Christmas 16277km from home

When I realized I was going to be in Australia for christmas, I had many ideas what it would be like. One of the pictures I had in my head was the following: me sitting on a beach, having an ice cold beer, enjoying the sun and a clear blue sky.

Ummmmm this did not happen. Instead my christmas this year looks like this:

On the bright side, this means, I get sunsets like this:

I sit here and wonder; where is my fondue chinoise???

Nontheless I am a happy man, enjoying my trip to the fullest. I hope my family, my friends back in Switzerland and everybody that I met on my trip, are good, happy and healthy. Enjoy christmas whereever you are, with whoever you are and whatever weather you might have.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY!

Mojo Surf Camp

I am back!

I know I know it's been a while since my last post on here and I have good reason why I was so quite. No really I do. Let me explain...

(btw. I am doing something different today.. instead of telling my whole story at the beginning of the post and then following up with pictures. I will start the story like usual and then progress it to accompany the pics.)

I left Brisbane with a laughing and a crying eye over a week ago. Laughing because I was really looking forward to my planned surf adventure. Crying because I had an absolutly great time in Brisbane and had to leave people behind who had grown really close to me. First I stayed two nights in Byron Bay.. which was supposed to be like the best Backpacker place ever. I have to admit, I didn't feel it. It was OK but I was glad I didn't stay there longer than one full day. Too bad though I heard about Nimbin too late. A day there would have been a 'high'light?

Come wendsday morning I went to the local Mojosurf office to get picked up for my 7 day surfcamp. I have to admit I wasn't to enthusiastic at this point. Sure, surfing for 7 days sounded great but you all know me, I am lazyiness incarnate.

Sitting in front of the office, I was expecting the above (see pic) bus to turn around the corner to pick me up....

...needless to say I was a bit dissapointed when this bus turned the corner. But I was soon to learn that you just have to be bit more relaxed about everything when around surfers.

When not surfing, this trailer was my home. I do have to admit I felt like white trailerpark trash sitting in front of this smoking in between surf lessons. I stayed at this place for 7 days.

I should have gone to two different spots but as I mentioned earlier, this place is run by surfers and they are not the cleverest folks out there. So they f*cked up and I was in the same spot for the whole stay. It didn't bother me too much but I would have liked to see the other one because I heard the waves there were bigger and well... the waves at the Spot X beach weren't exactly challenging after a few days of surfing.

This was the 'bridge' that led us down to the beach every day. We had 2 hours of surfing lessons in the morning and 2 hours in the afternoon. I could have rented the board and wetsuit for free anytime I felt like it, but honestly, after 4h of surfing every day you don't really have the energy to do more surfing. This is especially true for the first 2 or so days. At times I was sure I felt muscles in my body that I didn't even know where there.

The lessons weren't really lessons though. Yeah sure there was an 'Instructor' out there with us buuuut I didn't feel like I was getting that many instructions. They would mostly make jokes and push us into the waves.. which I obviously didn't need! Actually I always kinda lost my balance when pushed into the wave and ended up with a wipe out. Not that I needed any help for wipe out's, I got very good at doing them.

Some 'Instructors' were great, with others you didn't even realize they were there.

The most essential gear for surfers. We surfed mostly on soft boards. I tried a hard board once but after 30min of having no fun at all I switched boards again. Surfing rule number 1. have fun! It doesn't matter if you catch big, small or no waves at all. As long as your having fun out there you are a surfer.

Remember rule number 1?

Surfing rule number 2; look cool.

clearly I nailed rule number two.

I am like the master of rule number two. In all honesty, nobody sees how many waves you catch out there and if you wipe out all the time. All that counts is how you walk down the beach with your board.

But I did catch waves of course. I was actually surprised how good I got it in the 7 days I spent surfing. I am now really looking forward to go surfing again. Good thing I have a few places coming up on my trip where surfing is possible (NZ, Fiji, HAWAI'I).

