and due to many lonely

nights all 4 of us would end up snuggling in a bed 'to scare away those

bad monsters'. In Malte's own words “i'm so happy” but what man wouldn't be

when he is in bed surrounded by 3 girls, his most common

catchphrase was “this is beaauuuttiful.” Hopefully we'll see our German friends

down the coast-ROOM 5 REPRESENT. 

We can't wait for our next stop- Castaway Island.

lots of love

Megan, Robyn and Erin

xx

Backpacker central

'Cairns, you spent two weeks in Cairns what did you do?'

To be completely honest we spent most of our time following the

routine of spending the day by the lagoon, then going out,

then spending the day by the lagoon, then going out, win a few bar

tabs playing beer pong, find some free pizza, then wake up the next day and sunbathe by the lagoon. This makes it extremely difficult to write a blog post about Cairns itself, however we can tell you a few things we learnt about

the backpacker central of Australia.

1. Goon is a killer

So to describe Goon quite simply it's a cheap wine which

is EXTREMELY strong which we had to find out the hard way

(a wet t shirt competition and 2 games of beer pong later we were all gone)

2. Local exercise classes are free

Cairns doesn't have a local beach for you to sunbathe on and so a

man-made lagoon is the place to go. After spending a few days there

sunbathing until we were as red as a lobster we learnt that aqua zumba

and aqua aerobics were held at the pool every Wednesday and Saturday.

So naturally after not doing any exercise for 3 months we thought it would be

fun to attend, and trust me when I say following a gay man dancing outside in a lagoon to the spice girls was possibly one of the funniest experiences of our lives.

3. You can find free food anywhere.

Being natural food enthusiasts if there is free food anywhere in a 5km

radius we have a tendency to scout it out. Luckily for us

we soon found out that the local travel agents serve free pizza

and goon every Tuesday and Thursday. So, every Tuesday and Thursday

can you guess who was waiting outside the travel agents 20 minutes

early? Yup, it was us, so word of advice for any up and coming

travellers scout out free food before buying dinner, chances are there is

some somewhere.

4. We can flip our hair like the girls in the Loreal adverts.

Megan and Robyn soon learned that they had a hidden talent in the

sport known as beer pong. Because they were undefeated champions

(until the last round so technically we came second but we were

champions in our eyes) we were lucky enough to win a trip to the waterfalls.

This day included FREE FOOD (obviously that was the main thing)

no we're kidding, we actually saw a lot of the local rainforest,

slid down some natural waterfalls, and walked in the footsteps

of Mr Peter Andre himself. That's right ladies, we were in the shadow

of the hunk you see in the 'mysterious girl' video.

5. The Great Barrier Reef is just like you see in Finding Nemo.

(Prepare yourself for a big paragraph because this was a pretty special day)

So we started the day with a selection of 3 muffins, chocolate, white chocolate

and blueberry and finally lemon and poppyseed, and I know you're thinking what has this got to do with anything, well the answer is not much but the muffins were that good they get a special mention. Anyway, after a two hour boat trip (which tested the stomachs of Robyn and Erin as the boat flew over the choppy waves) we arrived at our first diving spot, this was where we would scuba dive. Being beginners we only dived 6m but it was pretty amazing to swim to the ocean floor and the depths of the reef to see every fish imaginable.

Now we don't know the names of the fish so we will just say their names

from Finding Nemo and hopefully you'll know what we mean,

we saw a 'Gill' fish (you know the one with the scar), we saw the fish

that's like “BUBBLES BUBBLES, MY BUBBLES”, some rainbow fish,

a stingray, a huge ass clam, pretty much everything. We then had lunch,

which was delicious, and stopped at our second diving point where

we snorkeled. So picture this, Robyn is swimming, she keeps swimming

until she's quite secluded and no one is near her and she sees a sting ray

so she's like “oh hey get a photo of that stingray” then out of nowhere

behind her a shark swims past her only about 2m away. SHE FREAKS OUT, SHE THE THINKS THIS IS THE DEATH OF HER so she swims as fast

as she can away from the shark only to remember reef sharks are harmless and you overreacted and missed a perfect photo opportunity you melon.

To sum up the Great Barrier Reef it's like a new world down there, do you remember how we described Bangkok, like a beehive, everyone having somewhere to be, well the reef is like that but of the fish world, wherever

you look there is fish of all colours and all species

just minding their own business as they swim around the big blue.

Even the journey home was unforgettable as Erin and Robyn

sang karaoke (Leona Lewis, bleeding love) for the unimpressed crew and divers, after a stunning performance of Leona we were invited

into the captain's cabin and were allowed to drive the boat

which is a lot easier than most of you may think.

I think it's fair to say we all had the most amazing day and had

an experience we will never forget whilst swimming around the worlds

most well known and largest reef.

And that's it for the beginning of our East Coast tour,

bring on the rest of Aus.

Lots of love

Megan, Robyn and Erin

xx