Australia Week 2

Hello again!

Hopefully everyone has deduced that we are, in fact, still alive :) Liz has been posting pictures on Facebook so that helps!

Well, it's been a DELIGHTFUL week on Hamilton Island. We've been spending most of our time at the beach (Liz in the sun, I in the shade), sitting and reading books (we've both read 3 or 4 at this point), and playing in the freakishly warm water. It's been just lovely. We have done some exciting things though too spaced out here and there:

We cuddled koalas AGAIN! There's another wildlife center here on the island and they offer lots of fun things. We went over there for breakfast and our table was right next to a koala in a little tree enclosure, it was super cute. Then a couple days later we got to hold one of them and they're just SO CUTE!!! I love them to pieces!


We also went parasailing! It was so cool and fun!! We went out on a boat and they put you in a lifejacket and a harness, then they clip you onto the sail and then up up up you go!! The view was amazing and the water looked so pretty. Then the skipper slowed down a little bit so we started to come down and he dunked us in the water a couple times! It was awesome and the water felt so good and then he sped up and back up we went. It was really awesome.

Then we spent a day or two at the beach, eating ice cream, Tim tams, and playing in the water. :)

Then we went on a catamaran sail boat and went snorkeling! It was cancelled the first day because the wind was coming from the wrong direction so it would have been unsafe to go to the two spots we were supposed to go to, so we decided to come back the next day and try again. So we did and boy are we glad we waited!!! The snorkeling was good, although nothing will probably ever compare to our dives up on the reef in Port Douglas. But the second stop we made was at Whitehaven Beach, which is a very famous beach around Australia (and the world I think) because it's over 4 miles long and is almost entirely pure, white silica sand. It really is beautiful, although it was incredibly HOT the day we went. We arrived and were informed there was a really nice lookout spot if we went for a 15 minute hike, so naturally we went for it. Although it was honestly like 90 degrees, sunny, and there wasn't much breeze in the forrest, and we were just in our swimsuits and flip flops, I was DYING. I was seriously so hot...Liz tried to take my picture at one point and I was honestly just an angry toddler. The lookout was indeed lovely, but all I wanted was to get back to the beach and get in the water! Once we did, it was pure heaven. Playing in the ocean after that hike was seriously one of the highlights of my trip haha! It felt so so good! The wind picked up on our way back so we actually got to sail for real on the catamaran, which was also very fun.

Then we spent a day or two at the beach, eating ice cream, Tim tams, and playing in the water. :)

Then we went on an airplane tour! It was an itty bitty little plane, with propellers and it held maybe 12-15 people including the pilots. It was quite cramped, I was pretty uncomfortable honestly, but the views made up for it! We flew out over the Whitsunday islands and out over the reef and it was just incredible. We flew over Whitehaven beach, where we had been on the sailing snorkel tour, which was gorgeous. The reef was equally awesome, I didn't realize the Great Barrier Reef was SO huge! I thought it was just up north nears Cairns and Port Douglas, but the reef stretches over 1,400 miles and covers an area of around 133,000 square miles! That just a little less than GERMANY! It's just crazy big and here in the Whitsundays we're only about halfway down the coast of the reef, it just keeps going! It was so pretty to fly over and see the views, although I was happy to get out of that cramped airplane :)

We have just one day left and we're both super sad to leave :( It's been awesome to hang out at the beach and lounge around. So on Saturday I'm flying to Sydney, where I will be for two nights before flying back to the US! I knew the two weeks would go by fast, but jeez it flew!

Australia Week 1

So the last time I posted on this blog was 2010... a mere 9 years ago...

The only reason I'm back is because all my previous travel blogs have disappeared off the internet and this blog website seems like it will withstand the sands of time so I might as well put it here. Ive like specific travel blog websites before because they'll map out where I go. But since Liz and I aren't traveling around Australia much and we're just staying in one place for a long stretch, it doesn't seem as necessary.

