Purling Brook Falls

I moved to Australia because of the beaches, not gonna lie. But the longer I live here, the more I’ve come to love the hinterlands, the Great Dividing Range, where we’ve so far only discovered a tiny part of all the great trails that exists. Out of the countless national parks, we’ve only visited TWO! We need to change that. But Springbrook is really incredible!

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Natural Bridge and Glow Worm Cave

In one week’s time, Mikael and I have explored Natural Bridge in Springbrook National Park in full. During the day, in the twilight, and in the dark in the company of glow worms.

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Springbrook, Warrie Circuit

I haven’t done too many hikes in my life, well a few. But Warrie Circuit in Springbrook National Park was definitely one of the best ones. Hot tips: Go after a period of heavy rain to lose count of how many waterfalls you see.

Don’t forget to scroll down to the very end of the post to see a couple of videos that I filmed and edited, almost all by myself (Mikael the pro helped of course).

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Noosa National Park

Due to the ever changing weather in SEQ QLD, we decided to take a last minute mini camping vacation up north to Noosa Heads where we hadn’t been before. It was both the perfect and worst day for it.

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Due to the ever changing weather in SEQ QLD, we decided to take a last minute mini camping vacation up north to Noosa Heads where we hadn’t been before. It was both the perfect and worst day for it.

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Burleigh Head National Park

WOW! We have had the most amazing day down in Burleigh Heads today. We were told that Burleigh Head National Park was incredible and it sure was. We followed the Ocean View Track in the national park. There were beautiful beaches in the beginning at Tallebudgera Creek, and it was almost a jungle feeling inside and along the small walking path and then we walked along the ocean with amazing views over the ocean and northern parts of Gold Coast. I will let the pictures speak for themselves. The coolest thing we saw was a Kookaburra sitting on a branch overhanging the walkway. It was just sitting there while we took pictures and lots of people walked by. So cool! A group of people we met along the way just told us that there was a Kookaburra ahead of us. People are so friendly here and just tells you about these things to brighten other people’s days.

After the short “hike”, we sat by the ocean, watching the surfers down below and just soaked it all in until the sun set behind the buildings. We had sushi at Oi Izakaya, a small place in Burleigh that had amazing sushi!

Today, we have taken a ride on the local bus and it worked just as well as the tram. Practically locals, haha!

Tsambika

This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my travels. This full post can be found here.

Today was as good as yesterday, and even more. We woke up in the same executive suite, so that was not a dream, good! We then realized that the breakfast buffet was the best ever. We had some troubles getting out of bed this morning so we didn’t pick up the car until 11am when we had reserved it from 10am. But not sleeping more than 2 hours for 35 hours had its toll on us.

I drove us down to Tsambika in our small, red Toyota Aygo. I hate driving it so Jesper will probably drive for the rest of the week. Stupid car. The beach did not look like it did 13 years ago. Now it was full of sunbeds and so many watersports thingies (more than last time) and cafés. We walked to the most right of the beach where no people were. It was also close to the wall so we could see something when we snorkeled. The sand was hot, it was so so so hot! It didn’t just burn, it burned like hell! So we put our towels as close as we could to the water and since it was also very warm in the air, maybe 32 Celsius, so we were probably more in the water than on land. It was impossible to stay on land for a longer time. I am not sure that I will finish the book I am currently reading, we are not really lying down that much, haha!

We did use lots and lots of sunscreen, we put on 50+ at least every other hours, but we still managed to get burned non our backs. It might be because we went snorkeling for 1.5h straight. With aloe vera it should be fine soon.

Here is a link to the 360 picture I took at the monastery over the beach: Tsambika Monastery on Google Maps

IMG_20160704_120316 IMG_20160704_120326 IMG_20160704_120828

DCIM100GOPROGOPR2228.

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DCIM100GOPROGOPR2286. Sea cucumbers.

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Around 6pm we left the beach and drove up to the monastery above the beach. Of course, the road doesn’t go all the way up, there are 300 stairsteps to the top. It was tough, but the view was worth it!

IMG_20160704_183252 IMG_20160704_183536 IMG_20160704_183531 IMG_20160704_183559 IMG_20160704_183807 IMG_20160704_183817 hdr_00015_0  Here is a 360 degree picture from the top.IMG_20160704_184539  The monastery at the top.IMG_20160704_184604 IMG_20160704_185821 IMG_20160704_185941 IMG_20160704_185914 PANO_20160704_185115 PANO_20160704_184435

Then we drove to Kolympia where we had dinner at a very nice fish restaurant right next to the water. We did some shopping in that city as well and then drove back to our fancy hotel suite where the Jacuzzi tub was waiting for us. It was really nice to sit there and relax a bit.

IMG_20160704_193028  It was such a romatic restaurant. A little too bad we didn’t stay longer because the lanterns weren’t visible when it was still light out.IMG_20160704_200854 IMG_20160704_204406 IMG_20160704_214157

It is really late now and we have an adventurous day ahead of us tomorrow. The hottest day this week is going to be tomorrow, so we were thinking that it would be best to drive down to Prassonissi where it is really windy, and then spend the afternoon at the Butterfly forest and the Seven Springs and later in the evening, the Old City in Rhodes city. I am thinking that since both the Butterfly forest and Seven Springs is in shadows, it seems like a good idea on the hottest day. The Seven Springs also has ice cold water.

Goodnight!