With a Smile

So for my mid-semester break, I went on a somewhat last minute thrown together road trip from Cairns to Brisbane, with 8 people. The general plan was get from Cairns to Brisbane in a week, stopping off in a few places and seeing various places. So off we went on Easter Sunday morning, bright and early!

We got to the first hostel and it was awesome! Gilligans Backpackers had a pool and bar and all sorts of fun activities to do. The people at the travel place (Stace and Irish) were so helpful and fantastic, helping us sort out our week and staying after they were supposed to have left to work with us. We spent our night adventuring around Cairns and hanging out in the pool sharing a couple beers and preparing for the epicness of the trip!

First things first, rafting the Tully river!! We had such a blast! 5 of us jumped on a bus at 6 30 and were taken to the river and got our own boat. We were “that group” that splashed everyone as we passed them. We got to do a small cliff jump, float down the rapids outside the boat, almost got away from our instructor person- and saved someone who had fallen out of his boat at the same time. It was all super exciting and pretty epic!

Tuesday we rented the vans, and drove. and drove. and drove. We got down to Airlie Beach after attempting to see a few waterfalls… i mean… *cough cough* the waterfalls we definitely saw. and the other ones we rand 10k through a campsite to go see just before dark.. haha.

Airlie Beach was super nice! Happened to be in the town at the same time as Sarah’s brothers, so we got to catch up with them that night, and Wednesday morning, we were up and on our way to go see the Whitsundays! We were on a massive Catamaran that fit 80 of us, and everything was purple!! It was a lot of fun, and we made a bunch of friends and just generally enjoyed the activities of the day. These included snorkelling, beaching, and lunching amongst just chillin on the sailboat and enjoying company :)

The rest of the trip was a bunch of driving and finding random beaches to spend a little time on and whatnot. And finding places to park the vans and spend the night. I should mention that the vans were quite entertaining. They had a kitchen in the back (sink, gas stove thing, and fridge. as well as pans, silverware, cups, and plates and everything!) as well as spots for 4 people to sleep. I thought it was pretty fun, got a bit hectic with all of our stuff as well, but it worked pretty well! :)All in all it was a really fun trip. I would like to go back and do some of the things that we didn’t have time to do: see the Great Barrier Reef, Frasier Island, and a few things up there. I have time, so hopefully I’ll be able to do that before I leave Australia :)