1. Trip: Moreton Island (10.12.)

I almost missed my first trip in Australia. After the tram broke down, which would have taken me there in 10 minutes, I had to jog the almost 2km in flip-flops. When I arrived at the (supposed) meeting point and neither the bus nor other people were there, I found out that the meeting point was somewhere else and I had absolutely no idea where that was. In the end, I just made it in time for departure. So we headed from the Gold Coast to Brisbane and from there took a ferry to Moreton Island. Unfortunately, it was extremely windy that day, and we froze on the ferry. When we arrived on the island, we wanted to go kayaking, snorkeling, and sandboarding. However, due to the wind, we could only do the last two activities.

So we went snorkeling in the turquoise water around a shipwreck, where I kept hitting my knee on those damn wreck parts underwater ;-). We also saw many amazing fish swimming right in front of our faces.

Afterwards, we took a bus through the national park on unpaved terrain to a desert landscape. The drive alone was an experience. It shook us so much and the bus sometimes needed several attempts to navigate a turn on the narrow paths.

I had never heard of sandboarding before. It's a lot of fun, as long as you do it right. The first time went really well. You lie on a thin board with your head forward and lift the front part of the board up and then ride down the slope. However, on my second ride, I forgot about that and got masses of sand slapped in my face. I couldn't see anything, I had so much sand in my eyes. Plus, the sand was in my ears, nose, mouth, and hair. Even after several showers, I still had sand in my hair :-).