Christmas !

Merry Christmas Everyone !
We hope everyone had a relaxing holiday spent with family and friends.
We had a fantastic Christmas, one we will remember forever.

Carlo and I woke up bright and early to prepare a breakfast for the staff...eggs, bacon, pancakes and toast...mmmm....we had to make a special trip off the island to get the ingredients but it was sure worth it.

That morning we went down to the ocean and surfed because there were gigantic waves from the ocean swell.....we were down there for hours.

All the staff pitched in and helped prepare a traditional Christmas dinner for 40 of the campers....ham...turkey...roast potatoes....veg ....Yorkshire pudding and plum pudding  and get this....it was all done in a traditional wood fire pizza oven. The meal was fantastic.....sure beats our daily kangaroo and spaghetti. ( We rotate between eating two meals every night because we eat what the campers eat. The camping groups rotate every three days....I don't think we will be eating spaghetti for a long time after this.)

It was a bit odd not having a Christmas tree, snow and family to celebrate but we will forever remember our Christmas on Fraser Island.


Happy New Year Everyone!

Carmen and Carlo

Christmas Dinner ( kind of looks like a soup kitchen)

Beautiful Xmas evening on the beach

Merry Christmas Everyone

Our favorite tour guide Jake

So excited about the waves !

We did a secret Santa, we had to make our gifts and my secret Santa made me a coconut cup.

Boxing Day hike to Lake Wabby

Fraser Island Continued !

We are loving, loving, loving Fraser Island. We have been going on a few of the tours and we can't believe how beautiful the island really is.

We have decided to stay until the end of January, we figure we won't find anywhere better to live. After that we may head up to the Great Barrier Reef to get our diving certification.

Our boss is actually going away for two weeks in January and offered us a paid position while she is away. We couldn't resist!

We hired three new English "lads" to help out over Christmas and New Years. We just found out we are having a traditional Christmas dinner...turkey....ham...Yorkshire pudding and more! We are so excited. Our boss got us Santa Hats and we made a make-shift tree.

It's a hot one today ( We tend to not even check the temperature), time to head to the beach and cool off.

Cheers,

Carmen and Carlo

Fraser Island, Australia !

Hello from our new home, Fraser Island, Australia.

Fraser Island it the worlds largest sand island and it stretches 75 km wide and 25 km long. It is located on the Southern coast of Queensland and was named a world heritage site in 1992. Fraser Island is home to one of the worlds most famous lakes, Lake Mckenzie as well as Lake Wabby and Lake Birrabeen. There are sharks ponds, sand blows, rivers, champagne pools all surrounded by lush rain forests.

We are volunteering at a tour company called Fraser Island Trailblazers. We are situated at a basecamp (seconds from ocean) and look after the camp and the guests. There are no stores, no roads (only sand roads) and only a handful of residents. We are loving it here. Morning runs on the beach, afternoon adventures and evening fishing......it can't get any better.

We have met some fantastic people from all around the world and we love chatting and sharing travel stories with them. We are looking to stay here for a month but it is tempting to stay longer.

We will update you with more pictures soon as we are going on a tour sometime this week.

Cheers,

Carmen and Carlo

Our Backyard

Beautiful

Beach soccer with the crew

Lightning Storm

Baking cookies in the pizza oven

Lake Mckenzie

Fisherman

Fishing

Trying to teach the Aussies Beer Pong..I think they liked the game

Trying to get over my fear of snakes

Bus got flat tire on the "highway"

Saarlouis, Luxembourg, Paris

Internet hasn't been easy to come by these past few weeks but we want to update you on our three last stops in Europe.

Our amazing friend Megan ( she was in the bridal party) recently moved to Saarlouis, Germany on a professional basketball contract so we couldn't resist going to see her. We had a wonderful day exploring Saarlouis, it is a small, quaint town that holds a lot of character. We had a few beers and went for dinner at a schnitzel house, it wad Megan's very first schnitzel. It was great to visit her and see where she will living for the next year. We miss her already.
The next day we headed to Luxembourg, it is about an hour from Saarlouis. Luxembourg is beautiful, especially in the autumn months. It is very classy, prim and proper but still holds its European cheer. We didn't spend as much time as we would have liked  because we think we got a small dose of food poising. Yuck!

It took the majority of the day to drive to Paris, but the drive was one of the most scenic routes we have seen. We drove through tiny villages , rolling green hills, and sunflower farms.

We were pleasantly surprised with how much we enjoyed Paris. We came in with no expectations but in the end it was one of our favorite cities.

We were fortunate enough to be there when the annual Christmas market was taking place, 300 booths of gourmet foods, Christmas trinckets and festive treats. We stayed well into the evening so we could capture pictures of the Eiffel tower and wondered around with warm red wine.

Sadly, our European journey has come to an end. We flew out on the 27th to China and had a 13 hour lay-over before we landed in Sydney.

We are currently in Noosa, Queensland where we are relaxing on the beach before we start our new jobs. We are working for a tour company on Fraser Island, check out the link below to get a better idea what the company is all about.
http://www.trailblazertours.com.au/

Cheers!

It's 29 degrees and  stunning here in Noosa. We will update you again when we can.

Cheers,
Carmen and Carlo

 

Portugal !

