Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Hello lovely families :)
We had a pretty long drive from Sydney to Port Macquarie but finally arrived in the small village and got met by 3 different hostels trying to promote their accommodation. It felt like being back in Thailand! We went with one that we had previously been considering and it was a big house that had been made into a hostel. Quite homely with a living room, pool room etc. it was nice to be able to sit and chill in a cozy area and watch TV and have dinner. The next day we found a skate park and tom spent some time there and then we walked to the town and had some nice fish n chips by the sea. I've never had such healthy tasting battered food but it was good. We went for a nice walk along the beach and for about 2 miles along the shore there were big rocks that people and families had painted, some in remembrance of people and others just to decorate. Was pretty cool.I treated myself to a hairdryer and tom had another dominoes in the evening!
After 2 nights in Port Macquarie we got the bus to Byron Bay which was about a 7 hour journey. As soon as we arrived in Byron I immediately loved it. There was a lot of small cafes and bars which were quite lively and the whole town, despite being walking distance and quite small had so much life! We stayed at 'Aquarius' hostel which was pretty nice and upon arrival was greeted by a bar of noisy backpackers and an awful karaoke. Yes it was apparent that we were not going to get much sleep here. We checked into a 10 bed dorm to save some money and did not get much sleep the 3 nights we were there. One of the nights was fun as there was a jelly wrestling competition for girls to partake in where there was a pool of green jelly set up outside and girls had to wrestle each other and whoever won, won 100 dollars. (Definitely more of an activity for the guys to watch) we had a pretty awful night's sleep one night as 3 German men that were in our part of the dorm came in at 3 making loads of noise! The last night I was the only girl in the dorm so we decided to get a private when we went to our next hostel. We spent half a day having a surf lesson, a group of 9 of us with 2 instructors who were very friendly and helpful. We both really enjoyed this and got the lesson for a really good deal as someone had given us a free lesson voucher. Tom was by far the strongest in the group and picked it up pretty quickly. We will definitely do it again. The next day we booked a trip to a town called 'Nimbin' which I had originally heard of from an Australian girl in Ko Phangan. She had described the town as a hippie place where everyone was always stoned. She was not wrong! After an exciting journey on a big rainbow colored bus, listening to reggae music and arriving to the song 'I got high', we entered hippy central where every shop was a rainbow shop and there were dreadlocks everywhere. After stepping off the coach for no more than 20 seconds we were offered some weed by a group of teens and farther down the road this happened again but this time offered by an old lady with dreads. Our bus driver had done his job by telling us it was illegal and you never know if it's genuine weed or not and that the space brownies were also illegal. However he then followed this wise advice by saying that if we were gonna try some space brownies to start small and work our way to bigger portions as previous backpackers had indulged to much in one go and returned to the bus hallucinating, one boy thinking his legs had run away from him, and another ex-soldier believing that the bus was full of Palestinians after him. Well you'd think that would be enough to put anyone off but everyone on our bus seemed to try these magic brownies BUT me and tom. We were good and kindly refused the Rasta men promising that they had the best brownies in town J after leaving Nimbin we headed to a spot in the country where we had a bbq which was nice. We returned to Byron after a fun worthwhile day.
So despite people saying that surfer's paradise was crap for surfing and by far a place of paradise, we still decided to go and it was only an hour n half drive from Byron. It was definitely correct that it was a party place and a mini America in Australia. We had booked a private with a shared bathroom which nicely turned out to be a proper apartment next to the hostel and we later met the other couple in our place who were 2 English girls. We got on with them straight away and went out with them that evening to the bar that was being promoted that night through the hostel. This included half price drinks and free entry. We had a fun night with them and finally a good night's sleep too. It was lovely being able to leave our toiletries in the bathroom and having a freezer and oven, living room, sky etc. A treat J the beach was lovely with the most beautiful fluffy white sand and the waves were pretty big. It was a good beach for experienced surfers but not somewhere that a beginner could go and there were very limited areas that were safe to swim. We found set up electric bbq's along the beach that were free to use so we invited our roommates to have a Barbie with us which was really lovely. The next day I went shopping with the girls and we got lunch and found a 'Ripley's believe it or not' museum which we later went to with tom. It was a fun evening and nice way to end our time in surfers.
Overall, so far Byron has been our favorite place though very popular so hard to get work. Our next place is Brisbane and then Mooloolaba where I have applied for a job and tom is looking. We are excited to go to Noosa as we heard it is just like Byron but richer and we'd both love to be able to work somewhere like that. A small but lively town near a beach J
Love you all and miss you lots,
Much love,
Amy and Tom xox
- comments