On the road - Brisbane to Sydney

The adventure continues ! We went to pick up our home for the coming 7 days... A 4x4 camper van. Imagine how people reacted when they saw two girls driving this monster !!! 2 x 90L petrol tanks, 2 beds, a fridge, a portable cooker, cookery utensils, a tap... perfect to discover the east coast !

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Les aventures continuent !! On est allees chercher notre maison pour les 7 prochains jours... Un 4x4 transforme en camping car. Imaginez la tete des passants en voyant 2 filles conduire ce monstre !! 2 reservoirs de 90L d'essence, 2 lits, un frigo, 2 plaques de cuisson, des ustensiles de cuisine, un evier... parfait pour decouvrir la cote est de l'Australie !

Our first stop: Byron Bay

Small sea-side town, with many shops, restaurants and funky coffee shops. A long stretch of white sandy beach and its perched lighthouse.

We had also decided to go and see an 100m waterfall inland, drove for an hour to this national park... Global warming once again... no water there arghhh 

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Notre premier stop: Byron Bay

Petite ville balneaire, petits magasins, restaurants et cafes longent ses rues. Une immense plage de sable blanc remplie de sufeurs.

On a egalement decide d'aller voir une chute d'eau de 100m de hauteur dans un parc national... malheureusement, pas une goutte d'eau... rechauffement climatique !

Second stop:  CoffsHarbour

2 more hours south, we were heading towards this town where Nat had booked our campsite for the night. Sophie is driving and decide to put the GPS on towards the campsite... guess what... the campsite that Nat booked was 500 km away !!!! You are not surprised ?! I can tell you Sophie wasn't impressed !!! One more FLOP !!!! Nat could not have a better nickname !
Went to the tourist information center and booked another campsite for the night.

The main attraction was the harbour, where we went for a stroll and ate fresh calamaris (Sophie's favorite)

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Deuxieme stop: CoffsHarbour

2 heures au Sud de Byron Bay, Nat avait la tache de reserver le camping pour la nuit, Sophie conduisait lorsqu'elle a mis en marche le GPS vers le camping en question... Vous n'allez pas en croire vos oreilles... Nat avait reserve un camping a plus de 500km de notre destination !!!! On a finit a l'office du tourisme juste avant la fermeture pour trouver un plan B.

L'attraction principale de la ville etait la marina, on a fait une ballade et mange des calamars grilles.

Third Stop: Port Macquarie

On our way down to Port Macquarie we stopped at a national park name South West Rocks. Sophie's friend recommended to us. Really warm day, nice lighthouse, and amazing beach reachable only by trekking down for 20 minutes.

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Troisieme stop: Port Macquarie

Sur notre chemin, nous nous sommes arrete a un parc national au bord de l'Ocean 'South West Rocks'. Journee tres ensoleillee et tres chaude, magnifique phare, et petit plage desertique en contre-bas.

Pie stop on the motorway - 50 types !

Fourth and final stop: Hunter Valley

We parked our little camper on pit 18 and left it there whilst we went to discover the Hunter Valley wines. An entire day of tasting over 40 wines, from 10am onwards, olives, cheese and chocolate. No need to say by 12 noon, our palet had already had plenty and it was actually quite hard to concentrate in the afternoon. Speciality of the Hunter Valley is the Semillon wine! a crisp and dry white wine. A lovely day all in all! After 2 nights in Hunter Valley, we then headed off towards Sydney. 

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Quatrieme et dernier stop: Hunter Valley

On a gare notre camping car sur l'emplacement 18 et sommes parties en mini bus a la decouverte de la hunter valley. Une journee entiere dediee a la degustation de vins, des 10h du matin, plus de 40 vins, olive, fromage et chocolat ! La specialite de la Hunter Valley etant le vin blanc semillon. Une superbe journee et nous voila parties pour Sydney !

Fraser Island - Chill Factor Extreme!

We embarked on a 'Tag along tour' on Fraser island with 20 odd other foreigners all 'guided' by our lovely Adrian. This guy was amazing! Laid Back factor a thousand! Didn't even introduce himself to the group, dropped us at each site and said his magic words "go and discover", and just everything about him was sooo laid back!.

During these three days, two nights, we swam in pure clear fresh water lakes; Lake Woody & McKenzie, trekked for several hours, saw amazing sceneries, bathed in "The Champagne Pools", soaked in the historical feel of the Maheno Shipwreck, floated down Eli Creek, ate loads of "wraps/ burger/ hot dogs etc, basically anything you can wrap, and partied hard.

The first trek we did, Nathalie broke her flip flop and refused to pay stupid amount of money on the island for new ones, knowing she had some in the storage back at the hostel on mainland, so spent the entire trip with only her right flip flop! or "thong", as they call them in OZ.

One of the fun aspect of this trip was that as the island is made of sand entirely, we were all taking turns in driving 4x4s with about 7 passengers through either long stretches of sand or very very bumpy paths. We were all hugging the car ceiling at one time or the other during the trip!

