Paradise

I just got back from my Fraser Island trip!  I signed up for it not really knowing what to expect but I knew it was going to be awesome and a great way to meet new friends.  It was a group trip that was offered to students studying at the University of Sunshine Coast.  I got an e-mail from school giving a little bit of information about the trip and it sounded like a really good opportunity and they were only offering this price one time for students at Uni so I reserved a spot for myself as soon as I could because the spaces were limited.  I talked to a bunch of people that wanted to go but they said that the trip was full and there was a waiting list.  This was the best thing I could have done.  It was by far the most amazing experience I have ever had and it gives me the chills just writing about it.  It was also listed as a world heritage spot in 1992. 

I am going to try and put a lot of photos on this posting but I want to say that these photos do not even come close to giving the areas that we visited justice.  In real life it was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.  I can not believe that we got to see so much in two days and spend a good amount of time at each place.

I will start from the beginning of my trip and try to put a lot of pictures up.  I will put up the important information that I learned about the places that we visited, but I forgot a lot of it.

I woke up at 4:10am on Saturday morning and packed, ate 'breaky' (Aussie term for breakfast), and walked to the bus stop at school to catch the bus at 4:50.  We rode on a greyhound like bus for about 2 hours and then met our tour guide in this little town and transferred buses.  Then we went with him on a little 12 minute ferry ride to the WORLDS largest sand island!  98% of the island is made up of sand and the other 2% is rocks, so all of the vegetation in the rain forests and stuff is all just growing out of sand.  

That's me by the bus

We had to go on a HUGE bus with HUGE tires because we did a ton of driving up and down sand hills that we needed this special bus.  We also did a lot of driving up and down the beach on the sand with the waves coming up to the bus.  There are a lot of other vehicles that can make it on this tour but for our group size (36) we needed a bus.  People do rent jeeps and even bring their own cars over also.  The 75 miles of beach front sand is just used as a road.  There are even cops driving around but no speed limit signs :).  Our bus went FAST and our tour guide Cam put the petal to the metal!  We had a lot of fun with him, he was a great guide.

The first place we went to was called lake Wabby and it was about a 45 minute walk/hike to get there.

A cool tree we passed on our walk to Wabby

This lake is really cool because one side of it is trees and plants and the other side is a huge sand dune that we hiked up.  Once we got to the top there was just so much more sand, and sand, and sand every way you looked.  Walking up the sand dune took about 4 minutes.  It was straight up hill and a really good work out but it wasn't a terribly long hike up.

This lake is special for a few reasons: one being that it is the deepest lake on Fraser Island but it will no longer exist by the time I have grandchildren.  The sand is slowly moving into the lake and eventually it will have fully eating up the whole lake.  The estimated amount of sand that is going into the lake annually is 3 meters. 



You could see BIG fish swimming around in there and the water was really refreshing.  The fish were harmless but really cool to see.  They got pretty close to us at times but if you moved they would quickly swim away.

This lake was a lot of fun to hang out at and we stayed there for about 2 hours (I think).  It was enough time to be able to take it all in and enjoy every second of it.  I went up to the top twice and came back down and both times going up were a lot of fun.    
When it was time to go back down to the bus we all packed up and enjoyed our walk down.  The scenery was beautiful and the weather was awesome.  When we got back down the first thing I did was go to the bathroom and on my way out there was a little guy hanging out on the side of the bathroom.  I didn't name him but here is a quick peek.  ------->>  Nice huh!!! This is the biggest spider that I have ever seen in my life.  Even counting the ones that are stuck in cages.  But if it makes you feel any better, rumor has it that they are nice and great to have around because they just eat all of the bugs.  The only   
time they bite is if they are really mad and they think they are in danger.  But I heard from my Aussie roomie Hayley that they are really handy to have around and they actually get much bigger and they just live in peoples houses (AHHHH)!!  Okay... I will quickly move off of this subject because I know some of you are probably not going to be able to handle this picture (but I am posting one more spider picture up later, a different looking one).

So we got down to the bottom and packed up in the bus and went to have lunch at the resort that we stayed at.  We had about an hour lunch break before we were onto our next journey. 

Where we stayed the night

 The next place that we visited was called Lake McKensie.  This was my absolute favorite!  It was the most beautiful place that I have ever seen in my life and it was completely unreal.  I cant even describe how beautiful it was and it was completely breath taking!  Even paradise isn't a good enough way to explain it...!


