Rainbow Beach & Fraser Island

I just got finished with my 14 hour bus ride from Rainbow Beach to Airlie Beach and am expectantly a little tired so this post will be short and sweet. The first night I arrived at Rainbow Beach, a sleepy little stop-over for backpackers heading to Fraser I was told that my trip had been pushed back a few days and that I would get free accomo at Rainbow for the duration of my stay. Luckily for me, however, it wasn't pushed back too far which would have messed all of my plans up since I'm traveling on a very tight schedule. But since I didn't have to wake up early for a few days on Rainbow I was all ready to party but the problem was there wasn't a party anywhere to be found. David, the French guy from Noosa, and I are pretty much traveling together right now and were pretty bored most of the first day at Rainbow. Luckily that night we found a sport club a few K's away from the hostel and went. This place was straight out of lazer complete with toothless women and crazy rules that we continually broke, like if you wear a hat you must buy the whole bar a round, which we didn't do and got some shit for. But by far the best part of the night was the karaoke that I participated in to a crowd of about ten sober Aussies while I was hammered. The next night we walked with a group of people up to the top of the Rainbow colored cliffs called the Sandblow which was amazing. 200 meters above the beach with a great ocean view on one end and a beautiful view of the setting sun on the other, it hosted probably the second best sunset I've ever seen. But the best part was when you walked on the sand it looked as if your feet were kicking over white paint cans that would splash onto the sand, the colors there were unforgettable. That night David and I slipped into a hostel bar next door where I closed the place down with some randoms until we decided that it would be a good idea to start a fire on the beach, which would've cost us each 1,000 if we were caught but luckily weren't. Other than that, my trip to Rainbow was uneventful during most of the day but fairly lively at night.

The 4x4 trip on Fraser was awesome. We had a very good international mix of people; two French guys, a couple from Barcelona, a Swedish girl, and the standard two Germans (Germans are everywhere in Oz). I was pretty much the appointed leader of the group since I was the only one who knew anything about 4x4 driving and was the only one confident enough to drive the hell outta the thing. By far the best part of the trip was driving the car through the very bumpy, sand jungles and the views from a few hundred meters above the ocean at Indian Head. While there we saw four or five whales out in the distance and fished for massive two meter worms on the beach. The other highlights of the island include the numerous crystal clear freshwater lakes that were freezing cold but I swam in anyway and just talking with all the people on the trip; all in all we got along great and simply could not stop laughing all through the trip. But, on the other hand, while Fraser was amazing and I'm glad that I did it, I was a little disappointed. I had heard that it was one of the best parts of the East Coast but didn't think that it compared with Noosa or the feelings that I got while there, although I did meet more people at Rainbow/Fraser that I'll remember for years to come.

But no worries as I am now very near the Whitsunday Island and leaving on my 3 day sailing trip tomorrow morning at 8:30 and I just decided today that I will be skydiving next week at Byron Bay from 14,000 ft. I will have to wait until I get to Sydney to upload any pictures as it would take too much time sitting here at the cafe so in two weeks time all of the pictures from all these trips will be up. Hope everyone is doing well out there and getting excited to come home to cheap beers and good times (btw I'm paying around 45-50 bucks for a 30 pack here!!!)