I arrived in Coffs Harbour by Greyhound this afternoon and went for a walk along the beach, which is stunning. The air smells really salty and the water is cool and clear. There are several rocky islands out to sea and the views are lovely.

Yesterday, when I was still in Byron Bay, I had booked up to go sea-kayaking with dolphins, apparently. I woke up and it was chucking it down with rain, but the trip went ahead, and it was much better than I thought it would be. After all the canoeing I'd done last week (I did a three-day canoe trip in the Upper Noosa River) the paddling wasn't very tiring, although the waves were big and it was a bit uppy-downy! The waves broke over the front of the kayak and I got soaked, and loved it. We saw two separate pods of dolphins playing in the waves, and got about 15m away from them. I really liked being able to see them in their natural environment, without any interfering from humans (feeding, training and the like). Then our guide saw a boat out to sea that had stopped, and we paddled over to it. There were whales there! It looked like three baby humpbacks, although they may have been minky whales. They were breeching and whacking their tails on the water and having a good old time! I completely did not expect to see many dolphins, let alone whales again. The rain didn't matter anymore! We got about 15-20m away from them too, and it was very different to when I went whalewatching because we were practically in the water with them, and it came as a complete surprise to me that we saw them.

On the way back in we were encouraged to surf in to the shore on the kayaks, which was hilarious, good fun, and cold when the kayak capsised and threw us out into the water!

I don't really have anything planned for the next places I am visiting - no tours or anything - and I just want to have an explore and see what I can find.