This lake is surrounded with beautiful white sand that is made up of three different kinds of minerals.  It is very special sand because some people have used it to make glass, it cleans jewelry, exfoliates your skin and all kinds of cool stuff.  Our tour guide told us to wash our skin with it and lather it into our skin as good as we can because it takes all of the old dead skin off your body so new nice soft skin can start developing.  It is also supposed to make you look 5 years younger, haha!  Some of us girls washed our faces with it and rubbed it all over our face and took a picture (you cant tell in the picture that we have sand all over our faces though).  When we left McKenzie Lake our skin was unbelievably soft from the sand.  People in the old days (and me) brushed their teeth with it.  It made my teeth really white and smooth :), not everybody was brave
 
enough like me to brush their teeth with it but... When will I ever get a chance to get a free whitening again? It made our teeth so smooth!

This lake is made up of 100% rain water.  It is the freshest, cleanest, clearest water that I have ever seen in my life.

We stayed here and swam for a few hours and it was the best (I don't think I have mentioned that).  I swam out pretty far and even though I went that far out I could still see the bottom of the lake.  It was deep and far down but the bottom was in sight because the sand is such a light color (or 'colour' if your an Aussie) and since its so bright you can see the bottom even if you go far out.  Eventually I did reach a point where I could no longer see the bottom but it was really deep there. 

You are not supposed to take any of the sand I don't think but I did end up taking a little pinch :).  I think it just fell into my bag from my towel though ;) (wink, wink).  It was just so soft and pretty that I had to have a little and just in case I ever need to clean any of my jewelery ever.
After a few hours of staying here we packed up and went to the resort to eat dinner.  All food we got was an all you can eat buffet so we never left hungry.

 After dinner we pretty much did whatever we wanted to do.  We ate dinner and then walked around on the beach looking for Dingos (wild dogs) and we spotted one from a distance.  I got a picture of one that was really close to our bus as we were leaving the resort today that I will post up in a few.

So once it got dark we went out to the beach to look at the stars and it was breathtaking!  I cant even describe the view and I obviously could not get any pictures but if you ever think you have seen the Milky Way then you are pretty much wrong because the Milky Way that I have seen in the States compared to the Milky Way that I saw last night was 100% different.  I cant describe it because it is impossible but it is by far the most amazing view I have ever seen (did I already use that line?).  The stars were as bright as you can imagine and more and the Milky Way was pretty much as bright as a moon, it was unbelievable! 

 After we star gazed for awhile we went to check out the Brazilian party at the beach bar because there was a full bus of people from Brazil.  One side of the bar was a live Brazilian band that sang in Spanish, we hung out there for awhile because they were having more fun then the other side of the bar where there was just regular music that is usually in bars.  There English was okay but not the best.  Some of them spoke better English than others but when you talked to some of them you had to talk really slow and explain things to them using words from kindergarten.  Eventually they understood it.  It was nice because they translated the Spanish band words to us when the band told us to do something... Like back up and come back forward and do your salsa and all that fun stuff.

I stayed there until around 11:50 then went to bed because we had an early morning.  Breakfast from 6:30-8:30 but the bus left at 8:30.  He said he would give us a little bit of a leeway because we were a younger crowd :), he wouldn't have left any of us anyway.

I woke up at 6am and could not sleep anymore so I got up and showered and then tried to lay back down and sleep for another 45 minutes but I still could not sleep so I just got up and walked around waiting for people to wake up.  Then I went to breaky and got on the bus to go check out this point that we hiked to.  We got a view of the whole ocean all around us.  Usually from this view we could see sea creatures in the ocean but the sun was at a point where it was making a glare onto the ocean so it was hard to see any creatures.  Some people saw a sea turtle but I couldn't spot him because he kept going back under whenever I was looking in the right location. 

Almost to the top of the point.

I took a 360 degree video of this spot but I do not want to put it on here because I am afraid it will take too long but here are some pix.  It was beautiful and the hike was not too bad either.  It was just a little uphill for a bit but mostly just easy.

 

Scary huh?

  Well, I have like a billion photos of all of this stuff but I can only put up some right now.  There are a few more that would be cool to post up but since I am getting tired, and it is getting late and I have an 8am class in the morning I am just going to try to finish this up and hopefully you will get to see pictures when I get back.  Maybe one day I will have a scrapbook of all these pictures!

