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It is a while ago when I wrote my previous blog, that was because I was on a surfcamp for 10 days and thus I didn't experience a lot of new things over there. But first of all, I still had 2 more days in Byron Bay, the surfers village. The first day I decided to hire a surfboard and try my luck in the waves of Byron Bay. The conditions were very hard and without instructions it was thus pretty unsuccesful for me unfortunately. Ah well, at least I had a good workout. The next day I decided to take a shuttle to Nimbin town. Nimbin is a hippie town and is located approximately 1.5 hour from Byron Bay. The special thing about Nimbin is that the people over there are allowed to sell pot. The town is very small and you 've seen everything in 15 minutes but you should go there to experience it, when you are in the neighbourhood. It all starts with the shuttle, the driver of the shuttle was a very nice guy and he was telling all kind of drug stories, that he has encountered since driving his bus. He does this while playing hippie/weed songs through the speakers. Actually, the shuttle was already the highlight of the tour, because as I already said there is not so much to do in Nimbin besides seeing hippies/semi-junks and buying pot if you want. Oh yea, they also have the Nimbin museum. I think they used a lot of drugs with a group of people, wrote some philosophical phrases on the walls, put some stuff inside the building and just called it a museum.
After the hippie-experience it was time for what my trip was actually all about, surfing.. My world trip takes me to the nicest surfspots in the world and thus I have to try them all. Of course I don't want to drink ocean water all the time when I am surfing and therefore I planned to do a 10 day surfcamp from Mojosurf at spot X. I was in the group of 2 Swedish guys and 1 Canadian girl. It was nice that we had a small group. Our instructor was Kyle from England. All the instructors are totally crazy by the way. That is a compulsory characteristic when you apply for the position as a surf instructor.
Meals were included in the camp, so that was very welcome for me, finally I could eat some normal meals. Breakfast was until 9 am and we had 2 lessons of 2 hours every day. The lessons started at 6.30 or 7, so we always tried to get a second breakfast! Between the surflessons there was not so much to do at Spot X and everyone is exhausted, so then it's time for a powernap. So the schedule of the Australian surfdude lifestyle looked like this:
6.15 alarm, jump out of bed in surf position and get the first breakfast
6.30 surf
8.30 second breakfast, yeeey!
9-12 nap
12-13 lunch
13-15 surf
15.30-18 nap
18-19.30 dinner
19.30 jump in the bus to the bottle shop
20.00-??? play drinking games
??? - 6.15 nap
And I repeated this schedule for 10 days.
At the third day we were surfing and catching some green waves. Suddenly I heard some people talking and nobody was paying attention to the waves anymore... Dolphins were swimming around us and 3 dolphins were just swimming approximately 5 metres behind me. That was awesome!
The best day was the 8th day. I was the only one of the group capable to go in the back of the ocean to catch green wave and thus I got a private instructor assigned. The conditions were very rough and the waves very big. If you got caught by a wave you could be under water for a long time. When you finally reach the surface you already see the next wave breaking in. But it felt totally amazing when I caught a wave simultaneously with my surf instructor. He was an Australian guy that grew up the beach next door and afterwards he told me that we was a professional top 20 surfer. His name is Shaun Cansdell and he has his own official website and many surfvideos on youtube. Awesome!!! One of his videos can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNBF-VoCq-E
I also decided to go to the kangaroo golf with a group of Swedish girls. The golf court has 11 holes and you can play golf while the kangaroos are just hopping around you. We we were able to get very close and I even feeded them. Afterwards, that evening, an Australian guy was telling us that it was very dangerous to get that close to wild kangaroos, because they have incredible leg-power and are not afraid to show you that when you come to close. Ah well, Bear Grylls wouldn't be afraid of that either.
Not everything was wonderful on surfcamp. After 5 days my group left me because almost everyone just booked the surfcamp for 5 days. I think 5 days would be a better choice because there is not much to do besides surfing and I was very unlucky, I actually don't want to tell you, but I think it was raining 9 days out of ten... The last 3 days the conditions were so bad that I wasn't allowed to surf except for the one morning on the 8th day, and of course they don't give a refund whenever that occurs..
After a lot of injuries, surfing, meeting new people and drinking games it was time to move on to Sydney. This day was the worst day of the trip until now. It rained and stormed the whole 24 hours of the day. The bus was supposed to arrive at 14.20 at the surfcamp, however it arrived two and a half hours late. After driving for 15 minutes, the bus broke down and we needed to wait for an engineer. The engineer, who came after 1.5 hour, didn't have the broken part in stock and thus we needed to continue with another bus. This took another 4 hours and thus our bustrip took 18 hours in total instead of just 10 hours. Luckily enough, I was able to move my booking with my hostel forward 1 day, because I wasn't able to arrive there on time. When I arrived in Sydney, I had to wait for the trains to ride and after that the hostel was not open yet at 7 am, thus I went with my backpack in the rain to the closest McDonalds to make use of their free Wi-Fi and wait until my hostel opened. Blog about Sydney will follow soon. I have been in Sydney for 3 days now and this city is beautiful!
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M.Cooli Lieve Martin Fijn weer eens wat van je te horen.Je zal de golven wel missen op de IJssel.Leuke foto met de kangoeroe zijn schattige beesten. We hebben gezien dat je morgen weer vertrekt naar Auckland. Heel veel plezier en we kijken uit naar het volgende verhaal. Dikke kus Oom Joop Tante Mar Xxxxxxx