Mosi'ing Around the World

I know I've said this a lot, but the Gold Coast seriously makes me want to move here if it wasn't so far away. We loved Cairns, but I think the Gold Coast may have just taken the #1 spot for us. Everything here is so relaxed, with an emphasis on being on the water whenever possible. There's creeks, beaches, and rock pools... the beautiful hinterland with amazing National Parks is only an hour's drive away... great diving is an hour or so away depending on where you go... easy access to Brisbane and all the islands around it... the list could go on for the Gold Coast. Oh, and no crocodiles or deadly jellyfish like Cairns :) Although we still love Cairns... and that lagoon!

It's hard for me to believe we've been here over a month already! It's officially been 35 days traveling, and we still don't have a return ticket, so you never know... (just kidding for all the parents... we will be back in March, I promise)! Our sticker collection is growing! Our impressions of Australia remain the same, we love it here. If it wasn't so far away I would consider moving here. Out of the cities we've been in, we both still really love Cairns, but the Sunshine Coast (where we've been the last week and a half) would be a close second. Basically we should eventually live near the ocean :) Preferably one with great scuba diving, another area Australia excels in. I thought in this post I could share some pics from the last week or so, but also talk about some differences in Australia we've noticed and how our plan is going so far.

It's been a while since my last post, we were moving faster than before but are now happily settled in our cute Peregian Beach Airbnb. So I can catch up :) Townsville As the title of this post suggests, we've been up a big hill and making our way South the last 10 days. Our first stop, the one with that big hill (also known as Castle Hill), was Townsville. Townsville is another beautiful tropical North Queensland city, bigger than Cairns but less touristy it seemed. Coming off our Cairns high, I have to say it will be hard to beat Cairns in our eyes. Townsville was similar in climate but had less vegetation overall, and again there were a lot of hills and it was HOT.

Our time in Cairns has come to an end for now, hard for me to believe it's been two weeks already. Today we begin to make our way down the east coast, our next stop being Townsville to see Magnetic Island. I am writing this from our 6 hour greyhound bus ride :) Which, for the record, is nothing like Greyhound in the US with having wifi, usb chargers, leather seats, and the rows are relatively spacious. Anyway, throughout our two weeks here our love for Cairns only grew stronger... enjoyed falling asleep and waking up to the sounds of the tropical birds, walking around viewing all the beautiful flowers / trees, biking down the esplanade to our favorite spot, the Cairns Lagoon. It's a very laid back city, and we'll always remember it being our first taste of Australia! Here are some highlights from our time on land in Cairns...

 After a looonnngggg day of travel (over 30 hours with a 14.5 hour plane ride in there), we made it to Australia!!

(+ how we packed it all up) We made it to LA which means we've officially begun our adventure! Everything has gone smoothly so far, both flights went well (Southwest gives you a free drink on Halloween!!) and we had a super nice Uber driver from LAX to our Airbnb. He even made a stop along the way at the camera shop Justin reserved our camera at... so we finally have our trip camera!! Our LA Airbnb is awesome as well, we can walk out and see the conference hotel which is only a block away. From the conference hotel you can see the Hollywood sign and it's right on the walk of fame! Brings back memories from when we were here for our west coast trip in 2011.

Hello Everyone! I still can't believe this is actually happening, but Justin & I are 2 weeks away from heading to Australia and New Zealand for a little over four months (!!!!!!!) I give full credit to Justin for coming up with this idea... as we are able to go for this amount of time by working on our company while we are down there. Our first dream has always been building our company (well since we met in 2008), but our second I would say is to travel. Why not combine the two? I compare this type of trip more to studying abroad than backpacking, but falls somewhere in between.