After the 7 days I was quite glad to leave. Yes it was a good ol' time but the camp was not exactly near an urban centre and so there was nothing else to do than surfing. Of course there was a lot of socialising and drinking going on but since I started getting a cold a few days into the camp I didn't really feel like either.

So where is this reason to not blog for something close to two weeks? Here: Internet was really shitty, like reaaaallly shitty at Spot X. I could hardly get a connection and certainly not one that would allow me to upload pictures. Reason number two is that I didn't get the pics they took of me surfing until earlier today... there you have it!

I am now back in Brisbane (oh wow Simon you must really love this place!) where I will stay over X-mas and New Year. As you (my faitful blog follower) will know, I never had a fixed plan on where I would be around that time of year. Here I kn0w, I will spend those days in great company. What's more important than that? Nothing!

What's next after that? After New Year I will board a plane and fly to Tasmania. After all the Backpacker madness on australia's East coast I can't wait to see something else. If you didn't know. Tasmania is 40% national park and there are only 500'000 people on that Island. It will be awesome!

that's it all folks....

p.s. if you find spelling mistakes.. you can keep them.. you know who you are! ^.^

Chillin and surfin...

at Spot X ... internet sucks and I can't update my blog due to that. Will be back near a good connection on Wendsday

Blog ya

Hervey Bay - Fraser Island - Brisbane

Hello there

Nice you made it over to my blog. This time around I will tell a little bit about Hervey Bay and Brisbane but before we go there, I want to share something else.

If your not here for the first time you will know that on my last post a few days back I bitched about some stuff I encountered since I started traveling Australia's east coast. I do want to say that I was very tired that day. And might have went over the top a tiny bit ;). I am sorry if I stepped on anybody's toes! That being said, I have NEVER had so many hits on my blog as that day. I think I should do this more often ;).

So what's new? Well I spent two days in Hervey Bay. No that's not really true. I spent one day in Hervey Bay and one, on or around Fraser Island. Right of the bat I can tell you this; Hervey Bay is a boring little place with not much to do. BUT from here you can hop over to Fraser Island which really IS worth a visit. I only did a day trip because I already had my Bus booked to get down to Brisbane, but I advise you take the time and visit it for two days. It's a beautiful place!

On to Brisbane. Here I met up with Bianca who I met on my first day in Cairns. She was so kind to take a few days off work to show me around and take me out with her friends. I am really having a blast hanging out with them. Meeting fellow travelers is good, but I still think that nothing beats meeting locals and getting to hang out with them. I really like the city too. It's not too big and not too small... although I have to admit I do hang around the same area a lot.

I bought a ticket to a Music festival here in Brisbane. It's called Stereosonic (Google is your friend!) and features a few of my favorite artists. I am really really excited about this. Going to a Music festival was one of the things I really wanted to do in Australia, but because I never plan too much ahead I wasn't sure if it was going to work out.

Before I get on with the pictures, let me say something about them. I know there has been a shift in what kind of pictures I post. Some are still your usual tourist pictures, but I do enjoy more and more, showing some that don't really show that much about where I am but just look good (at least in my opinion). I hope you forgive me for this! I promise that I will not forget to post pics about the places I visit and one of myself every now and then.

Alright I think that's everything I had to say this time.. enjoy the pics.

Meet the tourist with his new fancy cam.

Just love the look of this pic... beach in Hervey Bay

A bug I encountered on Fraser Island.

The famous coloured sands of Fraser Island. Fun fact: Fraser Island is the biggest sand island in the world and is made up of many different sands. In this picture you can see 3 of them.

The lagoon we spent some time at while being on Fraser.

Brisbane by day....

.... and night.

This is Bianca, she blew my duck.

Hey fellow swiss, does this building remind you of anything? I'll give you a hint: Luzern. Scandalous right?

MJ crossing! Or at least that's always my first thought when I see one of these signs

And this pic is just to confirm your suspicion.. yes you did see me sporting facial hair in that first pic.