Walking Greatly

On the 8th, we started out early... First we went to the Parks Dept to get our camping passes for the 30k Whitsunday Great Walk. Then, we went by the grocery store and picked up our food for the next three days. We drove out to the Whitsunday trail head at Brandy Creek and parked our car. We spent the next 30 minutes clearing out all of the unnecessary items out of our packs. After all was clear, we put on our fully packed (with food, water, tent, sleeping bags, sleeping mats, clothes, etc) bags for the first time... Yeoza! They were HEAVY. So crap, I have to carry this for 3 days up mountains?! ... No whining ... So, on we go up the rocky path toward our 1st night's camp site called Repulse Creek. The walk was pretty easy. We stopped a few times to take our packs off and rest. We cleared the first 8.3k's in around 4 hours. We arrived at the rainforest camp site, ate spaghetti and set up camp. We took a bunch of pictures of the giant, white tree we were camping by and decided it was the protector of the jungle. :)

Day two - we packed up our schtuff and filled (+ filtered) our water bottles and off we went... Up, up, up, up, up the many mountains to our next camp. We were pretty surprised to find out how freaking steep the trails were. We were definitely trudging up, and in some parts down, in pain. This jaunt was 11.5k's and took us about 6 hours. (Pretty sure I've never walked that far, or for that long, at once in my entire life.) We stopped along the path to eat some premixed tuna sandwiches. We were passed by a dude who was running the whole 3-day trail in one day. CRAZY! Other than him, we didn't see anyone else on the trail or in the camps for the entire 3 days. We finally arrived at the Bloodwood Camp around 4:00, set up camp, ate, and soon got in our (new and much larger!) tent, as there was no seating or tables for us to chill at. Soon after we got in, it started pouring rain. It didn't stop pouring all night long - and I can attest to this because I was up all night with a stuffy, runny nose... B gave me his sickness. BOO!

We woke up around 6a and packed up camp ... in the rain ... and we took the next 8.5k's at the highest speed possible. Our packs were slightly lighter since we had less food and water, so that definitely helped. The pathway was really muddy, so we were slipping all over the place. I was getting lightheaded every time my heart rate went up and I had to breath thru my mouth 'cause my nose was plugged. Did I mention it was still raining?... gur! After about 3.5 hours, we made it out to the other side, at Airlie Beach. We walked down the street of the brand new housing development that the trail led into... I felt like a homeless person, as I was all muddy from the trail, and hadn't had a shower for 3 days AGAIN! yuck... On we walked to the hostel we had stayed at before, checked in and paid a taxi $40 to take us back to our car at the trail head. We drove back and immediately jumped in the shower. Yay! After getting gloriously clean, we walked around in search of some food. A lot of the restaurants were closed as it was around 4:00 and it wasn't quite dinner time. The ones that weren't closed were around $25 bucks a plate. Finally, one of the restaurants owners who was closing down for the day directed us to a fish and chips place just off the main strip. Neptune's was fantastic! Best food I've had yet in Australia! Their fish and chips plate was $10, and the outside seating offered a perfect ocean view. The coke was still $4 for a small bottle, but we bought one anyway. There are just some things worth spending extra money on... After dinner, we walked around a bit, got the free wifi from McDonald's, bought a bottle of (really nasty) wine for $6 and went back to our room. We had a lot of fun last night, staying up til the wee hours of the morning, talking to all of our English roommates and their friends - we're now staying in a 8 bed dorm room.

Today, I woke up early and slipped out to have a breakfast of banana nut bread and a fresh fruit smoothie and have some quality Internet time.

We're still trying to decide if we're going to stay the entire 3 months and try to get jobs here, or if we will just do the rest of the things we want to do here and fly home. I'm on the side of getting jobs at the moment, but it tends to change for both of us daily...

Peace and love ya'll. :)