Byron Bay

Well, a helluvalot has happened in the past 9 (that long?!) days since my last post. I'll just start where I left off and see how far I get. Nora (a German girl I met in Brisbane) and I went to Byron Bay to spend a few days at the beach relaxing. The evening we arrived we had a look around the cute little town that is Byron Bay and made our plan for the next couple of days. On Wednesday, our first full day in Byron we got up early and took advantage of the hostel's free sports facilities. No it was not a gym (boring), we started the day by renting bikes and biking up to the lighthouse. We set off at about 9am, and even at that time it was swelteringly hot. The way to the lighthouse didn't look that far on the map, but it was all uphill and the bikes were small and had no gears. As a dutch person the bikes were shitty (Nora ownes a dutch bike so she wasn't too happy with them either), and in Australia it is illegal to not wear a helmet - you can be fined AU$ 50 (30 euro). So by the time we reached the lighthouse we were absolutely boiling. After having a look at the lighthouse we continued to the Australian mainland's most easterly point. The views of the rocks and the surfers (reminding me of my upcoming trip) were fantastic, and just as Nora was saying how jealous she was that I had seen dolphins in Noosa and that she wanted to see some, I spotted some. She of course thought I was joking, but then she saw them as well. They were really close to the rocky shoreline as well, it was amazingly beautiful. We then rode back downhill all the way back to our hostel - a lot easier than the way going, where we exchanged the bikes for boogie boards or body boards, whatever you like to call them. We went to the beach to try boogieboarding, to get me psyched up for surfing, and just for the two of us to have some fun. I absolutely loved it, the bigger the wave the better if you asked me! Unfortunately the big (and slightly rough) waves thrashed my bikini around a bit, and what with the sand rubbed all my suncream off leaving me with a bit of sunburn. Nothing too bad though, since we weren't out for long.

The next day Nora and I took a tour to Nimbin. Nimbin is a little hippie village close to Byron Bay, that seemed to be quite popular so we decided to check it out. We took a tour, and the busdriver/tourguide was a real hippie at heart. When we got to Nimbin, though, we were a bit disappointed. There really was not much more to do there than buy some weed and smoke up... I can do that back in Holland legally, cheaper and probably get better quality if I really want to, so I wasn't fussed and neither was Nora. Even enerally neither of us are fussed about weed. So we went into the museum and a few small shops, talked to some of the extremely weird and wacky locals, and had a parakeet sit on our sholder and nibble our hair. After a few hours in Nimbin we continued to some hippie's house, who lived in his own private mini botanical gardens. There we ate watermelon (the best thing you can eat on a hot day) learned a bit more about the hippie lifestyle from him and our tourguide and got a tour through his garden. We then continued to a waterfall with a great view, and then returned to Byron Bay.

The next day was Friday, and Nora's last day in Byron. We decided to take the boogie boards out for one last spin --- in the early morning with copious amounts of suntancream to avoid more sunburn, and then went to do a bit of shopping to pass the time until Nora's bus to Brisbane left. Luckily I had already found a new bikini (it took me 2 weeks of going into every bikini/surf/swimwear/promising looking in any way shop), so I could just browse. I did find a rash top --- against sunburn, some of you may have seen surfers wearing them. My bus for surfcamp would leave at 8am the next day, so after Nora left I just made myself some dinner, read some of the book Kevin donated to me: Down Under by Bill Bryson (Kevin got it from Laurens), and went to bed early.

Gosh this is already a really long entry, and I haven't even started on my surftrip that ended today yet. So I will just leave it at this, and write about my surf adventures another day (soon, like tomorrow or the day after) and just give you the teaser info that I absolutely loved it, didn't get pulled out to sea and drowned by a rip (dangerous current), eaten by sharks or stung by jellyfish, but I was one of 4 people in our group who were injured --- there were 7 of us in total! For now I think I will stay in Sydney until my uni starts, and just take some day trips to Bondi Beach, the Blue Mountains and whatever else comes up. Take it easy and keep me posted on your lives too!