MISSION BEACH

Hellohello,

Sooo long no WiFi.. I'm sorry for neglecting my blog..
But now there is much to tell, so I will get into it right away!
I have seen so much since my last post and I had to think, 'Where do I start..'
Here we go.

On the 7th of August we got our rental car in Cairns.
We then drove 4 hours to Mission Beach.
Mission Beach has a tropical climate, so even in the Australian winter the temperatures were
really nice. Mission beach has a beach, but we stayed in the rainforest, 5 min from the beach.
We only stayed here one night because the next day we had to go driving again.
We stayed in a beautiful B&B called 'The Licuala Lodge'.
The people were really nice and it was so cool to suddenly be surrounded by all sorts of flora and fauna we had never seen before.

We really enjoyed our stay!
The next day we drove to Airlie Beach.
More about Airlie soon!

Love,
Isabelle

ALICE SPRINGS

Hiii,

On the 29^th of July we had an approximately 3 hour flight from Sydney airport to Alice Springs.

Alice Springs is located in the centre of Australia as you can see on this map:

Alice Springs is a small town with 20.000 inhabitants.

We stayed here because the next day we were being picked up at 6 at our hotel by a little van from Adventure Tours.

We stayed in the middle of nowhere for 3 days. We camped and slept under the stars in swags.

(Swags are little beds you put over your sleeping bag.)

Sleeping under the stars there was one of the most amazing things I have ever done. There were SO many stars; it was incredible. People had already told me it was going to be gorgeous but when I was there and looked up I was shocked.

It is hard to explain what it was like, I think you will have to see it yourself to be able to share my emotions.

During those days we walked through Uluru, Kings Canyon and The Olgas and learned much about the culture of the Aboriginals.

We had a nice group and an amazing tour guide! In our group were two Canadian girls who were really funny and sweet!

We decided to stay in touch. It is lovely and so interesting to meet people from all over the world!

The second day was after my opinion the best. We were driving in the bus when suddenly our tour guide –her name was Q- said: ‘Oh yeah, I forgot to say that there is the opportunity to do a helicopter flight!’

My parents decided to ‘just’ do it. SO WE DID!

It was SO COOL!

We flew over the Kings Canyon, and it was so beautiful and so much fun!

We felt like pros with our headphones and microphone. Amazing.

On Friday the second of August we flew from Alice Springs to Cairns, were we are now, for the tropical sea part of our holiday.

More about Cairns later.

Uluru at sunset.

Now lots of photos of the helicopter ride!

On the last day we hiked through Kings Canyon. 

-The mountains you see on the photos made in the helicopter.-

Love,

Isabelle

SYDNEY PART 2

Hello all,

Sorry for not writing, I have some pretty good excuses though:

1. Half of the time that I didn’t write, I was in the middle of nowhere hiking through gorgeous nature and sleeping under the stars. No phone, no laptop, nothing.

2. Here in Australia they think Free WiFi is ridiculous.

3. I did so much. Most of my days started at 6 a.m. and by the time I got back at the hotel I was desperate for some sleeping time.

Enough excuses, time to tell about the AMAZING time I am having here.

I am going to start with our last days of Sydney.

27^th of July

This day the weather was amazing again. The sun was shining bright and the blue sky was present again.

It is winter in Australia at the moment, but mostly the weather is even better than in our summer.

Give us a winter like this please.

Back to the 27^th. Today we went to Manly, which is a small village part of Sydney. It is famous for its beach.

We did a biking tour through Manly and saw beautiful picturesque views that we otherwise wouldn’t have seen.

We all loved Manly beach.

Manly has an amazing boulevard with the nicest restaurants.

As you can understand, lunch was taken care of easily.

The food here is super by the way! Such nice and classy restaurants!

The thing we love also is the fact that in European countries gorgeous beaches like Manly are immediately made really touristic and spoilt, not in Australia.

In Australia everywhere we have been yet everything is so clean and as I said classy.

We also went to Bondi beach!

No lifeguards unfortunately.. ;)

28^th of July

We didn’t spend this day in Sydney.

We got picked up at 7 –I believe- and drove to the Blue Mountains with a tour guide and eleven other travellers.

The mountains are called this way because of the blue glow they seem to have when you look at them.

We walked quite a heavy track through the mountains.

But it was beautiful!

 Love,

Isabelle