So anyway, Liz and I got to Australia almost a week ago! We flew from Dallas to Sydney on a 17 hour flight that was the longest flight I've ever been on and with moderate success! We both slept a fair amount (it was actually helpful to have long enough on the plane to really attempt to sleep a significant amount. With shorter flights you just don't have enough of a chance to really sleep since you can't sleep as soundly and you wake up a lot) So we both only ended up watching 2 or 3 movies and slept the rest of the time! We then flew up to Cairns where we spent our first night. We arrived, walked around Cairns for a couple hours and then promptly went to bed around 6pm :)

The next day, we drove up to Port Douglas, about an hour north of Cairns. This is supposed to be a really good place to access the Great Barrier Reef with fewer crowds than Cairns, which it turned out to be! And on our way up to Port Douglas, we stopped in a little town called Kuranda to go to a tiny zoo where you could hold a koala!! This was at the top of my list so I was very excited about it. It was heaven, I only wish they had let me hold her a little longer. She was so cute and cuddly!!

The rest of the drive was so pretty! Just beaches and blue water and beauty everywhere!! We found our hotel which was pretty cool, the center of it which had a pool was sort of jungle themed. So it was very lush and full of plants and waterfalls and stuff. We enjoyed some beach time and a much quieter area than Cairns. The next day we drove up into the rainforest, which this area is also famous for. We stopped at a gorge to walk around and then drove up to Cape Tribulation where there was a GORGEOUS beach and it was just so pretty!!! Rainforest and beaches and it was just to lush and tropical! We also found this fun little ice cream place that had a tropical fruit flavored ice cream sample cup. There were some weird/interesting flavors (jack fruit, coconut, some kind of plum, and waddle seed. Never heard of waddle seed but it was different!) So anyway, it was fun to try those.

The next day (Tuesday) we went diving on the Great Barrier Reef!! I'd been looking forward to this for a while, this was one of my biggest regrets on my New Zealand/Australia trip a few years ago so I was pumped to get my chance! It was a two hour boat ride out to the reef and we got a good introduction to diving from our dive master, Wayne. He's been diving for over 30 years and he was the nicest guy ever. I've only been diving once a LONG time ago, so I was rusty and Liz had never done it before so he was very kind and patient with us. He gave us all the safety information and let us move nice and slowly so we could get used to it. Liz had a moment of panic when we first got in the water so Wayne literally held her hand throughout all our dives throughout the day so she would feel more comfortable. He was awesome. The fish and coral were AMAZING!!!! Wayne would show us which coral we could touch and it was so fun to feel all the different textures!! There were so many different colors of fish! It was the coolest, definitely a huge highlight of the trip. 

Wednesday, we got up early and drove back to Cairns so we could fly out to Hamilton Island where we will be spending the remainder of our trip! We'd both heard about and seen pictures of the Whitsunday Islands and it looked amazing and tropical so we decided we needed to go :) 

Hamilton Island is the most populated of the Whitsunday Islands and it's BEAUTIFUL! Our airbnb is on the top floor of the hotel and it's a little one bedroom apartment with an absolutely INSANE view!

We've spent all our time since our arrival going to the beach, the pool, eating Australian chocolate cookies called Tim Tams, eating ice cream, and just enjoying the gloriousness of the island. There are no cars allowed except for shuttles and maintenance vehicles, so everyone gets around by golf cart and its hilarious. All parking spots, driveways, and garages are tiny because they're meant for golf carts! Also, the island is privately owned, although there are also private residences, so many of the hotels and accommodations are owned by the same family that owns the island so everything is weirdly connected. It's sort of feels like a Disney cruise that's actually an island, or if the town of Celebration was an island. It's sort of odd, but we also kind of like it :P 

So I think that catches us up to the present!! :) We will continue to go to the beach, eat, swim (the ocean is CRAZY warm and comfy!!!) and generally just enjoy ourselves I'm sure. We have a plane tour and a sail/snorkel tour planed later next week. But tomorrow we're going parasailing and I'm excited!!! That's all for now!