Today we headed to one of my most anticipated places on the whole trip – the Austrian Tyrol! It was a pretty early start, we had to be on the coach at 8am to get to white water rafting by 10. As we wound our way down through the Alps Zach decided to serenade us all with songs from the Sound of Music, which I don’t think the people attempting to sleep on the coach greatly appreciated.

Around 10am we arrived at the river to do our first activity of the day – white water rafting! It was heaps of fun and a great way to see the mountains and the area. Also, we discovered that Zach’s afro really can bounce back from anything. We continued on our merry way to Hopfgarten, where we were staying for the night. Hopfgarten is a tiny little town in Austria, with literally one street. We spent the afternoon exploring the town, and stopped for coffee and cakes at a cafe around 4pm. They also had an amazing cathedral tucked away up the back of the town.

Since this was a bit of a one-horse town, Zach and David (our our manager and bus driver) organised a trivia night for us back at the hotel. They kept the bar open especially for us. Our team was made up of people from South Africa, Australia and New Zealand so naturally we called ourselves the Tri-Nations. After placing a respectable third place out of four, Zach told us all to get changed before we headed to the single cocktail bar in town. It was a lot more fun than we expected! Most of us rolled back to the hotel around 3am, in preparation for breakfast at 7am.

Today we are headed to Venice, where we are going on a gondola ride. The weather is finally clearing up so hopefully we’ll get to experience a real European summer soon.