Byron Bay

Byron Bay

Byron Bay was the last stop on our holiday travels. We stayed here for 3 nights. Byron is known for being sort of a hippy type town and backpackers place, and it was exactly that. There were people all over the place that had these long dread locks in their hair and were waking around not wearing any shoes.. it was a little gross, but the place was still very pretty, just like everywhere else.

The girls and I didn't sign up for any excursions here because all of the ones that were offered were ones we had already done, and honestly we didn't have any money left to spend. But a lady at the place we were staying informed us of a nice little walk we could do up to a light house, so we did that one afternoon, but be informed it was a very nice walk, but by no means was it little. It took us about an hour and a half to get to this light house so that's why I have put so many pictures on here of it.

If you look in the top right hand corner of this picture, you will see the lighthouse that we are trying to get to, it is ALOT farther away than it looks, this was at the beginning of our walk. And this is Nikki and Mona as well.

Still Walking....

Still walking...

Almost there..

And we finally made it! We made it up there just in time to see the sunset. Along the way we saw some whales out in the ocean and dolphins! That was exciting, because it was not the time of year that you would usually get to see whales.

We didn't do much in Byron Bay the walk was pretty much the highlight of Byron. We did have a good time though, and some of our friends from Geelong came up to, so we all got to hangout for a night.

This is the end of my 2 week holiday travels!

Noosa Heads

Noosa Heads - Australia

Traveling to Noosa was the LONGEST bus ride of our lives. We left Airlie at 6:00 p.m. and arrived in Noosa the next day at 10:30 a.m. Very very long for being on a bus. Luckily though the girls and I spread out so we were able to sleep in our own seats and sort of kind of stretch out.

Mona and I after the LONG bus drive... ugh..

Our Lodge
When we first got to Noosa we checked in to our hostel, which was pretty nice, booked our trip to Fraser Island. And then just walked around the city and on the beach, we didn't have much else to do. That night though was the huge AFL Grand Final, which is like their superbowl. It was Geelong vs. Hawthorne. Geelong is the best professional footy team in Australia, lost only one game... and the Grand Final. The girls and I were very glad that we were not present in Geelong that night, we heard from friends back home it wasn't good.

Noosa Beach

Fraser Island

Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the world. It has freshwater creeks and lakes on it and a rainforest, which is pretty cool considering the trees are growing in sand and not in dirt (Really neato). Lake McKenzie was the one the girls and I got to go to and it was beautiful!! We left early in the morning, took a ferry over to the island and had morning tea and lunch there. We drove through the rainforest and got to hike through it as well. We ended the day by having afternoon tea in a park. It was good, also considering that we bartered with the travel lady and she gave all 5 of us a deal on the excursion. If we had known this the whole time we would have been asking for deals the entire time!

This was our 4 wheel drive vehicle that drove straight down the beach and through the forest on all sand. It was really neat.. and bumpy.

One of the trees in the rainforest. It was really big.. obviously

This is Lake McKenzie.. it is the clearest and prettiest lake I have EVER swam in. It was freezing, but it was awesome. The tour guide told us that sand is so soft here and the water so clean that you can clean your jewels with it, I didn't have my rings on, or else I would have.

The girls and I at the end of a very lovely day :)

Airlie Beach

Airlie Beach


We first arrived in Airlie Beach at around 5:00 in the afternoon on Tuesday. It is definitely my favorite place! The town is SO cute, and there was a little bay and sailboats all in it. The water was so pretty, and the town was just so pretty.

The Bay

We were going to sign up for an excursion for the next day, but there were no spaces left so we signed up for the Thursday spot of extreme rafting to the Whitsundays. That night we went and checked out the night life, which was pretty beachy and laid back. We had a good time. The next day, we just laid out at the lagoon all day, and got completely fried!! I do not think that I have been burned that bad in YEARS! It was bad, and will never go without reapplying sunscreen again!

Here’s the Airlie Beach lagoon, it was a lot bigger than Cairns, and I thought better too.

The Girls and I at Beaches, the main pub in Airlie, that night.

We went to bed pretty early that night because we had to be up early for Extreme Rafting the next morning.


Extreme Rafting Thursday Sept. 25th

These are the Extreme Rafts. They go really fast, and you feel every single wave you hit, and the boat goes really high when you hit a big one. They were tons of fun! One raft went on the Southern route and the other went on the Northern route. We did the Southern because we were told it was better.
They took us for a 45 minute ride to the Whitsunday’s Islands. GORGEOUS Islands.

The Sand is the prettiest part in the water.

There’s our little raft just a waiting on us, so tiny.

Very long beach, that’s what we walked across to get to our raft.

This is for you guys :)

Cairns

This is where we stayed

(a quite lively place)

Well the trip all began in a little city called Cairns. We arrived at 2:00 in the morning immediately checked in to our hotel, and went to bed because we were all exhausted. We soon learned that the place we were staying was definitely a party place because people were outside of our door singing, yelling and carrying on until about 5:00 in the morning. It was quite nice.

