Hopscotch: Gold Coast

19 June Tuesday

The day started off with a whale watching tour that we had booked with Whales in paradise. We had never been on one of these tours before and I thought it would be a good experience for Xena who likes to draw and paint marine animals. Of course, there was no guarantee that we would actually see any whales, but we kept our fingers crossed.

It was an early start as we had to check in at 8 am.

It was quite cold so we were all bundled up.

Our boat was a pretty catamaran called Kaiala.

After a quick briefing, we were off into the sea. Our captain was a jovial fella. "If your hat falls overboard we won’t go back to get it, but if you have a child attached to the hat we will go back." He declared to much laughter.

The boat ride included tea, coffee, biscuits... and seasickness tablets! The sea was expected to get quite rough and they offered seasickness tablets to everyone. Though I get carsick sometimes, especially if I'm sitting in the back seat, I'm generally okay on boats. Some people did get sick though, especially a poor boy who had quite a miserable time during the entire journey. I felt bad for him and his mom who was tending to him.

Xena tests out the DSLR.

We cruised past many luxury holiday homes belonging to the likes of Hollywood actors. One of them was Jackie Chan's, but I can't remember which one.

Soon, the boat was bobbing up and down with a lot of intensity, and the undulating action was making my heart lurch.

Every time that happened, I'd grab hold of both Viv's and Xena’s hands.

From time to time, Xena would also freak out and hug me tightly!

My li'l monkey

Soon, the captain announced that we could go out on to the deck as that's where we would get the best view.

It was extremely cold and windy though, so Xena stayed snuggled up to her dad.

There was live commentary about the humpback whales that we were expected to see and the captain had requested everyone to keep an eye out for the whales, as they could be very elusive.

Suddenly, there was a lot of excitement as the captain had spotted a whale in the far distance.

We could see the water whooshing out of its blowhole!

It was still to far away for Xena to see anything properly so we hoped that the whales would be still be around as our boat got closer.

And there it was, less than 100 metres from us, a large humpback whale!

Suddenly, there were multiple whales around the ship and they all seemed to be waving at us with their fins!

We even saw a full 'breach'. That's when a whale jumps fully out of the water. But it happened so quickly that we couldn't capture it on the camera.

We were aware of at least three groups of whales around our boat, but they were being very playful with us, often going down for 10 minutes at a go before resurfacing. But it was a spectacular sight to see them from such close quarters. Our captain estimated one of the whales to be 40 tons in weight and 17 metres in length — the same as our vessel!

Xena and me against the Gold Coast skyline

Can you spot the rainbow over the foam?

We spotted this seaplane on our way back! In fact, two of the passengers on our boat got off and boarded the seaplane and flew off!

Back on calmer waters

It looked a little like the Singapore skyline but wasn't as crowded with skyscrapers so we could see a lot of the sky.

By around 12, we were done and headed back to our starting point. By then, we were quite hungry as we hadn't had a proper breakfast due to the early start. We walked around till we found this place called Thai Republic.

It turned out to be one of the best meals we had in the Gold Coast. It had a very wholesome, homemade feel to it and was really tasty.

Xena insisted on having her picture taken here. "Mama, I'm the li'l ox!" She declared.

We decided to spend the afternoon in the Burleigh Heads National Park and beach area. We walked around 1.5 km through the forest up to the Tallebudgera Creek entrance, and Xena kept up with us because she was really greedy for steps on her kids Unicef watch.

Burleigh Heads beach

With the cool weather and amazing views, it was really easy to keep walking on and on and on...

Hollowed out tree trunk... scary!

Xena writes 'Waddy, the waddling duck' on the sand at the beach. That's one of her nicknames for her daddy.

I saw the many rocks at the beach and excitedly asked Viv to take a 'Sayesha on the rocks' photo to update the one I have on my blog. But later, I decided against using it because of my horrendous red socks (What was I thinking? LOL!)

Xena had fun collecting shells at the beach. We told her she couldn't take them back so she picked 2 or 3 and returned the rest to the sand.

Surfers at Burleigh Heads beach

Viv and Xena suddenly had a weird craving for ice cream, so we popped by the Cold Rock creamery nearby. It was fascinating to watch the ice cream being mixed on the cold slab. In spite of my raised eyebrows, Viv chose Reese peanut butter as a topping for the rainbow ice cream that Xena had picked. One bite was enough for her to wash her hands off the entire affair. "YUCK, WHAT IS THAT TASTE? What did daddy mix into my ice cream??" And because it was a cold stone creamery, it wasn’t even just a topping that we could scrape off. The peanut butter had been smooshed right into the ice cream!

Xena was NOT happy with her dad.

But he managed to make her laugh, so all was well. Neither of us touched that peanut butter ice cream though, so Viv ate the whole thing by himself.

The day had come to an end and we checked into our hotel. I drew a bath for Xena and she spent a long time splashing in the bathtub, pretending to be one of the whales we had seen earlier in the day! "Mama, I'm Whaley, the whale!" She declared.

We were too tired to go for dinner, so Viv packed some Mexican food for us to eat in our room.