Still alive!

Hey everyone, we finally made it up to Cairns.
But let me begin with our safari on Fraser Island: we started from Hervey Bay from the same hostel - 18 people, 2 groups, self-drive and camping on the wolrd's largest sand island. No roads, just driving on the sand during low tide. We had a really good group: 2*Sweden, 2*England, 2* Germany, Canada, USA and Finland. We got to see some beautiful lakes and beaches and luckily enough our car didn"t break down (happend to the other group though...) The other group had lots of trouble with two Dutch girls, our British guy (looked like the ugly twin of Prince Harry) was a little bit anoying, too. I met a nice German girl which I will hopefully meet this weekend in Melbourne and we also meet two really nice Swedish girls and four Irish guys.

Back in Hervey, most people went up north, so we had kind of a reunion in Airlie Beach: the two Swedish girls, Finland, Canada, the Dutch girls and the Irish guys - apparently we all booked the same package from the same travel agency. The Irish guys and the Dutch girls were even on the same boat for the Whitsunday's sailing trip. Best weather and lots of snorkelling. We even got to see Nemo and turtels. All together, the group consisted of 7* Ireland, 5* Netherlands, 2* Sweden, 2*Germany, 3*Wales, USA and Australia - a really good group again and even better food. The chef was a friend of the four Irish guys :-)

Again I don't have enough time to upload pictures in this internet cafe, I promise to do that back in Germany! We leave Cairns on Saturday night, found a really cheap flight to Melbourne. We just didn"t take into consideration the Formula 1 Grandprix (who cares about that?) in Melbourne.... All hostels booked out over the weekend and all charge at least three times as much the price. Hotel rooms easily cost 500 AUD per night... So we couldn't find anything "cheap" for the night from Saturday to Sunday, but since we arrive at 2am, we somehow have to spend the night until checkin into our hotel at 2pm. For the next night we could finally find a hostel and they do even charge normal prices again. Lucky us...

I am not sure wether I will manage to post something again here in Australia. I am going to leave Sydney on the 24th, have a 23 hour stop-over in HongKong and finally fly into Frankfurt on the 26th at 5am. Hope to see as many of you as possible at the airport, haha :-) Or later that day in Stockum....

Vera