Lamington National Park

I think we've never had such a smooth arrival before. Plane was fifteen minutes ahead of schedule, no queues St immigration, baggage out immediately (thank you my Greek frineds), no customs hold up... Picked up car and sim card immediately from arrivals hall within another few minutes, 15mins drive to accommodation, brush teeth, go to sleep. Fantastic. Monday morning we went for a stroll in the botanical garden, bought some food and took off towards Lamington National Park. A very easy drive, nearly no traffic on the road. A quick pit stop in Canungra was topped off with a nice apple cinnamon muffin and orange almond cake at laid-back, vegetarian friendly cafe "earthly delights". We got to lamington early, at 1pm, but were lucky again because our room was ready.

We are staying at O'Reilly's rainforest retreat in the green mountains section of the park. Monday and Tuesday had brilliant weather, today, Wednesday is a bit on-off with clouds passing through bit no rain. So great weather for hiking! Which we did in this really ancient rainforest, beautiful flora and fauna. And gazillions of parrots. ☺ ☺ ☺ and wallabies for the reisebegleitung. And one death adder 🐍 right on the path to our room. Lovely!

The only thing that is really disappointing is their restaurant here. I hate to say it, but they try to punch above their weight and fail miserably. We had dinner on the first night and where so disappointed that we decided to drive to canungra on Tuesday instead. Today, we had a late lunch at the mountain cafe which was better value for money, standard cafe fare, but big portions. But the restaurant, silly business. They try fancy and expensive, which is fine by me, I'm always willing to pay good money for great food. But the food was not great unfortunately. It wasn't bad either, but rather bland and unspectacular. And the portions were tiny. So we say Fuck that and give it a Hitler rating of 2 out of 10. Can't have it all I guess. But we came here for the scenery and that's great and stunning and beautiful, so we're happy. And we're by far the youngest people around here which feels pretty weird. Tomorrow, it's off to Cairns.

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