Me having done my surfing, it was now Em's turn to try her hand at something she had never done before. Horse riding.
Behind our little cabin is a national park, most of which is taken up with the huge Lake Weyba. On the other side of the lake is a stables. The sarcastic but charming and chatty Dave, who is the epitome of Australian laid backness, took us for a beginners trek through the bush and in and out of the lake itself - so much more fun than I expected!
My horse was a slightly slow, lazy dude called Chappy whereas Em's horse, Matty, was clearly raring to go - much to Em's horror... Saying that, it was my horse that suddenly decided after plodding along for ages at 0 mph that it wanted to go for a run... So, I'm miles above the ground, in the middle of a frickin lake, and I'm holding on for dear effing life as my horse starts galloping! Can't stop laughing whenever I think about it now! Otherwise, what a beautiful morning horse riding with no one but us and our guide, oh and some wildlife friends - we unexpectedly got to see our first wild kangaroos!
In the evening we decided to take a walk that the owner of the place we were staying in had recommended. She described a hidden track behind the house that went out in the bush, unsigned but with a clear track until we hit a little bit of forest where you could weave through 50 yards to Lake Weyba. There waiting would be a clearing, a log to sit on and a perfect evening. "Flip flops would be fine" was the closing agreement. Unfortunately our plan for a delightful evening sipping Fourex by the lake was thwarted and, believe it or not, actually became more eventful than the horse riding.
Firstly, flip flops were not fine. Stumbling over rocks and down steep uneven slopes coated with leaves and thistles to a point where honestly, there wasn't just no path, there was no ground at all, just bush. When we finally got there, it's fair to say the spot was stunning, save the insect infested log which we opted against. With 45 minutes until dark and 20 minutes walk back, we decided to head home. Only we couldn't, because we could not for the life of us find our way back. 20 minutes later, we are both sweating, Em's planning a night in the bush as it's 20 minutes til sunset and my leg is dripping with blood. A low point was the moment my foot fell about a foot down through some fragile undergrowth. I don't want to think about the snakes we must have narrowly missed...
Needless to say, we did find our way home. But we can't quite laugh about the incident just yet... The potential newspaper headlines are still in our minds...
Our final day requires us to drive back to Brisbane to fly out to New Zealand. On our way we stopped at the popular Eumundi Market, a huge arts and crafts market with food stalls too. I say huge and I mean huuuugggeee. You could spend hours there and not see it all. It was adorable though, with kids riding ponys, hippies playing drum and bass vs. digeredoo, homemade sweets, soap, paintings, everything really.
Next stop Auckland! Feels weird and sad to be leaving Australia after nearly a month but what a great few weeks! We briefly stopped in Deception Bay on our way back down to Brisbane, which was a strange, bleak place... Comforted me that out of all the places we missed on this huge trip, some of them were worth missing...
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