Day 1 Friday Sept. 19

This is the Lagoon
The next morning, we woke up pretty early, went down and had breakfast at a little café, and then headed to the lagoon. It is a man made lagoon, because up in Cairns the jellyfish are really bad and you can’t get in the ocean close to shore or else you will die. So they have a humongous lagoon, and we laid out there until about 2 and then went and walked around the city. Went to the travel agent and booked our Great Barrier Reef trip for the next morning. After that we went and hung out by the pool, where there happened to be a footy team having their annual footy trip. And let me tell you, we know nothing of Aussie football back in the states. It is crazy! And the players are even crazier! But, after every season all the teams go on trips, where they pretty much just party the whole time, and are very very very obnoxious! So they were there at the pool with us just being loud, which they were fine that first day, and that was it. As the week went on they became increasingly louder and more stupid. But anyway, we made friends with them and hung out there with them that first day.

We made dinner at our hotel that night, and then went to bed pretty early because we had to be up early for our trip the next morning.

Day 2 Sep. 20th Saturday (Maritza's Birthday!)

We wake up bright and early at 6:30 and our bus leaves at 7 for the reef, which fortunately it picks us up right at our hotel, so we didn’t have to walk anywhere. When we arrive at the T-5, the boat that was going to take us out, it was a really nice boat, pretty big and they served us coffee and tea for the morning travel. The trip out to the reef took about an hour. The crew provided us with wet suits, snorkels and fins, the wet suits were nice too, because the water was a little bit chilly. When we get to our first spot we get to spend a little over an hour there, and it was AMAZING! Truly a different experience from snorkeling in Florida or in the Bahamas. There were so many fish, fish of every color. Beautiful coral, it was truly awesome. There were guides swimming around in the water with us as well telling us about the reef and the different fish. We bought an underwater camera to, which was a good idea, because the Great Barrier Reef is definitely something that you need to take a picture of. After that we got back on the boat and had lunch, which was a buffet. It was pretty good. After that, they took us to our next snorkeling spot, we didn’t get to spend as much time there only about 30 minutes. This spot was known as the fish bowl, and that is exactly what it was, the reef dropped off and there was pretty much a huge hole where you couldn’t see the bottom and hundreds of fish swimming around in it. It was pretty cool. After that spot, we got back on the boat and headed back to Cairns. All of us girls went back to the hotel and took a 2 hour nap because the snorkeling trip was pretty exhausting. Later that night we went out to dinner at a place called rhino bar, they served huge portions and it only costs $5, which is good here because everything is really expensive, oh and here whenever you go out to dinner, you don’t tip the server or anyone actually, which Laura would like.

Our Boat The Tusa T5

The view coming back in to Cairns

The Water at the Great Barrier Reef

Day 3 Sept. 21 Sunday

We slept in on Sunday, when we woke up we just put on our bathing suits and were just laying out at the pool, surrounded by the loud obnoxious footy players, they were by this time getting on all of our nerves, I forgot to mention they were staying on the same floor as us, and basically they stay up all night get 1 or 2 hours of sleep and then as soon as the bars open at 10 they are there so they are pretty beligerant the entire time. Luckily though, we had met a friend the night before that had been on our snorkeling trip, he lived in Cairns and his name is Phil, all of us called him Dr. Phil. He ended up calling us to see if we wanted to come over to his friends house for a bbq, so we said yes and left pretty much right then to head over and get away from the footy players ASAP. We got over to Phil’s friends house which was SO nice it is up on a hill that overlooks Cairns and has an ocean view. Very, very pretty. We had hamburgers there which were good, and just hung out for a little while. Watched the sun set, we left to go back about 10 because we had to be up the next morning for an excursion Daintree Rainforest.

Mossoman's Gorge

CrocodileCrocodile Safari we went onFunny Road Sign

Sign on the way down to the beach.

Makes ya wanna go swimming doesn't it?Cape Tribulation Beach At the beginning of the Rainforest
Tree in The Rainforest

Day 4 Monday Sept. 22

We woke up early on Monday and were outside by 7:30 to be picked up. Our tour guide that day was named Debra, which we ended up giving her the nickname of Debbie Downer, because for everything wonderful that she said, there would be a pause, and then she would proceed to tell you the really, really bad side of the wonderful thing. For instance, when heading over to Cape Tribulation she said the ocean is beautiful and it’ll be pretty warm, the sand there is known for being so soft. (pause) If you get in though, be careful to watch out for the salt water crocodiles, and scoot your feet across the bottom to make sure you don’t step on a sting ray, and also the jellyfish they are about this big and have long tentacles so look out for those too. So if that doesn’t make you want to go for a swim then I don’t know what will. Well she picked us up and we headed out to the rainforest, it took about an hour to get out there and that entire hour Deb talked the whole time… about anything and everything. Just about whatever popped in to her head. She was a crazy lady. The rainforest was pretty, it actually was not what I expected for a rainforest, but it did have beautiful plants. After a walk through the rainforest we traveled to Cape Trib which was a cute little town, and it did have a great beach, we didn’t get in the water though. After Cape Trib we traveled to Mossoman’s Gorge which is owned by the aboriginals. It is a big creek that is pretty, the water was freezing, but supposedly Deb says that it is very clean water and people just drink straight from it. After Mossmomans Gorge we got to see where Steve Irwin died, saw some wallabies which are just little kangaroos, and then headed back to our hotel. This excursion was a very informative one. When we got back, we just made some dinner and packed our suitcases, because we had to catch a bus ride the next morning at 7:30 to Airlie beach.