Hello again friends and family. It is Steph writing again....two days in a row - it's a new record!

So, we left off with magical Bryon Bay. Our next big adventures were to Noosa and then Fraser Island, the largest sand island in the world. Fraser Island is 120k's long at it's longest point and 53 k's wide at it's widest. That's a huge sand island! It was formed many many years ago by the tides pushing billions of tons of sand up against the Great Barrier Reef. The island is unique, not only b/c it's the biggest in the world, but also b/c there is a rain forest growing in the middle of it (in the sand!) and the purest breed of wild dingos still roam the island. Before I get too far ahead with telling you about Fraser, I need to tell you about Noosa, where we stayed for 4 nights before heading to Fraser.

Noosa was one of a few places we could get to Fraser on the ferry from. We'd heard mixed reviews about Noosa - that it's a bit pretentious and that generally people who like Byron don't like Noosa and vice versa. As we pulled in to town, we understood why...Noosa is the antithesis of Bryon. It is kind of like the Miami Beach of Australia. There are tons of expensive gorgeous homes, Mercedes and BMWs everywhere, chic and expensive restaurants, and the people to go with all of it. Rach and I love nice places and things, but even Noosa was a little too much for us.

As soon as we arrived we went straight to the information booth to see when we could get out of Noosa and over to Fraser. We thought we knew how we wanted to explore Fraser, but quickly found out we didn't want to do it the way we originally thought. Our options were 1) we hire a 4x4 and go on our own, 2) we go thru a company who pairs you together with 8 other people and then all 10 of us go out in an unsupervised group, or 3) we go with a guided tour. We thought we were set on option 2 - getting paired up with other travelers who also wanted to explore Fraser. It wasn't until we spoke with the woman at the tourist information booth, however, that that idea started to not sound so good. She advised us not to go that route, as oftentimes that type ends in disaster. Because you get paired up with inexperienced drivers, the likelihood of them getting the 4x4 stuck or even worse crashing is high. She said that people get hurt all the time - and some even die. Hmmmm. We hadn't really thought about the fact that an inexperienced driver would have our lives in their hands. So, we rethought things and decided either going on our own (just Rach and Steph in a 4x4 w/ camping equipment) or going on a guided tour. The woman talked us out of going on our own since niether of us were experienced 4x4 drivers and could run in to issues that way too. So, finally we decided the guided group tour was proably the smartest. Which guided tour however was our next hurdle.

For the next day and a half we asked just about everyone in the sun about which tour was best. We finally settled on a 3 day, 2 night tour thru a company who was supposedly fun, who took travelers about our age, and catered to smaller groups. We were skeptical of the group option b/c of the same reasons all of us are skeptical of group tours....you're on someone elses agenda and you can't be sure what your group is going to be like - if it's great, the trip is super fun, if it's now, the trip could totally stink. Tours only left every other day and the one the following day was booked, so we were hangin' in Noosa for a few. At first we were a little bummed - we would have rather stayed up in Byron Bay - but, we made the best of it and ended up having a really nice time :)

Our first night in Noosa we stayed at a little apartment right outside of town. It was nice, but secluded and we were up for meeting some people. So, we checked out the hostel right in town and ended up loving it. It was by far the coolest and nicest hostel we'd ever seen. It was perched up on a big hill right at the start of town. The building itself was and old white Victorian style house old. There was a neat little bar downstairs, a great outdoor patio with tables and chairs, and a huge veranda upstairs with comfy couches. Our room was cute, small, clean and best of all private and quiet. Our 3 days passed quickly....we went to the beach, Rach took another surf lesson, we explored Noosa National Park, and took more beach walks. We went out on the town one night and met some really nice folks from Brisbane. The morning we were supposed to leave to Fraser came quicker than we expected....

Ok, I have to sign off now - it's getting dark out and I want to walk home while it's still light out. I'll be back soon to tell you all about cool Fraser Island!

Bye for now! :)

xoxo,
Steph