Heaps of Fun!

Once again we fell victim to the lack of internet in Australia so this post is a few days off of schedule. We will be posting another blog in the next week with updates from this week’s adventures.

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G’day Mates! It’s May 9^th and we are on a flight to Alice Springs for our Uluru trip tomorrow. Before today we only knew of Alice Springs as a cheesy chicken dish at Outback Steakhouse. Funny how there are no Outback Steakhouses in Australia!  Josh says there are no Lone Star Steakhouses in Texas so we guess that makes sense.  That’s so crazy!!  Ok, maybe not.

Uluru is otherwise known as Ayers Rock. We will be taking a 3-day, 2-night camping trip beginning tomorrow at 6:00 am.

It has been quite a long time since our last post so let’s get caught up. When we last posted, we were about to head on a hike to the lighthouse in Byron Bay. It was pouring rain so we suited up in our rain jackets and headed out the door.  We tried to make the most of our wet hike to the beach.

We made it to the most easterly part of Australia.

We got to the top and enjoyed the beautiful lighthouse. Suddenly, it became really dark and we came to the realization that we would be hiking back in the pitch black. Our headlamps/flashlights (or as the Aussies would say “torches”) were securely nestled in our backpacks at the hostel. Lessoned learned: Always carry a torch!

After we made it safely back to the hostel we met up with a fellow Greyhound traveler by the name of John. He is from an island between Ireland and the UK. His accent was thick but apparently drinking beer is an international language so we all understood each other very well that night. Josh believes that if all the world leaders got together over beers the world would be a much better place. We danced and drank with John until the wee hours of the morning. Josh and John bonded over kebabs around 2:00 am before we called it a night. We forgot our camera so we don’t have a photo of him but he will always be a hazy image in our memories.

It continued raining as we made our way to the bus stop the next morning. We were heading up the coast to Noosa. It is funny that in Australia you head north for warm weather when we are so accustom to heading south for warmth. We arrived in Noosa around 5:00 pm. We booked a room through Airbed & Breakfast and stayed with a lovely family for the night. For any of you travelers out there you might want to give this website a look – www.airbnb.com.

That night, Lisa (our host) took us to grab some takeaway sushi for dinner. It is ironic that Australia is one of the most, if not the most, expensive countries we have ever visited but the sushi is reasonably priced.

The next day we headed to the farmers market for breakfast and ate some local fare. We spent the day hiking through beautiful Noosa National Park.

Unfortunately, we only had limited time here because we needed to be in Cairns by May 2nd so we found ourselves packing up again. Noosa is a place that we could have stayed at for days.  We had our first quasi-hitchhiking experience while making our way to the bus station. We were waiting for the local bus to arrive when a nice girl motored up and told us to hop in. She saved us $11 dollars by driving us to the bus station.  Thanks, young party girl whose named we never got.

We traveled via Greyhound through the night and stumbled upon this gem at a truck stop:

We arrived in Arlie Beach around 9:30 am and had a departure bus to catch at 2:25 am. Talk about a fast trip. We relaxed for most of the day and took in a beautiful sunset along the beach.

On the road again! This stretch of road was spent mostly looking at the back of our eyelids.  We pulled into Mission Beach on the morning of May 1^st. We stayed at a place 14 km from the town so we didn’t have much to do. However, we found a great hiking trail called Bicton Point.  The original European settlers of this area (the Cutter brothers) used the summit of this trail as a lookout for ships.

We followed the hike with a beer at the local pub owned by a nice German bloke.

We spent the following rainy day both reading an entire book and doing laundry.

If only there was a Bed Bath & Beyond and Home Depot in the area we would have been the typical married couple on errand day. Still, we could have thought of a million other worse things to do. Check out the view from the common area.

We got a ride to the bus stop for what was supposed to be a 6:00 pm departure time. After a few hours of waiting around we were told the bus was 4 hours behind schedule. So we waited and waited and waited some more. Oh the joys of traveling at the mercy of Greyhound. We didn’t mind the wait. Leanne whipped out her jump rope because her ADD got the best of her and Josh started a new book. He highly recommends “Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter." Leanne can’t wait to read it next.

The bus finally arrived at 10:00 pm and we boarded without an explanation for the delay. Guess we will never know what happened. We were bound for Cairns to spend the next week with our friend, Lesley. We introduced you to her in our last post. 

We are about to run out of internet access so we will post this and fill you in on Cairns and Uluru (Ayers Rock) upon our return in a few days.

Thanks for following and Happy Mother's Day!

Leanne & Josh