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Oooh, you guys must be super excited to hear what we've been up to lately!
I'll start off with Melbourne, which was such a smooth transition after NZ where we'd been staying in hostels and moving around almost every day for 3 weeks. We stayed with Carolyn and her family for 2 nights and then we were moved to her friend Sonia's place for 2 nights. We weren't exactly situated right in the centre, but this gave us the advantage as we got to go out at night hunting kangaroos. Carolyn's son, Josh, took us out the night we arrived and we met his friends, while Sonia took us to an amazing look-out and a sanctuary. Sometimes you get to see more when you don't mingle with the tourists, and we had such a good time while being taken care of by the nicest people.
Melbourne is such a nice city, always competing with Sydney so the outcome must be pretty good. We walked through Chinatown, went on a guided tour inside of the Melbourne "important building" (yea, that's how interesting it was, I can't even remember what it was. Could have been the court house, could have been the town-hall, could have been anything really) and as we were on a tight schedule the one day we went in to the city, we also managed to hop on the tourist shuttle bus!
Next stop was Sydney where we stayed in Sydney Wake-Up hostel. Cool, big and central. We were booked for 5days but as T-bird had a friend who lived in Manley we got to stay with her the one night she threw a farewell party for herself. 90% were Norwegians so we figured since we'd already started we might as well go all the way, and the next day was spent in the Seaman's Church while eating porridge and waffles and drinking "saft". The day ended with "Uno" the movie:D
Other than that we didn't really do much in Sydney as we were just waiting for Surf camp to begin! Meanwhile we went for a run, did the city tour with the hostel and just wandered around doing nothing.
Surf camp though was just plain AWESOMENESS! Strongly recommended if you're thick-skinned and able to ignore 90% of the bulls*** the surf instructors throw at you. It's insane! The first camp we went to was small and kinda makes you feel at home. Their work is basically just based on lies, and the manager/head instructor wouldn't even give us his real name. But oh boy did they teach us to surf! After the first day most of us managed to stand on the board, which pretty much made everyone's day. The second camp gave you a hint of professionalism but even they were a little sketchy sometimes. Turns out most of the instructors at both camps are going to Bali in June, cya! (So they weren't really that bad.)
Out of a group of 14 people there were 6 Norwegians and we were pretty stunned as we've barely met Norwegians on our trip.. Two of them (two guys from Kristiansund) were booked on the Greyhound bus but when they heard about the little chubby we were renting, they changed their plans and for 2 weeks they're travelling up the coast with us.
Next organized trip was Fraser Island, which is the world's biggest sand island and has the clearest sand you'll ever see. We stayed in a lodge on the island while we ditched our van in a car park, and every day we went out around the island in a big bus, suited for the sand covered road, and the driver took us to the beach (where we made good friends with the dingos), on bush walks etc. We didn't see any snakes or tigre sharks but the dingo (which could easily be mistaken for a dog) was pretty cute, we also went to an amazing look-out and the champagne pools were special........... Little did I know that a couple of years ago a 9 year old boy had been killed by those dingos. I was told this after the dingo approached the bus driver and I from a short distance of about 3 metres. Suddenly it wasn't so cute anymore.
When we got back to our little chubby the guys were there waiting for us, and that is exactly what they'll be doing the next couple of weeks as we're going on a sailing trip and scuba diving while they haven't booked a thing. How cute:)
Just read online that the temperature in Norway is about 7degrees. Enjoy:D
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