Two day Adventure to Magnetic Island

The view of the ocean from our hostel.
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Magnetic Island is an island that is located about 30 minutes off the coast Townsville.  There is still a week before class starts and because we didn't have anything going on for a few days a few of us decided it would be fun to stay over night on the Island.  We left mid-morning on Thursday and arrived back Friday night.    We stayed at the X base hostel.  The hostel was located right on the beach and all 8 of us had our own room.  After arriving on the island, which is a 25 minute ferry ride, we decided we would do some hiking to see the island.  The lady at the front desk of the hostel told us that if we hiked certain trails we could see come koalas.  Koalas were brought to the island awhile ago and now live in the wild throughout the island.  We walked a path that led to the top of a large hill on the island that had different forts from World War II on it.  Halfway up the trail a lady we were passing told us that she had seen a koala.  All 8 of us girls walked the whole trail with our eyes searching every tree.  Finally, about three fourths of the way to the top of our hike, we found a koala.  It was sleeping at the top of a tree.  He eventually woke up and began to eat the eucalyptus leaves.  The koala was not bothered at all by us taking tons of pictures.  He looked like he was really old.  He was very lazy and moved slowly while he was eating.  We continued on our hike and when we came back about an hour later, the koala was still in the exact same place we had left him.  The hike was an uphill hike that led to an abandoned command post from World War II that was built on top of the highest boulder on the island.  It was a fun walk and definitely worth it to see the koala.

We stopped at a local resort that had a place where you could feed the birds. All of the birds would clock to you if they thought you had food. I didn't even have food and this one landed right on my head!
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That night we all went to bed early because we were worm out from out hike.  Northern Australia is in the middle of the wet season so it rained all night long.  While it was raining we were all worried that we would no be able to do anything in the morning due to the rain.  The rain thankfully stopped right as we were waking up and it turned into a beautiful day.  My friend, Kelly, used to own a horse so she convinced me to go horseback riding with her.  The trail ride went through the bush (aka forest) and on the beach.  The trail was beautiful and once we got to the ocean we were able to ride the horses bareback through the water.  It was basically like we were swimming with them!  We stopped on the beach to take off the saddles and all the riders had to put on stinger suits.  Stinger suits are basically like wet suits except they don't have a lot of padding.  They are made to cover all the skin on your body and protect you from being stung by the jellyfish.  Australia is in the middle of their stinger season.  The suits were very unattractive.  I really enjoyed the horse ride and swimming with the horses was so much fun!

We were going for a hike in order to find some koalas!
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After the ride we went to hang out on the beach until our kayak trip in the afternoon.  It was a beautiful day and we all got a nice tan. The sun is so strong that you could lay out for 15 minutes and get a good tan any longer than that and you start to burn!  The next thing we did was an evening kayak around Horseshoe Bay.  Our kayak instructor was very informative and told us all about how life is living on the island, get gave us information about many of the local animals.  We kayaked for a few hours around the bay and then we pulled all the kayaks together and watched the sunset.  It had started to get cloudy so our sunset wasn't too impressive.  While we were waiting for the sun to set our instructor pulled out a few bottles of champagne and we all got to drink champagne while we watched the sunset.  As we were all sitting enjoying our drinks a sea turtle gave up to get some air right in front of us.  Our guide told us to be on the lookout for them, but that seeing them in a rare thing.  We got to see one up close.  They have to come up for air every 30 minutes or so before going back down to the sea floor.    After our kayak trip we were all pretty tired and decided to catch the ferry back.  Magnetic Island is a very cool place.  It's only 25 minutes away from Townsville but feels like you are on a vacation further away.  There are a lot of things to do on the island, so I know we will be going back.