Moreton Island

(This post is super long and as soon as you think it's done, it's probably not, just a warning.)

I survived my week of quarantine and sickness! Alex and I went absolutely stir crazy, made our own "Do You Want to Build a Snowman" video from Frozen, and got absolutely nothing accomplished, but I am back to feeling almost 100%! Which is good because we had a super awesome exciting trip this weekend!

Our bus!

Saturday morning at 6:30 am, Alex, Tori, Christy, Cameron and I, along with some other Bond students, got picked up in the most bizarre looking busses of all time. They sort of looked like garbage trucks with seats for people instead of garbage. Turns out they're special off roading busses because the island we went to has no roads, only sand. 

We drove the hour to Brisbane and then took another hour long ferry ride to get to Moreton Island. From the moment the ferry docked, I could tell this would be the most beautiful place I've ever seen. I know I say that about pretty much everywhere here but it's true! The water is crystal clear and the sand is so white. Like I said, there are no roads and it's an all sand island so there's really just lots of sand and some trees, or really anything civilized other than one resort, on the island so it was a very very very bumpy bus ride, getting thrown out of my seat. 

We finally got to the place we were going to sandboard and my first thought was 'so... where's the chairlift or something to bring me up to the top of these dunes...' and obviously since they're all made of sand, there wasn't one. So we grabbed our boards, which were just long slabs of plastic/wood, and started the hike 200 meters to the top. To give you perspective, that's like a 60 story building. That we climbed. In the sand. And it was so steep. Every step you took basically sunk you back to where you started. After a very difficult, hot, horrible climb, we finally got to the top and the view was so worth it. You could see all the beaches and everything on the entire island. Then it was time to slide. The drop was really steep so it was kind of scary, but nothing horrible. The guides said we'd probably get up to about 45 mph, which is pretty decent speed. We only got to go down like 100 meters, but it was still really fun! I dropped the front of my board at one point so I got super sprayed with sand and ended up with a nice mouthful of it. Alex had our groups only major wipeout on the sandboarding because the guide sort of pushed her sideways and she ended up going down backwards and then rolling down a big part of the hill. From this moment on, there was not a second that my body was not totally, annoyingly coated in layers of sand and sunscreen. Please just ignore the totally horrible, disgusting sand spit in my mouth at the end of this video...

The guides set up lunch and we all just hung out on the beach and played in the ocean. Then we got back onto the bus and headed towards the shipwrecks for snorkeling! As we were driving, we saw thousands of little soldier crabs running in huge groups along the beach. It was so cool! 

We suited up in our wetsuits and started snorkeling! There were a bunch of sunken ships and TONS of amazing fish! We got to swim with sharks and sting rays too. They had food for us to feed the fish and they would just swarm you trying to eat it. Then we saw a bird swallow a fish whole which was just lovely... but other than that it was absolutely perfect!

Shark!!

We spent most of the evening just chilling at the beach by our campsite watching the sun set before we ate a lovely pasta dinner made by our guides! Almost immediately after dinner (but not before eating a piece of cheesecake of course) we headed back to our tent and got ready to sleep. We were all exhausted and we knew sleep was gonna be necessary. There were four of us in our little tent and it was pretty cramped. There are a lot of big, scary bugs and lizards and snakes here in Australia so we were all a little freaked out at the idea of one of those getting into the tent. 

After surviving the night, we had some pancakes for breakfast and headed back to the bus to continue the tour. We went to Blue Lagoon, which is a freshwater lake in the middle of the island with water clean enough to drink and the kind of mud sand that they use in super expensive facials. At lunch, we went to Honeymoon Bay where they had big rocks that we could climb on and obviously we turned it into a giant photo shoot opportunity. 

The final stop on our adventure was a lighthouse/lookout point on the highest point of the island. Again, the views were spectacular. From where we were standing, so high above the water, you could still see turtles, sand and the fish that were in the water. I've never seen water so clear and bright blue. 

 That little darker spot in the middle is a turtle!

We finally got back on the bus and we are all lobsters from being in the sun for two days straight. But even the sunburns didn't stop us from having a great time! Everything here is peachy, but I'm not looking forward to going back to class after my nice little 11 day weekend with my quarantine time! I've got lots of big papers to write this week before surf camp next weekend! Don't worry, I'll keep you all up to date on the exciting things and not all the boring time spent in the library! Have a great week everyone!