11/02 - Loosing my feet in Noosa Heads

The alarm rang at 9am, by 9.10 I was up and we were having breakfast. The place is empty, I guess most of the inhabitants must be farm workers. We checked out and by 10am, we were on the road to Noosa. We stopped at a petrol station and bought chocolate.

We arrived in Noosa around 1.15pm. We checked in, we are in a dorm of 6, I am the only girl. We had a bit of a rest, then lunch and around 3.30pm we took the courtesy bus for the beach.

We decided to go for a walk in the Natural reserve. We walked along the beach and when we reached the National Park Walk we decided to do the blue walk and a small piece of the orange one.  The weather is up and down (clouds keep hiding the sun).

D. is in a better mood, he must have slept it off J. We see a lot of surfers in the water in various spots. The walk is really nice, most of it is along the coast and some parts in the forest.

At the last lookout, we sat for a little while. D. started one of his philosophical talk! The lookout is really windy, so after a while we decided to go back. After 5 minutes, I break one of my flip-flop, there is no way I can repair it…. They are so, so old! It is not a big deal but a bit of a pain, I have no other shoes with me. So I have to walk all the way back bare foot. It is long and painful….

On the way back into town, I managed to get a new pair from a pharmacy just before they closed. We walked back to the hostel. It is a rich area and some of the houses are nice! Back in the hostel, it is 7.30pm, we relaxed for a bit, then I did some research to book a cruise in the Everglades while D. went food shopping. Everything is fully booked….

For dinner D. made some wraps. He tried to feed me Kale….. it was disgusting. We did some more planning, got attacked by mosquitoes while outside, so we went back in, watched a movie. We were in bed around 10.30pm. We read a bit and fell asleep.

Walked 12.5 km today. 

Slept in a mixed dorm, in Noosa Backpackers Resort, Noosa Heads.

10/2 - Roadtrip to Bundaberg

It was a strange night, surprisingly quiet for a 10 share, apart from the screaming-girl (she sleep-talks apparently). Our alarm rang at 8am, we got up, got ready and had our free breakfast. We checked out at 9.30am and headed to Avis to get our rented car.

We have the car for 72h, it is red and luckily a manual! We left straight away and headed for Bundaberg, which is supposed to be a 4h50 drive. On the way we saw signs for the Glass House Mountains, so we decided to stop.

We went to the information center and decided to go on a small trek on top of Mount Ngungun (pronounced Nounou). It was super-hot and due to the limited amount of time we had, we raced through it! We ended up quite sweaty….. But he view were fantastic!

Around 1pm, we were done, we had lunch in a café and at 1.40pm we were back on the road. It was a bit tense in the car, D. is not an experienced driver and thus not too confident behind the wheel. Disagreements escalated quickly…

We arrived in Bundaberg short of time with no place to stay… I am not confident speaking on the phone and none of the places offered online booking. We stopped in a shopping center to buy a quick dinner. We found a hostel, but drove to the wrong address (the place is under refurbishment) the new address is in a crappy hostel that had really bad rating…. Oh well… this will do for one night.

We were back in the car before around 7pm, we were supposed to be at the Turtle sanctuary for 6.30pm, we called them and they said it was fine. When we arrived people were still queuing to get in. D. got some fries from a truck vendor. I think we missed the video presentation, but at least we did not miss the turtles and we did not have to wait for ages.

The place is called Mon Repos, it is a sanctuary for turtles. They take care of a long stretch of beach were sea turtles come and lay eggs from November to January and the eggs hatch from January to April. They are a lot of people but they are several groups. We are in group 3. While waiting, we got eaten alive by mosquitoes….

 We saw the hatchlings, we got to feel the strengths in their front legs and with light we made a path from them to the ocean. Turtles are attracted to the light from the horizon. D. was one of the people making the pass, the hatchlings went under his legs it was so cute!

Once they were gone, we could stay and learn a bit more about the nest and the turtles with the ranger. She dug up the nest with her hands. We counted the egg shells, 122 hatchling survived out of 135. We saved 5 while digging the nest, the rest were unhatched or wrong eggs. We also got to hold a few unhatched eggs and a dead hatchling, it was a bit sad.

We headed back to the hostel around 11.30pm, had showers and went to bed. The hostel is super quiet! There is only one Asian girl in our dorm and she is sleeping.

Walked 5.20 km today.

Slept in a mixed dorm, in Cellblock Backpackers, Bundaberg.

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extra photos from the internet

 

09/02 - Last day in Paradise

The alarm rang at 8am and we were up around 9. We had breakfast and checked out at 10am. We did a bit of planning for the next day: renting a car + hostel.

Then we went to the beach from 11am to 1.30 pm. I took a body-board again. This time we went to a different beach, and headed left once on the main beach in front of the hostel. We played in the waves a bit. One after the other to keep an eye on the bags. There are a bit more people today.

I played in the waves with the board. D. is not feeling great today. We tanned and went in the water repeatedly as it was so hot! We also read and played with the waves.

We came back to the hostel because D. had enough. We had lunch, planned some more and actually book something. D booked a car and looked at insurance while I read. Quickly time run out and we had to rush if we wanted to catch the bus that would take us to the ferry and head back to Brisbane.

We left the hostel at 4:05, the bus arrived at 2:30 (10 min late), and luckily we arrived on time for the ferry at 5pm. I could not sleep and ‘I had no more motion sickness tablets….’ So I laid on of the seat. Back on mainland, we jumped in the bus, but in the train station we missed the train as we did not have our return ticket for Brisbane.

D is a bit on edge and reacted badly to something I said. The train journey was silent. In Brisbane we stopped at Fortitude Valley (near China Town and Story Bridge). The new hostel is close to where we are going to rent the car. We arrived around 7.3pm. We checked in and went out for dinner (8pm). We got 2 for 1 big pizza at $15.

After dinner, we chose to walk it off, which was wise because we were so full! We went to Story Bridge and walked along the river until Eagle Street Pier and back to the hostel. By 9.40pm we were in bed with books, tired!

Walked 5.25 km today. 

Slept in a mixed room, in Brisbane Bunk Backpackers.