Finishing up the East Coast

Well it's been a long, strange journey but the coast has finally come to an end! Let me catch you up...

After leaving the town of 1770 where I did the Scooteroo tour, I headed to a cattle ranch about 4 hours north for the night. This is a stop which is included on the OzExperience bus, but it's optional. I had heard it was pretty worth it so I decided I should head out there. When we arrived the staff was wearing full on cowboy attire and lunch was waiting for us. Good thing, because I was starving by this point! We all received a cowboy hat and bandana upon check-in and were given the choice of going horseback riding or 4-wheeling. Obviously all the girls chose riding horses and the boys chose 4-wheeling.

The horse riding was actually pretty fun and a bit different than your normal horse tour. We got to round up goats! So it was fun because we weren't just aimlessly following around a tour guide, we were actually doing something. After riding around for a few hours my butt was killing me and it was time to head back to the camping grounds. We had dinner and started drinking something called "giggly juice." It was basically a fizzy wine. But hey, 2 or 3 bottles and we were all getting pretty comfortable and ready to ride the mechanical bull! Let me tell you this, riding a mechanical bull is not as easy as it seems. A handful of people went before I did and fell off pretty much immediately. Then when it was my turn I flew off in about 2 reps. That shit hurts! But was hilarious... After everyone got a few turns on the bull we all sat around and started playing drinking games. What better way to get to know a group of strangers than by playing a little game of Never Have I Ever? A few hours of drinking games ensued then people started dwindling off to bed since we had an early morning ahead of us. We had to be up by 6am, have some brekky, hit the road and drive for 11 hours to Airlie Beach! After the Cattle Ranch pretty much everybody was best friends so the rest of my coast travels were a sinch!

Up next, Airlie Beach/Whitsundays....

The Marina

After a long bus journey we arrived in cozy little place town called Airlie Beach. Airlie was amazing! This is where I did the 2 day, 2 night boat trip around the Whitsunday Islands. The town is composed of a main strip sprinkled with bars, cafes, restaurants and clubs, then there's a lagoon just down the street where everyone lays around to soak up the rays. Since everyone was excited to finally be in a party town we decided to go all out. Thunda, our bus driver, informed us that if we met him for dinner at the hostel bar he would give us a bunch of free beer. Count me in! Everyone checked in and got settled then went down for dinner around 7:30. We partied at the bar for awhile then decided to head to a club called Mama Africa. Jesus Christ this place did me in.



Getting bandaged up



After a few drinks here I was pretty drunk and my all time favorite dance song came on, "Party Rock" by LMFAO. I'm not sure if this song has hit the States yet, but if you haven't heard of it and are between the ages of 18-27, YouTube that shit. Anyway, me and all my new bestfriends are dancing away on the dance floor and I'm doing the party shuffle and all the sudden I feel a sharp stab to my foot. I stopped and looked down to find BLOOD flooding out of my foot! I took off my flip flop and hobbled over to sit down and get a good look at the damage and basically a huge shard of glass had gone through my shoe and right inbetween two of my toes. It's a good thing I was drunk because I think this would have really hurt had I been sober. The amount of blood pouring out freaked everybody out and I heard some guy in the distance yell out, "Ew, some chick had her period on the dance floor!" Oh geez...

Anyway, a few moments later someone from staff rushed over and told me to go into the office. My new friend came with me for moral support while the guy bandaged me up. I sat there cracking up because I found it hilarious that this would happen to me the day before I go on a boat trip. Oy Vey. I'll be lucky if I make it home with both my feet.

Ready for my first dive!

