Current Mood: Esctatic

What a wicked time we have had at this place, about as crowded as an old wild west town and as friendly as sitting round your family table for Christmas Lunch – its great here. The hostel we’re staying in is tiny with only 1 x 10 bed dorm, 1 x 6 bed dorm with 2 x bed double rooms and 2 x 4 Bed Dorms, none of which have locks, none of which are completely sealed from the outside world but all of which have individual character. Emma and I got one of the doubles for a couple of nights and the side wall has a huge window only covered by an insect net. Means that the room never really gets hot and there is a breeze throughout the night – fine by us as this place rocks!

The people here are super friendly and we’ve made good friends with a number of the travellers, some of which we are meeting in Airlie Beach in the next couple of days. Some dude keeps us all entertained with his juggling skills – 5 balls at once! While we all lounge about in the hammocks and chit-chat about where we have been and where we are all going. Strange thing being that a lot of them have been in the exact places we have been before on the same day – pub quiz in Brisbane on the 5th December for instance!

Yesterday, Emma and I did what’s known as the Scooter-Roos tour – recommended by her friend Claire from work. This dude picked us up (Rod!) who was a take off of Paul Tuttle Senior, just without the bulk, tash-goatie thing and scariness!

We got taken to a little place just outside of the town where we pulled into this big yard, first thing that we all saw was about 35 choppers lined up with different paint-jobs on. The whole van was like – whooop, yeah, wahoo + more exciting words!

We all hopped onto the bikes with our open face helmets and knee pads which offered about as much protection as a piece of crepe paper, so Em and I didn’t worry when (as the only ones with Bike Licences) we gave them up to people who had never ridden anything above a push bike before.  Then it was time to hit the road and it provided the group much amusement watching each other pull away, with the handlebars up by your ears steering was a little different and everyone wobbled like a weeble (wobbling, but not falling down!) all the way out to the highway.

[zp]1770[/zp]

The next 3 hours passed so quick with us all in a mass convoy riding around the streets and outskirts of 1770/Agnes Waters, everyone laughing and having a good time.  Cars and vans would pass, hoot and wave at us as we rode past them and the kids in the caravan and camping ground all came running up the bank to wave at us as we passed.  Everyone in the convoy acknowleded them with a toot toot on the horn.  We ended the tour with a stop at the beach where we all lined the bikes up, got some wedges from the cafe and took a place on some rocks where the sun slowly set!  Amazing and something I will remember for a long time to come.

I love this place and leaving here today is a hard thing, I could quite easily stay here for a lot longer.  So thanks to 1770 Backpackers, Louise, Louise, Carolina and of course Rod from ScooterRoos for making our stay here quite so memorable!

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 21st, 2006 at 1:46 pm and is filed under Australia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.