Surf's Up!

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G'day mates!

A quick update on our last few days in Town of 1770/Agnes Water! These two towns are really small and right next to each other, and are the northernmost surf beaches in Australia. Further north from here, the reef begins and waves don't reach the land like they do further south! We took the bus up from Hervey Bay and arrived around dinnertime in the tiny town of Agnes Water. We got to our hostel, Cool Bananas, and checked in, got some dinner, relaxed. The hostel was great because it had a huge, airy common room where DVDs were always playing. This turned out to be fortunate since we awoke the next morning to rain, and lots of it. We had intended to spend the day at a surf lesson offered by the local surf shop. We walked up to the shop a round 10am, not willing to let a little rain stop us. However, the locals weren't so hardy and they postponed the lesson until the following day. At loose ends, we headed back to the hostel and actually had a very nice, relaxing day. We watched Road Trip, the Hangover and a bit of Dude Where's My Car (terrible!!), wandered up to the one and only local tavern for a couple drinks, and chatted with fellow travelers.

Day to we awoke to BRILLIANT SUNSHINE! We went to the surf shop again and this time - success! Us and a group of a bout 15 others got a great lesson. Our instructor showed us the basics and had us practice paddling motions and "popping up" (moving from your tummy to your feet) on the board while on land. In the water, both TJ and I had success getting up. We both managed to stand our first try and it was thrilling! The lesson was about three hours and wrapped up around 1:30. From there we took a very quick shower and set out on our second adventure for the day, Scooteroos! Scooteroos are motorbikes that look like big Harley-type motorcycles but have the engines of scooters. The tour was great! We were assigned a bike, given a helmet and a safety talk, and then were allowed to ride. Our huge convoy of 60 bikes cruised the roads of the twin towns 1770 and Agnes Water. We got a good tour of the town and then stopped at a big expanse of land owned by a buddy of our leader. There we saw kangaroos!! They were everywhere, and since kangaroos have no natural predator they were fairly mellow about us taking picture of them. Kangaroos are adorable! It was funny watching some people try to sneak up on them to get good photographs. From there we jumped back on the bikes and rode around some more. Some bikes were more powerful than others, but the fastest ones could get up to 80km/h! TJ and I didn't go that fast, but I know i hit 70km/h a couple times :D We finished the tour at a great lookout spot in 1770 and watched the sunset while munching on wedges (seasoned potato wedges with chili sauce and sour cream... very popular here and very delicious).

We were obviously exhausted after this day of fun, so we showered, watched a movie and finally finished off the day by boarding the night bus to Airlie Beach. We were lucky on our first overnighter bus trip because the bus was quite empty and we each got two seats to ourselves. Sadly that was not the case this time... full bus, single seat and a lonnnnnng night of uncomfortable sleep. The A/C was a bit faulty due to some engine overheating troubles we had along the way. But the important thing is that we made it and are in Airlie Beach!

(sorry if any of you recieved this email twice, i made a teensy mistake in publishing this one hahaha)

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