All in all, amazing trip spent wit strangers, who, by the end of the 3 days were your next best friends and the guide, whom you now knew his name and a few extra facts about the island.

We just needed a little extra to confirm the fact that Australians are quite laid back!. Well, here it comes!After bringing all the 4x4s back to homebase @ Rainbow Beach, we then all jumped in the 25 pax bus which was suppose to take us back to Noosa, where our hostel and the rest of our belongings were. Well, cruising along the road, we suddenly heard a "BANG". The driver, who at that time was trying to tell us all THE story about Fraser Island, did not seem too worried and said " It's ok, it s probably one of the tires that just exploded... oh yep, I'm right! there we are, I've just seen it fly out behind us and ping on the car behind us ! ha!, but hey, let s just pull aside all the same". So the guy checks the tire and says " Ok, so indeed we ve lost a tire, but it's the inner one, so it s ok, we ll drive to the next gas station at a lower speed ok? is 80km ok?" and we were all negotiating for him to go at 50km max!. So we head back, the driver gets back to telling his story and suddenly we all here the tire making a flapping noise and it getting louder. Suddenly it gets soo loud, the entire bus shouts STOP! and the guy says, " it's ok, it's just pieces of the tire coming off! it s normal!" but then we highlight that smoke is also coming out of the bus!. We convince him to pull aside, which he does. After half an hour on the phone, describing the state of the bus to his boss over the phone, he declares forfeight and says: "OK, we re sending two vans to come pick you up."

At last, we were "safe".

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Francais a suivre...

Mega FLIP

Volleyball - pre driving warm up

Sophie @ the Champagne Pools 

Maheno Shipwreck, well part of it.

Our guide washing his hair with sand

Sophie not happy the bus broke down

Nat Flopless

Australia here we are - Brisbane

After an 8 hours flight, here we are ... in AUSTRALIA !!!!! Did not feel real to be honest :-)

So we landed in Gold Coast 1h30 from Brisbane and luckily, Nathalie's friend came to pick us up to then drop us to our accommodation in Brisbane. We decided to experience AirBnB which is a website where anyone could rent 'a spare room'. We found a house with great review and were really lucky as it was really close to the city centre, really modern house with huge terrace, bbq and really friendly owner.

We met with Nathalie's friend Dan who use to be Nathalie's flatmate in London. He took us around for a city tour. It made the experience so much better being shown by a local ! Brisbane is a nice city not too big, with a river that crosses the city like the Thames would in London. We felt a little bit like home. Brisbane is not straight on the coast so doesn't have beaches, however they've built a man made lagoon for everyone to cool down!. We went to Queensland University to go an pick up our official translations for our French driving license for which we had to pay a bomb for but without which our licenses would have been worthless.

Generally we found ozzies to be a very friendly bunch who talk a lot and like to share their experiences!

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Francais a suivre...

Dan, Nat's ex housemate

Copycats! Southbank London!

I've lost it, so let's fake it!

Singapore - Back to civilisation!

Long time no speak !!! Sorry been really busy lately enjoying our trip too much :-p

We went to Singapore from Dec 3rd until Dec 8th. What a great surprise !!! We were anticipating Singapore to be similar to Hong Kong (that we didn't like as much) but not at all ! Singapore is a clean, modern and very easy to live in city where you quickly feel at ease. Luckily, we were hosted by friends (and amazing hosts) from the Olympics and felt instantly at home !

Most of the expats there have a 'helper' at home who runs the house. Cooking, cleaning, walking the dog, grocery shopping etc... We felt like real princess at home !

We took the opportunity to meet up with several other friends, discover the city and went to the zoo. Sophie was good enough not to approach any luxurious brands of which plenty were present...

Overall a great city, worth considering if  the perfect  job came up but how humid and warm it is there ! Will need a few months to get accommodated to the climate.

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Pas de nouvelles = Bonnes nouvelles ! Trop occupees ces dernieres semaines pour continuer le blog :-p

Nous sommes allees a Singapour du 3 decembre au 8 decembre. Quelle belle surprise ! Nous nous attendions a une ville similaire a Hong Kong (Que nous n'avions pas tant aime) mais pas du tout. La ville est extremement propre, tres modern et facile a vivre. Nous avons eu la chance d'etre hebergees chez des amis que nous avons connu lors des Jeux Olympiques. Super hotes, en plus comme la pluplart des expatries a Singapour, ils avaient une aide a domicile qui s'occupait de tout... cuisine, ménage, promener le chien, faire les courses etc... On se sentait comme des petites princesses !

On en a egalement profiter pour rendre visite a plusieurs de nos amis installes a Singapour, on a visite la ville, et meme ete au zoo.

Sophie a eu l'obligence de rester a distance des boutiques de luxe qui jalongent la ville.

En resume, une ville sympa qu'on seraient prete a considerer si l'opportunite parfaite venait a s'y presenter.

Elena & Mirco

Rob & Dion

Nat & Aiko