Brisbane: Moreton Island - 9.9.9 :)

Whatta date huh :) ?

So today I had a trip to Moreton Island. It is the 3rd biggest sand island in the whole wide world and known universe :D Island itself is about 35km long and 10km wide if I remember correctly. On the island you are allowed to drive only four wheel drive vehicles as you either drive on a sand road or directly on the beach.

Our tour guide for the day was Logan - born in New Zealand and now lives in Brisbane. He was a bit crazy driver which made the whole thing even more fun ;).

Our agenda was to do some sandboarding on the sand dunes and go snorkeling by ship wrecks. I had done sandboarding once before in Peru, but this was entirely different story. In Peru I was going down on a board in loose sand whereas here the sand was hard and oh the speed one acquired :) We were going down either on our stomachs or sitting on the board single/double. I tried the belly down thing twice and sitting double on the board once :) It was great fun! And yea, we were all covered in sand from head to toe immediately. Logan worked hard on giving us as much speed during takeoff as possible :D

Gladly the next thing in the agenda was soaking in the ocean :) Now to talk about soaking, I put on a wetsuit and a life jacket (tour requirements) and even that did not help with the cold. Water was probably around 18C - it was freezing. All I wanted to do was swim as fast as possible to get warm, that was not possible as I had this floating device (life jacket) tied around my body and to see the fish down below one needs to stand still. Oh I was shaking all over my body and managed somehow to get through the thing. Floating (not to say swimming) by the wrecks was pretty awesome, although nothing beats Great Barrier Reef, probably ever. After snorkeling there was lunch time and back in the car we went.

As the roads were very good on the day thanks to the rain few days back (rain evened out all the bumps) we were able to drive faster than usual (faster and with less injuries from knocking our heads in the roof, considering how our guide was driving, don't get me wrong it was awesome to race in the sand of course, but I could not imagine being in the car if roads would have been "normal"). So we managed to even make few extra stops - one to the lighthouse and then to the northern point beach as well. To get to the lighthouse we drove on the beach, not on the loose sand, but between the waterline and the loose sand - most of the time the beach was deserted and we got the whole huge beach to ourselves :) And those beaches here are huge!

The lighthouse was built on the northern tip of the island - view from there was absolutely wonderful. Beaches seem to go on forever with bright blue water and huge foaming waves hitting the sand. On the sea we saw dolphins! Apparently it is also the whale season so should have been possible to spot the waves as well - didn't see any though. Dolphins on the other hand were all over the place :)

After lighthouse we raced back around the northern point so that we would not miss the ferry - we made it of course :) Although we got to hear some stories of almost missing the ferry due to getting stuck in sand on the last minute :)

Got back to Brisbane around 6 and we had planned to get together with Ave for dinner as it is my last night here. Dinner was wonderful and cocktails were good :) We took the time to talk and talk and talk. I enjoyed this evening tremendously and was very sad once I realized it might be a while till I see Ave again :(

Ave will pick me up at 5:30am tomorrow morning and take me to the airport. My flight to Sydney is at 7am. This will be a very short night :)