So far on this trip we have picked out winter homes in Austria and Switzerland and summer homes in France, Spain and now Portugal. When we walk down the city streets we can't help but to peep at the listing prices for a small summer bungalow......Unfortunately, the ones in Lagos, Portugal are way over our heads....just dreaming. Lagos was our first stop in the Algarve region of Portugal. The beaches and cliff/rock structures are spectacular. We had a wonderful afternoon climbing up the rocks and taking in different view points. The temperatures were perfect and we could not ask for a better day. For dinner we had our first tasting of Portugese Peri Peri chicken. We got a whole chicken for a $1.88 !

The next day we went to Sagres, Portugal , which had perfect surfing beaches and stunning views form Sagres Point. Our final stop in the Algarve was Albufeira. The town of Albufeira had countless restaurants, cafes and bars for the summer crowd to enjoy. The beach was filled with seashells of every shape, size and color.


The next stop in Portugal was to get the famous Pastel De Nata from Belem, a small suburb outside of Portugal. Pasteis de Belem is the famous bakery in Belem that specializes in this custardy/egg tart. The plan after Belem was to drive to the soccer stadium in Lisbon to purchase tickets for that evenings game against Bosnia. However, a quick stop to take a picture of a castle changed everything.

As we were walking back to the car, we see a person in the back door of the car. We are both stunned as we run over to the car. As soon as we get to the car and confront the man, he spins around and takes off running. We quickly put our backpacks in the car and bolt down the street. As we were tearing after him, two young men dropped everything and chased after the burglar. We are so thankful for these two men because without them who knows what would happen. The robber had two young men waiting for him on the other side of the bridge and they would have likely attacked us. The two men held him in an arm lock as we emptied the robbers pockets of our belongings. The police had us in holding at the police station for 5+ hours that day and we spent the entire next day in the Lisbon courthouse. As long as the day was, we had an eye opening moment about how fortunate we are to live in Canada. The two young men who helped us told us all about their lives and how travelling anywhere is unheard of and only a dream. The minimum wage in Portugal is 2 dollars an hour and their gas and rent is similar to ours in Vancouver. The police make one thousand dollars a month and have no overtime,so the 8 hours they spent with us at the courthouse was unpaid work. After this experience our next stop was Peniche and Nazare, Portugal.

We slept in Peniche on a campground near the ocean. The next morning was beautiful, the town was very traditional, quaint and revolved around capsulating ocean views and beaches. There was not alot to see here so we snappd a few photos and headed to Nazare. Nazare is another town where we would like to purchase a summer home, it is a seaside village. The beaches are flat and far strecthed, the sand is clean and powdery and the restaurant options are endless. We enjoyed our first sampling of Portuguese fish, it was delicious. We love Portugal but it is time to start heading North because we only have a week left in our trip and have alot left to see.

We have added a few pictures of San Sebastian, Spain. We had a stop over there a few days ago and absolutely adored this city. Its clean, lively, full of tapas and  best of all everything is close to the beach.

Cheers,

Carmen and Carlo

Lagos

Lagos

Lagos

Lagos

Peniche

Sagres

Lagos

Nazare

Grilles Sardines

San Sebastian

Nazare

Avo selling us nuts!

Pastel de nata....yummy and Super Bock beer!

San Sebastian

Tarifa and Morocco !

Ohla from Seville, Spain!

We have good news......We finally got a new tire on our car! This means we can drive over 80km per hour again! Unfortunately we had to drive back from the Algarve in Portugal to Seville and now we are going back to Lisbon tomorrow. We only have two weeks left and still have so much we want to see and do.

Tarifa is the most Southern coast of Spain. We heard in was beautiful but our main reason to go there was to catch the ferry to Morocco. When we arrived at our campground we were blown away. It was absolutely gorgeous, we arrived just as the sun was setting. We met some fantastic people at the camp who travelled there and decided to stay and call it home. Tarifa has several campsites and caters to kite boarders and windsurfers. It is funny because during the day all the stores are closed because they are on the beach and in the evening the town comes alive.

We were originally going to take a ferry by ourselves and explore Tangier however, it was more expensive to do that than to take a tour. So we opted to go for a tour and we are sure glad we did. To see everything we saw in one day would have been impossible. The tour started by visiting the palaces of the Moroccan Kings and seeing panorama views of the city. We stopped over to see The Caves of Hercules where it is rumored the the mythical figure Hercules, used to rest in the caves after a day of fishing. We drove to the Old town where we indulged in a traditional Moroccan lunch; Moroccan bread called khobz, beef skewers, a traditional soup, a couscous dish, a type of sugar cookie and warm mint tea. After lunch we visited a carpet store and a spice doctor. This part of the tour was a little cheesy but we took it with a grain of salt and sampled the rose cream that "makes me look ten years younger." We went through the town and got hassled to buy everything from Kleenex to toy camels.  We loved experiencing a completely different culture. As touristy as the town is, the locals have kept to their traditions and made the trip over there a memory we will never forget. At the end of the day we were exhausted and couldn't wait to get back to the campsite. The next morning we had  get up early to drive to Seville.

We will update you with our Portugal pictures soon!

Cheers,

Carmen and Carlo

Campsite in Tarifa

Tarifa Sunset

Our Campsite

A beach down the road from our camp.

Sand dunes

Wishing we did gymanstics as children



Morocco Camels



Smiles

Laughing the whole time

Better idea of how big the sand dunes were

Caves of Hercules in Morocco

Cave market

Serenading us at lunch

Local Carpets

Our traditional Moroccan lunch