Australia - Byron Bay - The surfers dream and I was too lazy to carry a board to the beach! I need to have a word with myself……

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Australia – Byron Bay – The surfers dream and I was too lazy to carry a board to the beach! I need to have a word with myself……

As a fully qualified surfer the only natural thing to do was to make my way to Byron Bay so that’s exactly what I did. Sadly the buses air conditioning had broken by the time it got to my pick up point and the bus was displaying an internal temperature of 35 degrees, it was going to be an uncomfortable four hours not to mention a sweaty four hours.

Well it was pretty much like a sauna for the duration of the trip but it was still great to be in the world renowned Byron Bay even if a little sticky. I arrived at the hostel around 8pm and was picked up at the drop of point by the hostel mini bus by two surfer dudes who looked very disappointed that they had been dragged away from the party at the hostel to pick me and several others up. The hostel was like many others in Oz, a bit of a shit tip with clothes and bodies (still alive) everywhere. After a quick walk round town I headed out to the sea front to check out the beach and hippy life style going on and grabbed a pizza and had a sea front dinner, perfect!

The weather to date has been mainly fantastic but the more I’m heading North the more rain is appearing. In Byron it was very mixed there were days of rain and days of beautiful sunshine. On the days of rain it was a case of pretty much do nothing at the hostel all day and on the days of sunshine I hit the coast or went out to explore by bike. Byron is actually pretty small and other than surfing or getting drunk there is not a lot else to do. Sadly for me I have developed a love hate relationship with Australia, I love the natural beauty and the picture perfect scenery it has to offer but I hate (ok maybe to stronger word) the travellers life style over here compared to Asia. The vast majority of travellers seem a lot younger and the main focus is to get wrecked every night and as many of you will know this is not for me, so I have found myself bored at times because in many ways I don’t fit the stereotype here. Everyone is friendly enough and I guess I should make more of an effort to fit in whilst I’m here but it just goes to show something’s in my life I’m not prepared to change.

As it turned out I didn’t go surfing in the end because the walk to the beach from our hostel was to long for me to want to carry a board in the intense heat, coupled with the fact it’s $20 an hour to hire one I just couldn’t be bothered. I spent four days here in total which was a good amount of time, I also went to a place called Nimbin on a day trip, now for those of you who don’t know Nimbin it’s the Drug capital of Oz and basically the police turn a blind eye to drugs here so pretty much anything goes. I have to say this is one of the strangest tours I have been on for a while, the bus driver was hilarious a guy called Carl who seemed like he had spent most of his life stoned and some of the stories he relayed about previous trips were fantastic particularly about the drummer from Blink 182 who ended up naked on his bus. Carl took us to Nimbin on the worst bus I‘ve been on in Oz, once in Nimbin we all looked around in amazement and for those who wanted to get involved with the Cookies, Mushrooms or cakes they went about sourcing their poison for the day. It’s a bloody strange town to say the least, everyone is completely out of it including all the staff in the shops which made for a very funny day. On the way back Carl played a track that he called the roller coaster track and this meant he had to do a certain stretch of road in the five minutes and twelve second it took for the music to finish and for all those who were stoned it was sure to scare the shit out of them. It was a little hair raising to say the least, the bus seemed partially out of control and when we met a car coming the other way on a single track road even those who weren’t out of it truly shit themselves. After a slight detour across the bank we actually made it to the finish of the road dead on the dot of the finish of the track and those who were sampling some of nature’s delights were in a less than happy place right now, it was bloody funny to watch!

Well that was my last day in Byron and I have to say the place is pretty cool, but you really need to love your surfing or partying to want to stay here for any duration, next stop for me will be Brisbane and I promise to keep the blog very short if it’s just the same as the other cities.

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