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So Mission Beach is famous for a few things.. we knew we had to do...Walk along the gorgeous beach, visit the tropical Dunk Island, Jump out of a plane at 14,000ft and White Water Raft on the Tully River.
Soooo thats what we did!.. we didn't want to tell anyone at home until we had sent the pictures and DVDs home to give the parents a shock! lol.
Even though the Hostel at Mission was basic it was good fun and we had a couple of visits to the bottle shop and some good nights on our balcony with the girls!...On our first day we got the Water Taxi to Dunk Island which was just how i expected paradise to look! palm trees hanging over the beach beautiful sunshine and lush beaches.
On the morning of the Skydive I was rather nervous and excited at the same time... sitting waiting to be picked up it did cross my mind that i was about to jump out of a plane!... so we got picked up...signed our lives away...got wisked off the the centre for a bit of training on how to jump and the positions etc....obviously we did tandem
skydiving and the man strapped to my back was videoing at the same time.
I can honestly say it all went very quickley and the only time i had to get nervous was the walk to the plane... i had never sat next to an open aeroplane door before and it was really exciting when it took off... it seemed really high so i asked my instructor how many feet we were high...only 2,000ft!!...asked again...only 6,000ft... the views were getting more and more breathtaking. we could see the Barrier Reef on the horizan, we could see all of the rainforest and the reef surrounding Dunk Island and some other small islands. The colour of the water was fantastic! It turned out that the day we did our jump was the only clear blue sky and sunny day we had in Mission..PERFECT....
At 11,000ft we had to start getting ready to jump. Ant went first which was strange to see my boyfriend jump out of a plane door!
Then it was my turn. i had to kneel over the edge... arms crossed over my chest and head up...JUMP.. all of a sudden i felt freezing air rushing past me.. but
it didn't feel like horrible dropping like a rollercoster...it didn't really feel like we were falling apart from the funny faces my mouth was making with the air! Then the shoot opened and it felt like we were getting dragged back up. the next few minutes of flying over the crystal waters... watching the sandlines of the Great Barrier Reef were amazing. Ant saw a Dugon underneath him (a sea Cow) cos the water was so clear. my instuctor Sinno let me take over the controls of the shoot for a bit and showed me how to make it spin until i felt a bit sick!... then we came into land on Mission Beach..saw the girls waiting for us and i was the last to land. Feet up! i landed smoothly on my bum and just sat there for a second stunned! legs like jelly i got to my feet. We did it!!
The next day we thought we would take it easy so we got up at the crack of dawn and went White Water Rafting for the day!!lol. We got the bus to Tully (the oldest rainforest in the world). got our safety talk, picked up life
jackets and paddles and headed down to the river. our instructor Fabio from S.America was only young and showed us all the different paddles we needed to know which also included "Get Down!" and "Hold On!" which made me feel safe!..not then he told us what to do if the raft turned over and we were stuck underneath!! uh oh.
I was a bit unsure at first and more nervous than the skydive but after a few small rapids it was so much fun. we got chucked in the water at swiming spots, tackled upto grade 4 rapids, stood under massive waterfalls, had BBQ lunch shared with a million wild turkeys! then tackled even more waterfalls and bigger rapids as well as jumping of a 10metre high rock into a deep pool! which i did! and i only saw one fish!
Again we were unbelievably lucky with the weather..Fabio said it usually rains as Tully is the wettest place in Oz with average of 7metres of rain per year. but for us it was beautiful sunshine and quite refreshing to jump into the river to cool off! What a knackering day...but sooo fun! Brilliant!
The rest of our time
at Mission was spent chillin' on the beach or in the hostel recovering from our mad couple of days! Then finally we had to get our last bus up north to our final destination on the East Coast...Cairns!
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s teph
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Live life to the full
Sounds like you had a fantastic time at Mission Beach, what amazing luck seeing a Dugong from the air. Hope you enjoy Cairns and Cape Tribulation, watch out for the crocs on the beach!