According to alot of people Byron Bay is Surfers Paradise's ugly sister, a similar kind of place but a lot more chilled out with a laid back surfer (almost hippy vibe) and without the cheese. You can see what people mean when they say this about Byron Bay, it is a medium sized town smack bang on the beach, but there is not a high rise in sight, instead these are replaced with small independant shops, boutiques and cafe's. It's a little less busy.

When we first arrived and stepped off the bus it was like being back in Asia as a woman was desperatly trying to get our business and hurried us off to a travel agents. We hadn't pre booked accommodation so we followed her in order to book some. Turns out she was pretty rubbish and only 'found' the more expensive places to stay. Ignoring the rubiish adivce we were gievn we opted for a hostel we heard about in Surfers Paradise.

8 bed dorm with an en-suite and large rooms, we chose the right option listening to ourselves. The hostel was about 5 minutes from the beach and with this in mind we went for an afternoon stroll and plan out where we would need to go in order to walk to the lighthouse, we decided to do this the following day. We walked along the beach for a good couple of hours until sand turned into rock and then the sea, so we turned round and strolled back. From this point in I may refer to any beach we visit to as the 'Standard Setup' as again it was predictably picturesq. We also found the lighthouse, I say found it would have been harder not to, and were happy we knew which way to walk the following day. That evening we took advantage of the offer the hostel had one which was 'free dinner' when you bought a drink. With this in mind we waited until happy hour, bought ourselves a drink and got a free evening meal, which turned out to be well worth it.

We woke up the next day ready to head up to the lighthouse and take on the 7km (roughly) round trip. However when we looked out of the window it was clear that mother nature had a very different idea and was holding a large spanner, it was pouring it down. Therefore we did absolutley nothing on our second day in Byron Bay except catch up on blogs, use the free internet at a travel agents round the corner and book a day trip to near by Nimbin the next day, hoping the weather would change.

Luck was on our side as when we woke up the next day it was alot nicer than the day before. The sun was out but there was a brisk wind which made it a bit on the cool side, still better than rain, rain, rain. Where to start with our trip to Nimbin...

We first hopped on a bus which picked us and our room mates (we happend to book on the same tour) up, the bus was called 'The Grasshopper' and was decorated with mutli coloured stripes. Our driver for the day a South African man (who's name escapes me) who although didn't dress like a hippy, was one at heart. Nimbin is about 2 hours away from Byron Bay and after being bombarded with anti government, anti war, anti religeon and anti establishment music and views (from the driver) we arrived in Nimbin...wow!

The place is like the land that time forogt, but in this case the town. It is a tiny town which appears to be relatitvely in the middle of no where, full of hippies (this time in full hippy attire) with bare feet and long hair. A single strip of shops, cafes and the occasional pub all dedicated to or with some link to weed. We parked up and told we had about two hours to explore the town, we didnt need this long. None the less we headed up the highstreet, greeted by the strong smell of marjuana which must be Nimbin's major export, as every other person offered us "weed, hash cookies?" It really was a surreal experience and everyone was so relaxed about trying to sell us drugs. I think it took us about 10 minutes max to walk from one end of the highstreet to the other passing shops such as "Bringabong" instead of 'Billabong' and cafes with people smoking joints and sipping coffee's. To kill some of the generous two hours we were given we headed into the 'Nimbin Museum', again an interesting experience. It was a small shop which had been converted into a small 'museum' which had a lot of paper mash...?, chopped up VW camper vans, Marajuan leaves (everywhere) and anti war material. To call this place a museum was clutching at straws on their part, however it reinforced what Nimbin was all about; hippy culture, getting stoned, peace and love (man!).

It was now time to head back to the coach and leave this forgotten little town behind and head for some lunch, which may I point out was natural hunger and not the 'munchies'. We stopped at a nice picnic area with the route free BBQ, it was a nice little site but was one hell of a wind trap, it was almost like a wind tunnel. We sat down and enjoyed a BBQ lunch washed down with a cold cider before heading back on 'The Grasshopper' to the final stop of the day a waterfall.

