Galen's #weekendexperiences is looking for the most beautiful thing (not person) we have seen whilst on vacation. That is a topic I could probably write a book about - almost - meaning it is a tough choice.
I will limit it to two or three things that we saw during one of our vacations down under, in Australia. Mind you, it has been a few years since this trip and I honestly think we're due for another one. Anyhow...
We spent a portion of this trip on the road renting a camper van in Cairns and drove the 1700 km south along the beautiful coast to Brisbane. Not too long after leaving Cairns behind us, we saw these trees and fruit along the roadside. They looked very suspiciously like
Mangos!
We both love mangos but I've never ever seen a mango tree. Heck, before this I didn't even know they're a tree fruit because I never checked. Yeah, I know, seems obvious but if you live in a climate where mangos don't grow at all, it seems just wonderful when you see them lying next to the road like apples fallen off a tree back home in Germany. Of course, we had to stop and we collected a few that weren't damaged by the fall to the ground and ate them as fresh as can be, dripping juice all over us. Yummie!!!
When you're driving along the coast another wonderful thing is - you're close to the ocean. We like the ocean. And we also like to try new things, we're curious. So when we saw a local seafood shop advertising
Sandbugs, fresh seafood!
We couldn't resist. We were oh yeah, let's try this! To be honest, I seem to remember that it was okay, not overwhelmingly great but not bad. Hey, you can't always win, right?! As often as we could, we had fresh fruit and fresh seafood. And if at all possible accompanied by a nice wine or bubbly, Australian, of course.
And then - there are waterfalls. Hubby loves waterfalls. I have tons of photos of waterfalls from pretty much all the places we visited. Waterfalls are awesome. So it came as no big surprise that one day when we saw a sign for Murray waterfalls (among others), we took a detour just to check out - waterfalls.
But all these wondrous things were not the most wonderful thing we saw on this trip. On the way to one of the waterfalls, we were on a very narrow footpath, rainforest left and right, I saw this (not so) little fellow, an
Australian Blue-Tongued Skink
He was lying there on the dead tree stump next to the path catching a few sun rays. Basking in the sun, soaking up (even more) heat. He or rather it was a pretty chunky little fellow. Of course, I didn't disturb him, well, maybe I did disturb his privacy by taking these photos but I didn't try to touch him or pick him up. This guy would have been fine, but generally speaking, you shouldn't try to touch any wildlife, especially in Australia.
It just felt so awesome to be so close to mother nature, to experience this little guy (and the fruit) that otherwise I'd only know in a zoo. How awesome is that?!
For this post I had to make a tough choice, it was either this skink or a little octopus that I had seen and filmed on Bonaire. I'll have to check if I posted about the octopus yet. I don't think so and if not, the octopus will be for another post.
Have a great rest of your day!
Cheers,
(Ocean)Bee
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