Yea to the arrival of fabulous girls

Friday, November 21st

Mission Beach is the collective name for four peaceful hamlets strung out along a fourteen-kilometer stretch of sand.  It's supposed to be a perfect break from the partying at Magnetic island or Cairns.  The beach was very quiet, and I had to take advantage of it by going for a run along the beach.  I woke up at 8am, but in reality I'd been up since 6am because another German roommate decided to set off her alarm then.  It wasn't a normal vibrate alarm, but a stupid ring tone.  She didn't quickly turned it off but decide to put it on snooze every five minutes....and then every 30mins.  By the time it went off at 7am I was pissed, since I'm a pretty light sleeper, and said loudly "seriously."  That's when she decided to get her lazy ass out of bed to get ready for whatever she was doing that morning.

I ran along the beach that morning and it was beautiful.  The sand was perfectly pressed and even ground, the water was shimmering from the sun, and it was empty.  I really enjoyed it even though my body was pretty exhausted from the previous running days.  I hope I can keep up with this running momentum.  I need some exercise to stay somewhat in shape.  When I was resting, I spoke to a German boy that was working at Scotties.  He was telling me that he planned to travel for 5 months, and work along the way with no set dates to be anywhere.  I continue to be amazed by how people do that.  I wish I could be brave enough, but I am totally not.  It's a really carefree lifestyle that I do envy.

After cooling off, I quickly showered and then we all got our stuff packed to check out.  We were leaving for Cairns that afternoon to meet up with Natasha, Mel, and Connie.  Should be good fun.  We had a few hours to kill before our bus, so we waited to see some people sky dive on the beach.  It looked pretty amazing, but I was going to wait till New Zealand to do that.  We then walked over to Woolworths to buy some groceries/snacks.  Then just waited for our bus.  It was a pretty uneventful but relaxing last day at Mission Beach.

When our greyhound pulled up, our old German roommate from Airlie Beach and Tom from Whitsundays popped out of the coach.  It's pretty cool how we are seeing people along our travels that we met early on.  I'm sure we would probably bump into them in Cairns too.  If not, we always have facebook.

I am staying at Mantra Trilogy hotel with Connie, Natasha, and Mel.  Bernice and Stephanie are staying at Calypso Hostel.  It was nice to check into a nice hotel and take a hot clean shower with out flip flops.  This will probably be my last luxury stay before I go home.

I met up with Bernice and Stephanie at around 7:30pm for some sushi dinner.  Bernice and I have been craving sushi for a long long time, and Steph has been craving curry katsu.  We found the place the sky diver I met at mission beach recommended called Matsuri and it was delicious.  I got a whole bowl of salmon and tuna sashimi over rice and rainbow roll to share.  It was definitely yummy in my tummy!

We still had time to kill before the rest of the girls arrived, so we walked around the night market and city place.  It was pretty dead for a Friday night...but every night is a Friday night for us ;-). We stopped by a bar on the way back to get a drink.  Bernice got a toohey extra dry and I got a cocktail with appleton rum, peach schnapps, nectar, muddle pineapples, and a tad ginger paste.  It was yummm.

At around 10ish Natasha called to let us know they were on the taxi line.  Yea!  We went back to the hotel to meet them.  We bumped into them by the check in and I saw Connie running for me.  How nice!  So excited to see them.  We went back to the room and caught up on our lives.  At around 11pm, Steph and Bernice had to go catch a bus back to their hostel while the rest of us went out for a walk.  The bars were pretty empty and the only real happening place was the clubs, but we decided to save that for another night.  Instead of drinks, we got ice cream and soda.  It was good having dessert while chatting before bed time at 2am.  I'm happy the girls are here.  It's going to be so much fun!