Pythons and Sting Rays and Koalas... oh my!

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Oh My Goshhh, where do I start!? The 2 weeks that Erin here went by SO fast and we did SO much, I don't even know what to write!! I can say, though, that the past 2 weeks have been some of the most fun times I have had in Australia.

Tuesday (of last week), Erin and I went on a Blue Mountains tour, which was actually really fun, and really ridiculously hot - close to 110 degrees!! Yikes! The tour was mostly full of older people, but we happened to be sitting at the back of the bus by a Canadian girl traveling alone named Danielle, so we ended up having a really fun time with her all day. We went to the site of the 2000 Olympics, a couple places in the mountains (including the famous Three Sisters), and lastly, we stopped in a national park and saw some kangaroos in the wild! The tour lasted the entire day and 68 dollars well spent... and meeting new people always makes things so much more fun!

Wednesday (Day 1) we were up and at the airport for a 7am flight on our way to the Whitsundays! We had an hour layover in Brisbane, then flew up to Mackay, THEN took a 2 hour trip on the Greyhound up to Airlie Beach!! The first night we just walked around and went to bed early since we were a bit tired from traveling most of the day. While we were walking around at night by the beach, I looked down by my feet and then bolted away SO FAST... there was a HUGE python right by my feet that I had almost stepped on! Some guy walked over and was like, "oh, it's just a python"... but I usually don't see 5 foot long snakes roaming around Iowa City.... crazy!!

Day 2: We really lucked out (not) and had bad weather most of the day... really cloudy and mostly rainy, with very few bouts of sunshine. We did a 3 Island Tour which took us to Daydream Island, Hamilton Island, and famous Whitehaven beach. On our boat, we met two Australian girls who we hung out with all day and had a blast with. Unfortunately since the weather was pretty bad, so we ended up swimming in resort pools and hanging out at some swim-up bars. Which, I guess, isn't all that bad, eh? Whitehaven Beach was really pretty with pristine water (which was as warm as bath water) and white sand... and we got to wear sexy stinger suits to keep us from having our lungs paralyzed by killer jelly fish. Once the water gets about 80 or 85 degrees, people are told to wear suits because the box jelly fish come out in masses. That night we went out and met tons of English and Canadian people and had a blast at a foam party!! So much fun. AND, the guy that was DJ'ing at the bar happened to be a guy I met while traveling in Cairns a couple of months ago... such a small world!!!

Day 3: The weather was supposed to be crappy so we rearranged our snorkeling plans and decided to stick around Airlie, but the weather turned out to be nice so we swam around the lagoon most of the day. We went to Subway for lunch and ran into some Canadians and a guy from Switzerland that we had met the night before. The Canadians were on their way home, but the Swiss guy ended up hanging out with us, getting ice cream with us, and hanging out with as at the lagoon for a few hours before he went on a sailing trip. Ahhh, I love meeting people from all over the world and helping them with their English - haha, it's so much fun.

Day 4: OCEAN RAFTING!! We took this awesome boat that was kind of like a speed boat but looked like a big raft and HOLY COW it was crazy! I sat at the front at one point and was flying out of my seat and seriously thought I was going to die from these huge waves! It was a BLAST! They took us to 2 different snorkeling places off of the reef, which were AWESOME (minus seeing a few jelly fish, but not the killer ones)... and THEN we went to the northern part of Whitehaven beach which was indescribably beautiful. By far, the most beautiful beach I have ever been to. So we just played in the water for a few hours (and I saw tons of sting rays... and almost stepped on one, oops!), then our guide took us up a 20 minute hike through the jungle to the Hill Inlet lookout to see the entire lookout.... WOW! Simply amazing and the pictures don't even do it justice. It was definitely one of the most fun days I have had in Australia.

Erin's last few days here were spent walking around Sydney, going to a delicious sausage sizzle (BBQ) with people from Andy's work, eating a yummy kangaroo dinner, going to the zoo with Erin and my Mom (baby koalas!!) and climbing the harbour bridge!! The bridge climb was awesome, not as hard as I thought, and way scarier than I had anticipated!! But the amazing pictures were worth the 3 hour trip up and down the bridge. So now for the past day and a 1/2 I have been relaxing from these past 2 crazy, busy weeks.

Right now my Finnish roommate Michaela is traveling the East Coast with some friends, so her friend Maria, from Denmark, is staying here... and we are having a blast!! She is so much fun... it's gonna be hard to go back to the midwest and be stuck around Americans all the time. I love the diversity of this city!! One more month til school starts, but in the meantime, a German guy that I met on Magnetic Island a few months ago is going to be here, and my friend Jim from Antioch is going to be visiting Sydney with his girlfriend too!! Also, Andy and I are going on the Central Coast of NSW next week, which should be SO much fun! I have been having so much fun (and am SO poor, blah) and haven't really taken time to think about how cold everyone is back home - hahaha, just kidding, I think about it every time I step out into the 100 degree heat here!! I love my roommates (and temporary roommates), I love where I live, I love the weather.... love my life!!! Everything is going so well, I couldn't have asked for a better experience or better people in my life to share it with!!

I feel like I'm leaving out SO much of the stuff I did, but I'm pretty sure I hit all the big, important, fun details 😊 Hope everyone is doing well and staying warm... miss you!!

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