This isn't Flying, this is Falling with Style

We took our car with a ferry to Magnetic Island. We'd booked the ferry in advance and had to wait a while to get shipped over, so we did some groceries in the meantime and bought a little something for Chris' birthday. He turned 22 that day, so Anneke and I bought a card with some pencils and we played Taylor Swift's 22 the rest of the day. We could see Base hostel from the boat, very bright and looking very cosy as well. We checked in and the first thing we did was join the bingo-game that was just starting. The prices weren't too shabby either, so there we were, playing a bingo-game that had its own rules. Harrows was there with his friends as well, still couldn't behave. That night we didn't win anything but we had loads of fun seeing everyone dancing on the tables, kissing each other and drinking beer like it'd been lemonade.

Our planning only allowed us to be at Magnetic for a few days, so the next day we went to Fort Complex, a fort that was built during World War II to try and protect the island from hostile Japanese ships that could invade. Thank God it never got to that and was never used for protection purposes. The posts overlook the ocean which made for a wonderful view. We watched the sunset from the top of one of the posts and returned to Base very satisfied. That night I saw the waves wash bioluminescent algae ashore, something that looked so magical I could never forget it. As I printed my foot in the wet sand the algae would make my footprint blue, and the moon that night was the biggest and brightest I've ever seen. The following days we played around a bit, getting some rest and walking through the forest looking for koalas (which we didn't find). We swam at Nelly Bay: just a short walk over the rocks from our hostel, we watched a sunrise and the boys played handball.

We drove on to Cairns.. in a few days Chris would fly back home, Samir would go to Bali and Anneke would go back to live with her man in Brisbane. Nick would go to Melbourne to meet with his sister and Emma and I planned to fly back to Sydney, where I would see Kate again. Our hostel in Cairns was everything you'd expect from a party-hostel, and way more. It was beautiful, not that expensive, had some luxurious parts as well and made sure that there was entertainment every single night. After a few days they hosted a party called the Sinner's Ball, the second biggest party after Christmas, where you could be a saint or devilish or anything in between. Anneke and I had looked for some cool makeup or a cool outfit, and in the end I went with lenses that would cover my entire eye. We went to dinner beforehand, drank together in our room after that and finally had the courage to go to the Sinner's Ball. It looked the way it sounded. There were girls walking around in lingerie, there was an SM-act on stage, the girls behind the bar were all dressed in leather but not much of it, crazy. One Hell of a party, that's what it was.

Emma took me to a birthday celebration of her driver and tour-guide. We had dinner there as well, in a karaoke bar, playing pool with the friends she had made. Now because Karlijn is a very difficult name to pronounce for anyone not Dutch, I had been introducing myself as Caroline for the past months, and this man and some of Emma's friends insisted on singing Sweet Caroline in the bar. I had a fantastic evening. That week we also went to a pizza place for dinner and a burger tent for our last night together. Too bad those burgers made us all feel unwell, but they were worth it.

I had wanted to go skydiving for a while, it was on my bucket-list together with diving in the Great Barrier Reef. Perfect opportunity to do that in Cairns. Anneke and I had gotten a discount on a Great Barrier Reef dive, from when we were in Airlie Beach, so what better time to do that. We got on the boat one morning, got a quick course on how to dive, what to do, what not to do. "Don't do a thumbs-up, because that means you want to go up, make an OK sign instead" First we got the chance to go snorkeling through the reef, see all the pretty fishes and the beautiful coral. They'd chosen two different spots for us to dive, up to us where we wanted to do what, but we were divided into multiple groups. The deeper you go, the easier it becomes, more relaxing as well. It's such a different world down there and you see so many fish that you wouldn't see at the surface, very special. Nick had planned his skydive a long time in advance and across the street from Gilligan's (our hostel) was a travel agency that I'd been planning my stuff with since the beginning of my trip. I walked there to ask for a spot in the same plane, they could handle it, and two days later I was going to jump from 12.000 feet. Now, I'm afraid of heights, but I tend to spontaneously buy things, as with this trip. Only when I was getting dressed and prepared for jumping out of the plane I felt the reality of what I was going to do, and once in the plane I knew there was no way of getting back down except for jumping. It all goes so fast that you're not really comprehending what you see, so when Nick was thrown out of the plane right before my eyes, I was shoved forward with my feet of the edge. I felt the wind rushing and before I knew what was happening I was thrown out of the plane too. It's literally breathtaking, the adrenaline through your veins in combination with the wind rushing past you makes that there's no way you're getting oxygen for the first few seconds. In my head there was pure panic, that old familiar feeling of an extreme roller coaster, the feeling that I was most definitely going to die, and then out of nowhere the calmness set in. I looked around and realised I was going to survive, I was flying, a heavenly feeling, and halfway through that thought process the parachute was out and I was floating down. The man on my back pointed out the turtles that would come up out of the reef for air, the sharks underneath us, the islands in the distance and the strip of beach where we would land.

10/10 would recommend both diving experiences. In one word: life-changing.