Early-ish start today for our sea kayaking adventure!! We were up, fed and kitted out in our wetsuits at 9.30am! After a few basic intro instructions from our guide Dougie (when he introduced himself first, I said 'nice to meet you Buggy...until he corrected me :-)).
Dougie was a right surfer dude, don't think he was born at all but probably emerged from the sea one day about 40 years back. He has the golden locks, all the surf lingo and skin that definitely spent too much time in the water when the sun was shining!!
We were on the trip with a young couple from Melbourne, Alec and Catherine.
Kayaking was cool, getting out over the initial waves crashing over our kayak (Carol and I were in 2 person one!) was a bit 'efforty' for me but we got there!
On our tour around Byron bay we saw whales, dolphins and turtles - the dolphins and turtles came quite close which was great! The company we were with are called go sea kayaking and they take pics during the trip while you are kayaking and here's the good part, they don't charge you stupid fees. They're free and all you gotta do is get them from their facebook page. Great idea!
Once we finished our tour we made our way back in over some mad waves and stood on the beach drinking some hot choc and tim tams. Dougie even showed us how to do the Austalian customary tim tam straw where you bite the ends off 2 diagonal corners off the biscuits, use it as a straw to suck up hot chocolate using only your mouth which soaks the biscuits in hot choc (tea is apparently the normal way to do it..) and then in one go swallow the biscuits! Messy but nice!!
Once we walked back to kayak stall on Lawson street with kayak (very tough work as you had to carry it after near 2.5 hours of paddling)we headed back to site for some lunch and afternoon at beach on campsite called broken head. Was a bit chilly but the scenery really makes up for it! Stayed there for about 2 hours but the tan wasn't getting any better so we decided to call it a day!
We headed back to van for a few drinks and to get ready for our big date night! We decided to spoil ourselves and treat ourselves to dinner and drinks in Byron.
We got cab in (28 f'ing bucks for 7km..)! Had dinner and a few cocktails at nice Mexican restaurant called Aztec! Got a nice combo plate which had taco, enchilada and chilli con carne ! Yum! Carol had Uxmal which had garlic chilli prawns baked with jalapeños and cheese with Spanish rice / tortillas! Apparently restaurants that side of town bear Lawson street have only a shelf life of under a year due to extortionate rents. Reminds me of back home!
We headed into Byron for drinks after it, the place was dead enough, which was strange as it is a bank holiday tomorrow! That's probably the only thing the Irish do better than Oz - celebrate bank holiday weekends more!
Australia even celebrate Xmas twice..obviously the official one but also a Xmas in July! No set date for it but they leave it up to folk to have parties whenever they want in July! Apparently it's because at that time it's the 'coldest'!!
We hit the most lively bar on the night, called 'the rails' which wasn't at all busy. An old railway station converted into a drink haunt! Was a live band in, they were ok. Every one started to leave about 10pm so we headed off ourselves and then forked out another 26 dollars for a cab! I thought the Irish cabbies were robbing bas**rds but these lads took the mickey!
We were both conked within minutes of setting up bed..so much for our big date night!!