Sunrises and Sea Turtles

This weekend was nothing short of great times with great people. I can't express enough how thankful I am to have made the friends I've made, and how we can share so much with each other after only knowing each other for a few months. My friends are so passionate about what they want to do in life--it honestly made me second guess my future. I'm just going to have to embrace the fact that I'm not sure what I want to do and just continue to explore the world and learn more about myself.

Me hiking the Noosa National Park

We went to Noosa, which is on the Sunshine Coast, a little north of the Gold Coast. The hostel was absolutely adorable--bright pink with painted designs on the doors, hammocks to relax in, Buddha statues everywhere and dragons on the walls, incense being burned--our own little hippie home. Noosa was a very different place than we were used to...lots of elderly folks...in fact, I commented on the fact that I'd never seen such a large concentration of older people in one place in my life. However, it was a nice change being in a calm peaceful place. Upon exploring the shops in town we realized that there was a jazz festival going on which was a nice surprise. I kept thinking about how great the lifestyle is here--no one is stressed out, working ridiculous hours and missing out on family time--the mindset here is "it will get done when it gets done, lets go have fun".

The girls and a boy we met at the hostel

That night, Gracie and I went to the beach to look at the stars and so she could take star trails, which in the world of photography means leaving the shutter open for a long amount of time so that as the Earth rotates it leaves a trail of light from the stars in the photo (I think). The pictures turned out AWESOME.

And, of course, we also had conversations about life.

Sunrise at Noosa

We decided that we should continue the tradition from Byron Bay of getting up to see the sunrise at each new place we go. It doesn't get old--this sunrise was absolutely gorgeous, pink clouds swirling in the sky and reflecting on the water to make it look like we were sitting inside a painting. After the sunrise, we went on to hike the national park. Hiking here is amazing because the lookouts are something I've never experienced before: stunningly blue oceans and..get this..DOLPHINS AND SEA TURTLES! Yes, we saw them and it was incredible. We continued on through the national park and found our own little private beach to take a quick nap on. Can't believe I can say I laid on my own private beach...in Australia.

When we got to the end of the national park, we ended up back downtown, and went to lunch at a place called Hogs Breath, where live music was playing. I had a delicious salad with chunks of pumpkin (they really like they're pumpkin here), almonds, cucumbers, tomatoes, and Australian feta cheese. A great end to the day was going out for drinks with all the girls, talking about our highlights of the day and having a lot of laughs.

Hells Gates

We decided to get up for the sunrise again..and it seemed like a great idea at the time because the previous day we felt so active and were able to fit so much into the day and didn't understand why we don't get up this early every day...but we really hit a wall. Don't get me wrong, it was just as gorgeous as before, except this time afterwards we all went back and passed out and you couldn't get us to wake up if the world was ending. Once we were able to peel ourselves out of our beds, we headed over to the beach again to explore the caves. This was SO COOL. After basically scaling a mountain, we were greeted by the view of a huge cave with tide pools of crystal clear water that we could swim in and jump into. Probably the most fun part was deciding to let Gracie take Victoria's Secret-eqsue model pictures (yep that happened).

These weekend trips just keep getting better and better! This weekend we are going to Brisbane for a festival, stay tuned!

Cheers!