Sunday 17 November 2013

Byron Bay


4th November the day we started east coast, we had a flight from Sydney's domestic airport at around 3pm to Ballina, a very small airport just 30mins from Byron bay, the distance from Sydney to Byron by car or coach was 9hours but the flight was only an hour, so we thought we start our travels with the easier option which only cost us £10 more. It was an extremely windy day and although the flight was short it had the most activity I've ever experienced whilst flighing. The plane was all over the shop and the girl next to me was packing in it LOL. The landing was a little unconvincing too but luckily we arrived safe and sound. We grabbed our bags and jump into a shuttle which would take us to the front door of the hostel.

When we arrived we realised our hostel was slightly out of town, which wasn't ideal, but we quickly found out the hostel had a free shuttle running from 7am to 10pm everyday so getting into town wasn't too much of a problem.

This hostel was to be our first dorm experience so we was hoping to have some decent people in our room, but only to find 4 young German lads who had made the dorm their own and the whole place was upside down, shit absolutely everywhere, food, rubbish all over the floor and to top it off the stink of weed surrounding the room, being optimistic we chucked our stuff on our bunks and began to chat to them, they didn't seem too bad but we soon realised they were very young and we didn't have much in common and we knew sharing a dorm with them would be a problem, so we went back to reception and upgraded to a private room, we was originally staying in Byron for 3 nights but the weather forecast wasn't great so we cancelled one night, which worked out perfect as we only really needed two anyway.
Once we were finally settled in our new room, we freshend up and jump on the hostel shuttle, and met 2 Aussies who were on holiday, they invited us out for dinner but when we got to the resturant we noticed the prices were well out our price range so went and grabbed food from somewhere else, but we still managed to hang out with them as we met back at the hostel and had a few drinks before heading to bed, the girls exchanged numbers and facebooks as we were telling them we might be looking to do farm work soon to gain 2nd year visas and she lived on and near other farms and said they might be able to help us out. 

The first full day came in Byron and we headed into town, we went into a travel shop and booked a 3.5hour surfing lesson for the following day then we headed to the beach, it was a warm day, some cloud but not much and we walked all the way along the beach, we were heading to the lighthouse which boasted the most easterly point of the Australian mainland, after trekking beaches, paths and main roads we reached the lighthouse at the very top, which had views of all Byron bay and surrounding beaches we took a few pictures grabbed a drink then walked back down to the beach, this time we walked through a track in the bush, finding a snake almost straight away, was only little but that obviously don't mean it can't kill you, so we got round it and carried on, and as we did we found 2 men setting up for a paraglide so we stuck around to watch, looked very sketching but once he was up in he air it looked good. By time we got back to the bottom it was time to get back to the hostel freshen up then back out again to pick up a dominoes, $5 Tuesdays (standard)



The 2nd day and our last day in Byron bay arrived and we were going surfing for the first time, which I was proper excited about, Lisa being Lisa had no emotion about it but it didn't take her long to pipe up when she got her first wave lol. Our surfing lesson was with a company called 'black dog surfing' a group of very friendly people. We met at their shop got wetsuits jumped into their bus and headed to their surf spot, we done a few exercises, learnt a few basic about safety etc, then how to get up on the board then headed into the sea for around 2 hours, the majority of it was them pushing us into the waves and we had to try stand up, took me a fair few goes, where as Lisa was up on her 2nd and road the wave all the way to the beach, I soon realised the lower I stayed the easier it was to catch a wave properly myself, then towards the end I manged to grabbed 3 waves myself, was BUZZING! Anyway the  lesson was over and we headed back into Byron, we quickly went back to the hostel to have showers then we needed to be back in town by 6 to catch out greyhound coach to Surfers Paradise.




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