Coming Down South

Soooo this post was written a few days ago and when I went to post it my computer decided that the internet did not exist anymore. Fantastic. So it's a bit old, but you still get the idea...

Hello everyone! And welcome to my blog. I hope you enjoy it. Anywho, where did we leave off? Mission Beach. Right. So, we were feeling a bit stressed about trying to make it all the way down the coast in a matter of weeks and decided to kind of switch up the trip a bit and extend some spots and cut out everything below Brisbane. I know, I know, but sacrifices must be made and I’ll just do it next trip. So, we stayed in Mission Beach an extra night. Don’t let the name fool you, there is not much more than a beach there. Literally-we ate at a gas station/car garage/mini mart/restaurant which was surprisingly delicious, though awkward, for obvious reasons. The day was spent on the beach laying in the sun and thinking in my head “this is actually happening. I am actually here” Over and over again. Really, it blows my mind when I stop and think of where I am, what I’m doing, and most importantly, what I would be doing if I were home in Portland. That night the hostel put on an “In Bad Taste” party, which translates to everyone wear the most ridiculous thing you can find in the dress up bins- I ended up in a lovely dance leotard complete with sequins and built-in choker. I should mention this was probably made for a 7 year old. We then went to the only bar in town and danced around like idiots for the better part of 4 hours. I did not win the dance competition, but did get an A for effort. So that’s something…

The next day we were up and off to Townsville-mistake #1. Townsville is a shabby, run down, military base town that has not much to offer besides a little kids water playground. Which was awesome but we didn’t get a chance to play in. We did run into a girl named Stephanie that we had known from our hostel in Sydney so she joined us for the night which we spent sleeping in our dirty hostel. So Townsville..cross it off the list.

We caught a ferry to Magnetic Island the next day which is about 20 minutes off the coast of Townsville. It’s beautiful-the water is that aqua that everyone loves in the pictures, there are trees galore and a bunch of funny little animals called rock wallabies that hop about and I swear were the inspiration for parkour. It reminds me quite a bit of McCall actually-there are these rocks that jut out into the water and are begging to be jumped off of, but there are also jellyfish in the water waiting to kill me so I had to control myself. Our hostel here was a funny place called Magnums that plays terrible music videos (which is a common theme among bars and hostels here in Oz) and they charge you to rent pillows. We had the bright idea to try mixing skittles and vodka- mistake #2. Some Welsh guys on our Great Barrier Reef boat had told us it tasted "sooooo good" and we believed them. The end result wasn’t terrible but definitely not something I would do all the time. We then had the unusual pleasure of attending the local Toad Races. Yes, they are exactly how they sound. It’s a local get-together that involved about 50 chairs circled around the “toad race” which was essentially a giant circle. An old local would auction off toads, which was y him making up stories about how fast all the toads were and then manhandling them about the ring to the highest bidder. We of course found it really fun to yell out obscene bids (my favorite was "my first born baby"-screw monetary values) and get beaten out, but some of these toads went for upwards of $100. The local scene was beyond entertaining and we got some fabulous shots of the spectators-think Eastern Oregon if you can. I did however win a pen for knowing the second smallest state of the US at trivia time between rounds (Delaware. I guessed.) After enough toad abuse for one evening we decided to see what else Magnetic Island had to offer-that led us to X Base-another hostel on the island. Where naturally I danced around like an idiot for another three hours with Claire and tried to make friends. There is just something about awesomely bad 90’s music complete with music videos that my body just cannot stand still.

Im slowly starting to pick up on people’s accents the more I meet new people, but still cannot understand half of what they are saying, if that makes sense. I can tell the person is Irish, but could not tell you anything about a 5 minute conversation we had. I’ve gotten really good at the “smile and nod” policy of pretending to know what’s being said but really singing bad music in my head.

Yesterday we made like real tourists and rented a funny little car that looks like a go-kart and drove around the island. That took about 20 minutes of actual driving. We drove down to one beach and went swimming, then hopped back into the car and off to another beach to swim. It was like musical beaches. But it was really, really fantastic and we got to see a lot of the island that we wouldn’t have otherwise been able to. I even drove! Granted that lasted for about 2 minutes of my brain trying to figure out a 4-gear stick shift on the wrong side of me, and driving on the wrong side of the road before it just shut down and I turned the wheel over to Sean and Claire for the remainder of the trip. But at least I tried, and no one was harmed. The island is really beautiful and definitely worth the ferry trip out here. Last night we went to X Base again because it literally is the only place on the island to go out, and it was considerably less crowded, but still fun. We took it somewhat easy since we have the Whitsundays coming up and have to be on our A game for that.

Today we are catching a ferry, then a greyhound bus to make it down to Airlie Beach where we take off for the Whitsundays tomorrow. I am so excited that I can’t convey it properly on this blog-Whitsundays are what I have been looking forward to the most of this trip. So, I’m quite excited that the time for it has finally arrived! God I sound like a little fat kid in a cake shop.

Until then..

Love you all.

Jen