I had bought my swimming shorts as we had been told you could swim in the waterfall (not actually in it obviously, but at the bottom) but after being frozen for an hour at lunch I decided against going in. One lad did though, so he was obviously more of a man than me, although he probably wasn't after. The waterfall was pretty nice but fairly unspectacular and after about 30 minutes it was time to head back to Byron Bay and an attempt at trying to warm up. So that was our hippy day out in Nimbin, it was defiently an experience and an 'interesting' day out but I think we were both glad we got buy one get one free on the tickets.

Day four in Byron and again the weather was kind to us so we headed down to the beach, this time with body board in toe (free hire from the hostel). We found our room mates on the beach and while Belle sunbathed I headed for the surf. I was in the sea for about an hour in this time catching some waves on the body board which was really fun but after an hour it got pretty cold and left me with some 'joggers nipple' from the cold water and body board, never mind though it was fun.

We headed back from the beach to the hostel shortly after a quick sunbathe for the BBQ they were putting on. Similar to the 'free' dinners all you had to do was buy a drink, so we sat in the sun and warmed up tucking into our lunch. We had got to know our room mates pretty well over the last couple of days and that evening we headed out with them to check out the night life.

It was now our last day and we finally decided to take on the ligthouse walk. We left our hostel and after about an hour or so of walking we made it up to the lighthouse. There were a few great views on the way up though so that kept us occupied and we even saw some handglinders taking off from a part of the cliff. At the lighthouse there were unobstructed views out across the Byron coast line and out to sea. We had a look around the small light house museum, then took a break and had a rather tasty ice cream. In the cafe we bought this from was a 'whale tally' for the day, with the total being (about) 12 for that day, we kept everything crossed that we would spot one on the return journey.

We headed back a different way to which we came, this time down along the sea front, making our way down towards the most eastern point of the Australian mainland. As we headed further down on the desent from the lighthouse we headed out onto a small strip of rock, a pier made by nature. It was here that not paying lots of money to go whale watching in Surfers Paradise payed off! For 45 minutes we sat watching (what we think) was four whales 'fluking' (Whale lingo), jumping out off the water and what looked like waving, the whales would slap one huge fin on the waters surface. The amount of time we sat there was not because the whales would jump every 20 minutes or so, its because it was so amazing, at time we didn't know which direction look for whales leaping out of the water. We did manage to get some pictures before the battery died but you will probably need to zoom in on the picture to see the whale in more detail.

After a truely amazing show from the whales we headed back to the hostel and cooked up some dinner and a chilled night before leaving the next day. This was the plan anyway. Dinner went well and was nice, but the chilled evening didn't go so well.

It was this night that we truely discovered the 'low's' of sleeping in dorm rooms. The room mates we had got to know had left in the morning and therefore we had some new ones. A couple of German and a couple of English lads, who had decided to go out that night. The German's were home by 8:30pm not feeling very well. One camped up in the ensuite bathroom (German 1) and one to refuge in the small patio'd area (German 2) out the back of the dorm. We had to kick German 1 out of the bathroom if we needed the toilet and did on a couple of occasions. Although this was a bit of a pain it wasn't the end of the world, it was later on when the English (I am ashamed to say that) came back. Around 2:30am we were woke up by doors slamming, loud, drunk slurs and two blokes being right idiots...although a stonger word was used at the time. After waking us up and keeping us awake for a good couple of hours they decided it was time to turn in for the night (which we hoped would be a good thing), it was only the start of the sleeplessness. The two English lads were like something you would see on 'Brits Abroad' and made us ashamed to be from the same country as them.

All four of these idiots plunged into what can only be described as a drink enduced coma, two of them snoring in unision (it sounded like thunder, only worse!). Belle tried hard to push one of them awake, only for him to turn over and continue on his mission to break the sound barrier! We had very little sleep that night and by the end of it we were glad to leave the room behind, which was a bit of a rubbish way to end 5 great days in Byron Bay.

Aside from the last night (of doom) we had a really great time in Byron Bay, which had alot of new experiences; whales, hippies, body boarding, lighthouses and more. A small part of me secretly didnt want to like Byron Bay as everyone you meet says how nice it is, however as hard as I tried (I didn't try that hard at all!) it was simply not possible, it is a chilled out, beautfiul place and even the 'league of idiots' didn't spoil it for us.