Leeches, wallabies, leeches, leeches, and more leeches

Jill and I met up with a guy from work, Shaw, on Friday after work to head down to the Green Mountain section of Lamington National Forest for a weekend of camping and adventure. After a three hour drive with the last hour of the drive through extremely narrow and windy roads, we finally arrived at the beautiful campsite. The campsite had about 20 level, gravel pads for tent set-up. There were three other tents in the entire place, so we got a great site. We woke up to a beautiful view of the valley with wallabies all around us. They are so cute! We decided on a 20.6 km (12.8 mile) hike through waterfalls and lookout points. The weather didn’t do us any favors because it rained throughout our entire hike. And the rain brought out the leeches by the millions! About 20 minutes into the hike we realized that we were covered in leeches. About an hour later, after almost turning back, we realized that Skin-So-Soft was doing the trick. Lucky for us, the leeches hated it! We continued to find them throughout the next morning, but you could feel when their fangs went into your skin, so I don’t think we lost too much blood. It may have been raining in the rainforest, but the temperature was still pretty high and kept us warm throughout the adventure. Sunday morning we decided we had enough of the leeches and headed for the beaches of the Gold Coast. It was hot and party sunny. The sand was soft, the waves were big, and water was warm (about 80 degrees). We had a wonderful weekend and can’t wait for our next adventure!