FLIP & FLOP'S ADVENTURE: Fraser Island

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...