God Jul

Hyvaa Joulua

Merry Christmas

Feliz Navidad

=)

Magnetic Island & Cairns

Ok, now we have came as far north as our Australian trip will take us. We are in Cairns at the moment and will be flying south to Brisbane today. We were three days on Magnetic Island, which is a nice place to spend a beach holiday. Magnetic Island was also very relaxing and our major activities were hanging around the pool or on the beach. We also did one hour of kayaking and went snorkling there. The water wasn't as clean as it was in the Whitsunday so snorkling was not as good. Although you don't meet Finnish travellers very often we met one Finnish girl working on the small Island. She was really kind to us and offered us a bit of extra food and drinks for free just because we were Finnish. It is sometimes a benefit to come from a quite small country. Magnetic Island was definitively a place where I could have stayed longer.

After a very relaxing weekend at Magnetic Island we continued with bus up to Cairns. Everyone that we had met on our way up kept saying that it was raining all the time in Cairns. Yes, it is the rainy season but we have been lucky as the days have been sunny and it has been raining only during night. Yesterday we were on a boat to the outer reef and went snorkling there as well. The waves were quite big and the trip to the reef felt like being on a rollercoaster for a couple of hours. The reef was beutiful and we took a lot of pictures. I was a bit scared of meeting sharks, and when I saw a big black thing in the water I almost panicked. Well it wasn't anything exciting since it was only the pontoon of the boat =) and my wild imagination.

From Brisbane we will travel south to Byron Bay where we will be spending x-mas and celebrate Piritta's birthday party this friday. I also want to go surfing after christmas so hopefully we'll be able to. Well come back to Brisbane with Juha for new year and from there I don't have any plans yet.

Whitsunday sailing

Imagine clear blue water, sunshine, laying on the deck of a sailing boat drinking a cold drink and listening to good chillout music. Or then try to imagine the same with thousands of stars in the sky. This is basically what Whitsunday sailing is about =) I can say that it was extremely relaxing and nice.

This time our group consisted of 15 persons from different countries. We had also three persons working on the boat. We were sailing for three days and two nights. On the first day we were only sailing to our destination were we spent one night. On the second day we went snorkling two times and also went to Whithaven beach, which had beautiful white sand. When we went snorkling we had to wear stinger suits due to the stinger season. Actually we heard that one guy from another boat had been stunged by a stinger and they had to take him to the hospital with helicopter. The third day we sailed back to the harbour and I also had a chance to try sailing. It was fun. We also had a small incident on the boat as our crew managed to drop one sail into the water and had to jump in and save it. One sail costs 11000 australian dollars so they were really worried about it (approximately 6600 euros).

At the moment we are at Magnetic Island, but I'll tell you more about this place later. Gotta go now. Cheers

Fraser Island

Now we are travelling together with Juha and the adventure of this week was Fraser Island. That is one of the places that many backpackers say that you should not miss. Well.. It was a beautiful island and we had our share of adventure. The way it works was that we had a 4WD car together with ten other persons. We were first one night at Hervey Bay and on Fraser Island we slept two nights in a tent and then again back to Hervey Bay. The first day we got up a 6a.m. and had our briefing where we were warned about all the dangers on the island and how to drive there. We went shopping together with our group and headed with a ferry to the island. Nobody from our group was very eager to drive so I started the driving. First we drove from the west coast to the east coast and then along the beach. We set up our tents at 6p.m. and prepared our food.

The second day was a bit rainy and we had to sit all morning in the car, because we couldn't drive on the beach until 1p.m. due to the tide. On the second day the problems with the group started. There were some persons who didn't take part in our jobs like washing the dishes and packing the tents etc. Then we had an incident cause our driver was driving quite fast on the bumpy beach and one of the passengers hit her head in the roof. People also had different opinions about where we should stay for the night. There were altogether five different groups that went to Fraser Island on the same day and of these five only one of the groups didn't fight. Compared to some other groups our group got along quite well.

The third morning we woke up already at 6a.m. with Juha and spent the morning on the sunny beach. It was really nice. The only thing was that we were not allowed to swim in the sea due to sharks and these jellyfish-things. In spite of the problems that we had there I think it was a good trip, and after that you again appreciate things like a bed without sand, a shower and the thing that you don't have to watch out for dingoes when you go to the toilet =)

Before this we were a couple of nights in Brisbane, were we just did some shopping and rested. Now we are back in Harvey Bay and tonight we are taking the bus to Airlie Beach and from there we are going on the Whitsunday sailing, which should be relaxing and fun. I'll try to put some pictures here as soon as possible espeacially now that I have a new camera that Juha bought to me for Christmas =)