This was possibly the most relaxing place we stayed at in our entire year out here. The beach itself is about 10 miles of golden sand and lined with palm trees, and is mainly empty which made it a perfect little place to unwind. Our hostel was a short walk from the beach and was without doubt one of the best we stayed at: cheap price, friendly,helpful owners, clean, spacious kitchen, free internet, not too big, not too small, a pool, hammock and a free bbq on saturday night, and the weather was perfect! Sorry if that makes you jealous but we couldn't have asked for anything more!
The reason we decided to stop at Mission beach in the first place was to do some white water rafting. The nearby Tully river is apparently the best place to do this in Australia and it was pretty good fun. We were on the river for about 5 hours and part of a group of 8 rafts with about 1 instructor and 8 people in each. Going through the rapids is cool and you obviously get soaked and bashed against the rocks, and we had to swim a couple of times as the raft turned over, but it is all good fun. The only frustrating thing is that you have to wait every so often for the other 7 rafts to come through the rapids safely, to comply with health and safety, and it means you sometimes lose some momentum between rapids, but considering we were told that there have been a couple of fatalities over the years, we couldn't really complain! It was a great way to spend a day and some of the views are amazing, as the river winds through gorges and raveens, with waterfalls running down and the rainforest rising up to the sky.
For the rest of our time at Mission Beach we just chilled out at the beach, dipped in the warm ocean and made some attempts to top up our tans. As I'm writing about it I wish I could go back there, but these pictures will just have to do...