Okay, so the next day was my date to departure Airlie and sail around the Whitsundays! For those of you who don't know, the Whitsundays are basically just a cluster of like 70-something (I think) Islands and you go scuba diving, snorkeling and go to Whitehaven beach, which is ranked one of the top 5 beaches in the world. Are you impressed yet? It's two days and two nights and everyone rants and raves about how awesome it is, so needless to say I was PUMPED UP for it! That morning I checked in to let them know I was still coming and the girl gave me a map of where I needed to walk to in the marina to find the boat. Oh great, it's all the way on the other side of town...sweet, that was fun considering I had a gimp foot at this point. I stopped at the Chemist (drug store) on the way to get some bandaids and sure enough on my walk to the boat my foot started bleeding again. At this point I was carrying all my stuff for the trip, a box of goon, it was hot and my hair was everywhere and my foot was bleeding. I'm sure when I rocked up they thought I was a crazy person. Needless to say, the staff on the boat remembered my name right away since I came with a good story about the night before.

That day we went scuba diving/snorkeling! No, I didn't see any sharks...bummer. As much as I'm petrified of sharks and the unknown monsters that live in the water, I have a guilty urge to really see some in real life, not in an aquarium. That night we all got on the goon then woke up early the next day to head to Whitehaven beach. Exciting right? Wrong. We woke up to it pissing down rain. How am I supposed to worship the sun and be a bronzed babe with this shit weather?! Sure enough they made us get off the boat and go to the beach. Pretty much no one wanted to go, it was cold and raining. We all had to wear wetsuits to keep warm. Such a bummer too because we were on one of the most amazing beaches in the world and couldn't even enjoy it. We went back to the boat after a few hours of sitting in the rain and they made us nachos! I miss Mexican food so much. I haven't had it since I've been in Australia so that was my first taste of Mexi since I've been here! It was pretty good. After everyone showered and had dinner we all gathered round to watch the pictures they had been snapping of us the past few days. Cool slideshow but I opted out of buying it. During the slideshow me and a few others heard a bunch of splashing going on on the back of the boat so we went to scope it out. Guess what it was?! Dolphins!!!! 3 Big ones and a baby. They were just swimming around there for like an hour showing off for us. We never got close enough to touch them but they were all around. It was so cool. Then the staff put on Pirates of the Caribbean-how appropriate. Everyone watched that then pretty much passed out. Next morning we woke up and had an early morning snorkel and dive then headed back to Airlie! While I had a blast on the boat, I was looking forward to getting back on dry land. I just hate being around so much damp stuff for extended periods of time. Ew.

When we got back to Airlie Beach I had 2 free nights at a different hostel so went and checked into there. I went and met up with some of the Scottish guys I had met on the bus and they introduced me to a few American girls they had met on their boat. For the next few days we hung out but the night before our OzExperience bus lef we found out it was leaving at like 7:15 or something. I wasn't even going to go out but then got talked into going to the girls' room and having a few quiet drinks. This turned into me blacking out, losing my phone and missing my bus the next morning! Noooo. Even the Scotts had managed to get up and  make the bus. I spent the day getting my life back together and tracing my steps. I asked around everywhere for my phone but no one had seen it. After accepting that I wouldn't get my phone back I went to the nearest convenient store and bought another one. They are only like $50 but then you have to put credit on it so I bought $30 worth for that then headed back to my hostel. I got on facebook and had a friend request from someone random, accompanied with a message saying that he had my phone and if I wanted it back I'd have to meet up in the next few hours. Seriously? Fiiiiine.

If you know me, you know I lose a phone about once every 3 months. They usually have a way of finding their way back to me so I guess I'll just have this backup phone for the next time I lose this one for good. I even thought ahead and put everyone's numbers in the new one so that whenever I do use it I won't get texts and calls from people and have to do the whole awkward, "Sorry, but I lost all my numbers, who is this??" After sorting out my phone I had to reschedule my bus pickup for the next day. The guy wasn't happy that my excuse was that I over-slept. He gave me a full-on lecture and told me I wouldn't be charged this time because it was my free-bee, but if I miss another bus then I'd have to be a $50 fine. Alriiiight, whatever dude I just need to be on tomorrow's bus. Needless to say I was super early at the bus stop the following morning! Off to Magnetic Island.... :)