After we left here we drove more on the beach front until we reached a sunken ship that floated to the beach and got stuck.  It was from the navy and...  there was a lot information about it and history that if you want to learn about it I could refer you to www.google.com  :).   There was too much information about this for me to type out this late at night.  But anyway, it was really awesome and neat to see in real life.  It is Australia's most photographed piece of rust.  We couldn't go in it because it is far too dangerous and we would have gotten hurt.  It was really long and this is not all of it.  Some of it got washed away so it was a really large ship. 

They almost tried to clean it up but while they were brainstorming ways to get it off of the beach they saw tourists that were really interested in it so they decided to keep it.  I think it has been there for about 67 years but dont quote me on that exactly :).

We were only here for long enough to get pictures of it and then we were on our way for our last stop before lunch.  Elle Creek.

Elle (sp) Creek was really awesome.  It was cold water that you can drink, (but I didn't).  We walked up to the top of the creek and then floated down the the pool area where it opened up.  This water was the coldest but it was only cold for a second.  Some people had tubes that they floated down the creek with but we just floated with our bodies.  It was not a long stretch and did not take very long so I did it a couple times.  The first time I went I didn't bring my camera or anything because I wanted to do the full float and not walk the whole time holding up my camera.  Then I laid out for a little bit and got hot and did it again.  I brought my camera and saw this spider on the walk up.
  He was huge too.  Unfortunately I didn't get many pictures of this area. But here are the few that I got.

After we left here we went and had lunch and then hit the road to our last spot.  The rain forest.  We were all so tired by this time that we weren't that excited about it and just wanted to stay on the bus and sleep but we fought through it and did the last stop of the whole tour.  It was good that we got motivated to do it because it was worth it.

Again I did not take many pictures but I still got some.  This is the only rain forest of its kind (and I forget that kind, haha).  But its the only one.  I hugged a tree that was 1000 years old.  I did it just to show the picture to Marna and John.  PS- if you guys are reading I had to walk an extra 25 minute walk (totally worth it though) to get this photo and before we started this walk he gave us a 'how to be safe talk' since he was not going to go with us.  He gave us some information about the walk to see the tree that was 1000 years old and the first fact he threw at us was, "7 of the 20 most deadliest snakes live on this island".  Umm... I hate snakes more than anything on this earth and they are all pretty much deadly to me.  Even the little water snakes!  But I still did the extra 25 minute walk because seeing a tree that was over 1000 years old was going to be worth it :), plus knowing that this was the last stop of the day was pretty rewarding!

There she is!

   This was another cool looking tree on the walk.    -->
  Since the guide was not with us I am not really sure what is growing around it but it was awesome.  The creek that was flowing through this walk was really clean to and you could drink that water as well.  It was encouraged but I didn't because I didn't walk to walk through the bush since there were so many snakes and since I saw so many huge spiders.  So I just drank out of my nalgene instead.

This picture is a postcard. 

Back in the day women gave birth in or around the creek that we followed to the tree.  It was beautiful as well.  There is a bunch more information about this also so I suppose if you are interested in knowing it google would be your best option again:).  

After this we made a toilet stop for all the people that had to go, of course I was one of them and then we hit the road.  As we were driving on the beach we saw a Dingo close up!  It was pretty cool.  There are about 150 dogs left on this Island and you cannot feed them.  If you got too close to them they might bite.  If they bite you then they are killed.  They have tags on their ears to identify them but the one that we saw did not have a tag so there are probably more than 150 on the island.

They are really skinny and unhealthy because they do not have much to eat.  Their lives pretty much consist of wondering around to try and find food since there is not much on the island for them to eat.  They live off of rubbish (the Aussie word for garbage).

This was the last thing that we saw on the island so it ended off really well.  Some people do not get the opportunity to see a dingo and I saw two while I was there.

Well... It is getting late and I have an 8am class but I just needed to write all of this stuff before I forgot :).  I hope you all enjoyed reading about my FRASER ISLAND ADVENTURE! Because it was such an amazing opportunity!  I would probably have written a lot more if it was not so late.  They're still a lot of photos that I will be getting from friends cameras so I will try and make a 'Fraser Island part 2' blog post so I can post up the rest of the pictures.
Good night!