Byron Bay

Hey Everyone!

Its been a few days since our last post, and since we are now in Sydney we figure it would be a good time to fill you all in on what’s been going on between Surfers Paradise (where we left you guys) and Sydney!

We got the Greyhound from Surfers Paradise to Byron Bay which turned out to be somewhere around a 2.5 hour journey.  It wasn’t so bad – we got a chance to have a short nap and get rested for Byron.  We only heard good things about it from fellow travellers, so we were excited to get there and see what it was all about!  As our bus neared the small town, dark ominous clouds started to roll overhead.  At first it seemed as if we may yet avoid any rain but as fate would have it that would not be the case, not at all!  Literally as soon as the bus doors opened at the stop in Byron Bay the clouds seemed to just dump as much water as possible!  Torrential rain was falling as we were pilling off the bus! We grabbed our bags as quickly as we could and ran to the bus shelter to get out of it! Already waiting under the shelter for us were reps for the nearby hostels, all trying to get us and other travellers to come to their hostel.  We ended up speaking with a 22 year old guy from Tsawassen that was a rep for a hostel called “holiday village” at 28 bucks a night for a 2 room 6 person apartment with its own kitchen, bathroom, living room, free internet, pizza, surf boards, body boards, bicycles it seemed like a great deal to us so we jumped at it.  At the end of our time in Byron we were very happy with our choice, the place was clean, the people were great and it was really great having just us 2 with 1 other in our apartment! (+1 friend of our roommate was over all the time)

Our first night in Byron we went out and got our free pizza for dinner from a place just down the road.  We brought it back to ours and had a night in, we spoke to our roommate for a while, then her friend came over and we played cards for hours! We played Uno (which we later determined needed to be a drinking game for the next day) and some other various card games.  The next day we headed down the beach to check it out.  As we were sitting we spotted the ominous clouds once again rolling in overhead from the west, but this time they were MUCH darker, and thicker!  We looked at each other and we both knew we were going to sit there and wait out the storm! We figured it would be good fun to take our shirts off and just sit there on the rocks and enjoy the tropical storm! After all…how bad could it be? Its Australia!  Just before the clouds were above us Matt looked down the beach, before where we could see miles and miles, he noticed it was all gone, swallowed by the haze under the clouds.  After seeing the blue sky and sun blotted out completely by black clouds and lighting starting to flash all around us we started to question our decision to stay on the beach! After all, the hundreds of others that were on the beach earlier had all ran, but we sat strong!  Matt looked around and saw a small cave/shelter under some rocks on the beach, it wasn’t much, but we thought we could both fit inside it.  Just as we reached the small cave the rain started coming, at first just a few small drops, getting progressively larger.  We both got as far into the cave as we could, which as it turns out wasn’t far at all, if we tucked our knees to our chest we were barley in.  As the rain got worse the beach started to dissapear, where we were just sitting moments ago we could no longer see, the rain was so thick, so heavy it was incredible!  Our rock shelter was a far cry from waterproof (being rocks) and soon the rain started to find its way between the cracks and rocks pouring onto us….even though we were getting soaked under the shelter, we both knew we were far better off in the cave.  As the rain continued we both just sat and looked out – thankful we found the shelter! As lighting continued to flash all around us, and thunder boomed we sat and enjoyed natures impressive display.  We had never been in storms like this before!  Little did we know how lucky we were to have moved to shelter…5-10 minutes into the full swing of the storm it started…hail! At first, just small shards,   eventually progressing to hail the size of GOLF BALLS!  As first it was neat to see, hail impacting the beach and looking as if a small mortar round had hit the sand.  Or when it struck the ocean and looked like someone had thrown a rock.  It all because just how serious it was when they started to hit where we, we could hear them striking the rocks above us, exploding on impact.  Still feeling rather safe, until they started exploding just infront of the entrance to our cave! Sharps sprayed all over us, stinging every piece of flesh they hit!  We curled up into the best balls we could form and cover ourselves.  Still safe from direct hits we were alright.  Then the storm seemed to find us…it is as if it finally noticed us hiding in the rocks and the wind completely changed, instead of blowing from the shore to the ocean, it reversed and started blowing directly at us in our cave (which the entrance faced the ocean)  Blowing with it all the rain, and worst of all the hail! It started to hit our legs, full on…if any of you have played paintball before…it felt as if each piece of hail was a paintball hitting our legs!!! We did all we could to shield ourselves, we attempted to stack up rocks to build a sort of wall, we tried to get in further to the cave, but it was all useless.  As we shielded our eyes to protect them from serious damage from spraying ice we started to consider perhaps running to nearby buildings at first opportunity.  Both of us happy with our determination and staying power against the storm we felt it would be best to move to the buildings.  Looking up out to the beach and not seeing it at all through thick rain and hail, and ice exploding all around us, we decided to wait for the first sign of the hail letting up.  The rain we could walk through – but a golf ball sized hail ball in the head would hurt.  We found a hole in the storm and made a break for it, scrambling over the rocks we got off the beach and walked back to our hostel for a hot shower and got changed.  That night we went out to the local movies with our roommate and friend and saw Superbad!  After the film we played our drinking games with Uno and cards with our roommate and her friend.  It was one heck of a day all in all!  We both know now not to underestimate Australia’s storm potential!

Next night we went out to a club/bar called Cheeky Monkey’s for a night out, just some drinks and dancing, it was fun!  The fourth night we went out to Woolworths and bought a bunch of stuff to make sushi!  The night previously we saw just how expensive sushi was in the store and decided it would be fun to make ourselves.  So the 4 of us got to it that night!  We made an epic amount! We had California Rolls, chicken teriyaki rolls, tuna rolls, and vegetable rolls! Check out the pictures to see how amazing they were!  We all took turns and helped out making them – so it was a lot of fun.  We all ate as much as we possibly could but alas were defeated but the giant plates of sushi!  The next morning we had to check out, luckly our friend was still staying in the same room we were in so we were able to take our time somewhat.  We hung around all day, went to the beach – and later had dinner that night at Cheeky’s.  We said bye to our roommate and friend at the bus and got on at 10:05pm for the long trip to Sydney! It was going to take 13 hours!

We got on and found our seats, and tried to get comfortable.  We both had colds developing which really was not nice…to make matters worse as the trip began the bus driver would make the bus extremely cold, then to counter the cold would turn on the heat and make it really hot, then again to correct himself put the A/C back on full which made it cold again, and it went on for 4 hours!  Until a new driver took over and took us the rest of the way to Sydney.  As the night wore on we tried to get sleep as best we could.  It is hard to get comfortable in those busses!  Finally at around noon the next day we rolled into Sydney! Tired and exhausted we found the closest hostel we could find and checked in and dumped our gear!

That’s it for now! We will post about Sydney soon!