Shannon in Australia & New Zealand: Costa del Sol and other adventures

For the past two weeks I have been stuck in Brisbane taking mid-terms, classes, writing paper after paper, and doing research. Despite this long stretch of dreadful school work, some of us were able to sneak away for the weekends. One weekend we took the train to the Gold Coast, an hour south of Brisbane. We only stayed for the afternoon and played on the beach, but the Gold Coast is known for its nightlife and money. It is highly commercialized down there. The following weekend, a good amount of us traveled north to the Sunshine Coast, which is a more chill environment. We stayed in Mooloolaba at a backpacker's lodge and on Saturday we embarked on an unexpected adventure. We hired a Hawaiian surfer as our guide to take us to the Glass Mountains. Sure enough we went there, with many stops along the way. We started off the trip with a 10am wine tasting, followed by some rope-swing/cliff jumping action, mountain lookouts, more wine tasting, and sure enough more cliff jumping off of the waterfalls in the rain forest. Kondalilla Falls was quite the local hotspot, with a ton of people cooling off in the rock pools there. Other than the seven of us who went, everyone was pretty jealous of our day trip. The weekend brought more fun being Katie Bus' birthday. We enjoyed Thai food and our fair share of cheap boxed wine. Doesn't get much better than that.
This past week culminated with a day hike to Moogerah National Park. We hiked up a steep gully on Mount Greville, encountering the usual snakes, spiders, and of course goannas mating in the brutal summer heat. The view of Lake Moogerah was quite spectacular, yet it was a mission to get to the view point. A whole bunch of people were attacked by jumping ants that were climbing into their boots and biting them over and over. They all turned back to our base, but luckily I escaped without any bites and I was able to get there! It was pretty fun and a great alternative to class in a lecture hall all morning.
ALSO, this past Saturday morning I awoke at the early hour of 5am to join my host mom, Elle, in an outrigger canoe excursion. The two of us, along with other Aussies, set out on the Brisbane River and paddled as we watched the city come to life in the morning. Elle does quite a bit of boating and her specialty is dragon boating, a Chinese sport. It was pretty intense, considering the people that joined us in the outrigger were avid paddlers. The whole Brisbane River Dragon club seemed to be quite the organization. I surely enjoyed it, yet my arms were feeling extra sore for the rest of the day!
The time has finally come! Tonight we take off for the Great Barrier Reef. We leave for our 6+ hour bus ride at 11:30pm, followed by a 2 1/2 hour ferry ride. We will be stationed at Heron Island and I plan to finally due some diving, snorkelling, and all that jazz. It's about time! Until next time...

Day at the beach on the Gold Coast