It’s Christmas and we head out to the second part of our trip to Sunshine Coast. Being a group of 7, we decide it’s better to rent out some cabin in the woods rather than stay in some hotel. Best decision ever. Since check-in was late (around 4PM) our first stop was trying to find breakfast. Of course, we forgot it’s Christmas so everything will be closed. To our disappointing arrival at some breakfast place somewhere close to Sunshine Coast, we decided to find some Asian place for lunch instead. After all, Asians (south Asians included) love money, so it’s not in our blood to close store unless we are going out of the country.
This takes us to Mooloolaba, a beautiful beachfront with some quite a few closes restaurants. However, as we guessed, many places owned by Asian were open. And so, we end up eating Thai food.
Since we did book a cabin in the mountains, we didn’t spend much time looking at the beach. Instead, we head out, to a place without cellular network. Driving manual on hills and extreme slopes is not fun at all. However, the drive there was simply beautiful.
We make a pit stop at a small town called Maleny in hopes of getting some lunch. Again, forgetting everything will be closed was a huge mistake. Luckily the cabin we were staying in had a fully stocked organic kitchen. The cabin in Crystal Waters Eco Village grew and hunted their own stuff. So for the meat lovers out there, you will find fresh meat for you to eat based on donations to the property owner. Lots of small rivers and ponds on the way to the cabin.
The village itself was surrounded by mountains/hills and forests.
The welcome to the cabin was also pretty cool.
There was quite a bit of random stuff and surrounded by the green forest. The cabin itself can house a group up to 15-20 I think. For smaller groups, they had smaller sections within the cabin area. This means it’s a great opportunity to meet other travelers since they do have a few common areas.
There’s a lake/dam a min away which was supposed to be great for swimming. And seeing how hot it was, that’s what we ended up doing.
The lake also had a nice little swing to use to jump into it. Pretty cool.
There were a few other spots that were known to be popular swimming areas in the area. Some being nude pools. Sadly not something we had the courage to check out. By the time swimming was done, we head back to the cabin where we set up a nice little bonfire and have drinks with the owner, and a few other guests. The cold breeze was really appreciated after the hot.
Another thing popular in this village was being able to get really close to kangaroos. Sadly we didn’t see any other than one which was fairly far away. Seriously, a selfie would have been amazing!
The village boasts some really cool festivals, homebrews, etc. Definitely worth a checkout if you’re in the area. And of course, since it was a group, here are some of the people on this amazing trip.
We had plans of visiting the Noosa National Park, but due to possible rain there, we decided to skip that for now and instead go to an obstacle “water park” in a lake (link). 50 minutes was all that was needed to exhaust all of us. I’d say a pretty fun end to Christmas break…and now to Sri Lanka for New Years 😁
Divyang Joshi 