Helloooo 2013...You Don't Look Any Different Than 2012

Oh man...It's been a few days since my last post and for that I apologize. Let's play catch up shall we? After the Christmas adventures of sand and sun we hit the Moreton Bay sand island which is exactly what it sounds like...an island made of sand!! It is the third largest sand island in the world and was fairly impressive. We had to take an hour ferry ride over to the island and we saw dolphins. Unfortunately I don't have a good enough lens on my camera to capture the dolphins who were swimming a ways from the boat but I did get this picture in.

See all those lightish spots in the water? Well those are jellyfish and as the captain of the boat joked "There were thick enough to walk on". There were thousands upon thousands of these buggers just hanging out at the mouth of the bay. When you come upon Moreton Bay you are greeted by the shipwreck that you can snorkel on some of the longer trips. It was much less impressive when we learned that it was put there on purpose to break up the tides.

Once on the island we meet up with our driver and tour guide named Al. He was a local of the island and told us that there were only about 60 residents on the sand island not including the resort staff members. We then headed inward and soon got stopped by someone who was and inexperienced driver on the sandy roads and was "bogged down". All the roads, what few of them there were, all looked like this:

After about 40 minutes of waiting on these roads for other people we went on to the desert which was where we sand boarded for the first time. Sand boarding is essentially climbing up the massive sand dune and laying down on a wooden board and riding down it. It was fun but not worth trekking back up the hill in the heat for round two.

We then loaded up into the car again and went to the Blue Lagoon which was more of a murky brown color to be quite frank. The trek to the water was hot and the sand burned your feet so badly you found yourself running to the nearest bit of shade when you could find it to let your feet recover. When you finally saw the water most people ran to it to dip their feet in and cool the burning sensations. Mom fell here (which no alcohol was involved she would like me to add) and her daughter (aka me) soon joined her (but since I hold the camera there was no pictures of me on my ass).

Then there was some lunch to be had and then we were off to the island's lighthouse. Which was pretty amazing and probably the highlight of the island.

And the view from up by the lighthouse was incredible.

Then we returned to the ferry and took this picture.

Just for fun of course. The next day we spent at the beach because my sister was not feeling well and spent the day at the apartment so we went to the beach so she wouldn't miss anything. The day after that we went to Sea World. I took a few pictures but I can honestly say that the fuzziness in the pictures baffles me and as a beginning photographer I am obviously still learning the different settings on the cameras manual mode. Here were some of the better ones.

The next day we spent at Warner Bro's Movie world which was like a sort of Universal Studios. It was fun with some rides and some shows. I decided to leave my camera home that day and thus there are no pictures to show for it. New year's eve was spent relaxing, cleaning, and playing cards while drinking at the apartment as it was our last day in Brisbane. We stayed up to ring in the new year but went to bed right after midnight. New Years Day was spent traveling back to Melbourne where we shall be for the remainder of our time in Australia. January 2nd was spent relaxing at mom's apartment where instead of updating this blog I took the relaxing seriously and did nothing. Today, January the 3rd, we slept in late did some planning before making our tattoo appointment. See when my sister went off to college my mother got a tattoo with her nickname in it. I have long teased my mom about when she would get a tattoo for me and she told me when you go to college I will get one for you two. Well. I am now in my third year of college and there is no tattoo to show for it. But a while back my mom had the idea of getting a tattoo together and I was game. So on our last day here we will be finally putting words into actions. After our appointment was set we headed down to St Kildas, which is a quirky little street filled with shops, cafes, and bakeries. The bakeries are apparently what that area is well known for so we stopped and had a late afternoon treat. It was almost as delicious as it looked.

From there we went to Brighton Beach which is well known for it's Brighton Beach Houses. They are these little shed size houses right on the beach which are apparently very expensive to own because you can't build them anymore and they are passed down through generations of families here in Melbourne.

This one was my favorite.

We have only 6 more days here in Melbourne and then it's back to Hawaii and then back home. It amazes me how the time has flown. I feel like we just got here last week but all I can do at this point is try to do as much as I can before I have to leave. And by the looks of our schedule we will be doing just that.