Airlie Beach, Skydive (my birthday)

22.06 - 23.06

And we're back on Laaaand, and with a full program. On Saturday we booked an Airbnb experience in a kangaroo rescue center. A woman in her mid-50s has dedicated her life to orphaned kangaroo and wallaby babies after her divorce. Around her beautiful house (absolute dream location and dream pool, see gallery) she raises small kangaroos, cooks the respective milk every day (3 different types depending on the age stage) according to a special recipe, plays with the little rascals and prepares them for adult life in nature. In addition, she occasionally gives a small group (like us) insights into her work and tries to raise awareness for animal welfare, etc. We were allowed to play with the little ones, feed them the bottle and listen to many interesting stories in the meantime. We all arrived there with probably the worst hangover in a long time (after the after-party on Friday night) but after a minute there, everything was forgotten. The little ones were soooo cute.

In the evening it was time to go to bed earlier, then the next morning we got up at 6 am to be on time for the skydive. After being woken up with a lovely Happy Birthday and having a light breakfast, we set off. Oh, the excitement grew from step to step and from minute to minute the nervousness became a bit bigger. We would jump from a height of 15,000 ft, with 60 seconds of free fall. 1 minute of free fall. We're crazy. I don't want to die on my birthday. Hahaha, yeah, and luckily I didn't. My guide and I were the second to jump out of the small plane, with water and the Whitsunday Islands below us. Beautifully dreamy. Well, I didn't see any of it for the first 30 seconds because I couldn't force myself to open my eyes. I just wanted this adrenaline rush to stop, all that was going through my head was 'please pull the parachute, please pull the parachute, please please finally pull the parachute'. When the parachute finally opened after 60 long seconds, I was as relieved as probably never before in my life. And suddenly the view was breathtakingly beautiful and I realized that someone had just sung Happy Birthday to me for 1 whole minute while we were falling through the air without any support. How many people have experienced that? Back on the ground, there were tears of joy and relief at seeing everyone safe and sound again, and of course hearing that it was 'pretty chilled' and 'actually, kind of boring' of course Riel. Just shut up.

The rest of my 19th birthday we spent with a nice walk along the waterfront, playing cards, lots of phone calls with family and friends (I think I spent a total of 4.25 hours on the phone that day, friends hahaha), and burgers that the dear gang had made especially for me.

What an exciting birthday.

See you soon, XO

PS. Pictures of skydiving will follow as soon as I get the pictures from the USB to my phone, because unfortunately my laptop can't read it 🙄😑)