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Published: April 29th 2008
Byron1
Old men in speedos.Hello friends and family, it is I! Josh! You remember... that curly haired kid who went to Australia for 5 months? You'd probably remember me better if I updated my travel blog more often, but that's what I'm here to do today: write massive amounts to tell you all about two of the best weeks in my life to date. Since I did SO MUCH in these last two weeks, I'm going to break the entries up by locale instead of writing everything into one huge wall of text. We'll start with some background information.
I've been cruising along in my classes at University of Newcastle with no real problems, and actually found myself enjoying a couple of them between hanging out with friends, watching rugby, and visiting pubs on the weekends. It's not a terrible life, but it's not really what I came out here to do, which is travel around and experience some of the only-in-Australia things that everyone wants to do. Back around Easter I attempted to plan a week-long trip to New Zealand which proved disastrous and one of my contacts in Auckland fell sick with a tonsil infection... also, airfare and accommodation costs were rather
Byron2
Lighthouse. high due to the holiday weekend. These and other reasons caused me to forget about the whole thing and try to plan for a different time.
Since my failure trying to get out and see things, I was determined to not waste my two-week break in April, and asked around to my friends and classmates to see what they were doing. My German friend and business partner(in Marketing class) Ulrich told me about a trip that STA Travel was trying to push on the study abroad students. I went to the travel agent on campus right away and everything sounded amazing: surfing, whitewater rafting, sailing, skydiving, camping, and partying with 30 others who came here to see the sights as well. The base package was $2,000 including several greyhound trips, accommodation, camping permits on Fraser Island, a sailing trip for three days and two nights around the Whitsunday Islands, and several activities up north in Cairns. Some other things had to be paid out of pocket though, things like national park levies, skydiving upgrades like pictures and dvd, as well as boosting from 10,000 feet to 14,000 feet. Some protection costs when snorkelling the Great Barrier Reef, and of
course money for some meals, alcohol, souvenirs, and the like. It sounded absolutely like something I wanted to do, since skydiving was part of my initial New Zealand plan already. I paid the money and was then told that I had just filled the last spot. Ha! I have no idea what I would have done without it.
Flash forward a few weeks to Friday, April 11th. Around 7 pm, my roommate Craig is happy to drive me into town to the Brewery Hotel, which is a bar that is sort of snooty and not the best for wild college kids. I've been there a few times, but other bars are more to my liking. We sat in the parking lot for a while because I didn't see any sort of banner or reception there for people going on the trip. Eventually a truck pulled in behind us and four girls got out with their tons of luggage, and I knew they must be going on the trip as well. I got out of the car to meet and greet when I realized that I already knew all four of them. Ashley A., Lauren, Kelly, and Ashley Geesman(or just
Gees). Ashley A. and Lauren I had actually gone apartment shopping with just a couple of months earlier! Kelly and Gees were also at the YHA hostel with me for that first week and a half. So, feeling a little more confident now having 5 people that I knew on the trip instead of 1, we all went up to the bar's patio area to find that another 10 or so people were already waiting with their luggage.
I learned some names and where people were from, expecting to meet some people from all over the world. Of course this isn't the case, as 29 of the 33 students ended up being American, three were Canadian, and one was my German friend Ulrich. We all kill some time talking about school and what we're most excited about on the trip. I catch up with my four hostel friends on what's been going on, and we drink a few free beers thanks to STA. Once it gets close to 9 pm, we all convoy with our luggage over to the nearby bus station. Our first leg of the journey is an overnight Greyhound Bus trip to Byron Bay. 9 pm
to 7 am... how do you think I slept? Awfully. I sat way in the back next to some British girl whose name I will never, ever remember and her two friends. She was tiny so I had some room to stretch out, but still couldn't get to sleep. I think I may have gotten a good 90 minutes out of the entire drive. We get into Byron Bay on time, 7 am, and start wondering where the hell we're supposed to go next... a place called Aquarius Hotel. Before we can organize and start heading there, a van from Mojo Surf pulls up behind the greyhound we just got off of. Two guys named Trent and Brent hop out and say "dude" a lot while figuring out what to do with us. They've already split us into a 7 am group and a 1 pm group. I was thankful to be in the 1 pm group, as it meant I got to sleep in for a bit.
1 van speeds off to the beach, while another van scoops up the rest of us and takes us to Aquarius. We check in, get our meal vouchers, then they tell
us to come back at around 11:30 so they can clean the rooms up. Great. 4 hours to kill before I can even lay down. Some girls and guys end up unpacking their blankets or towels and pillows and sleeping on the chairs by the pool. I decided to go off and explore with four girls I had just met: Katie, Cecilia, Mel, and Hayley. We first walk down to the beach and the girls start to lay out and try to drift to sleep. I realize that I didn't bring a beach towel. Hayley didn't want to lay out, she wanted to take pictures, so we set off down the beach checking out Byron Bay. After we had walked far enough, we turned around and headed back to the sunbathers. At this point I split off from them in search of a nice, big beach towel that would actually fit my body, as the last one I had ended around my knees. The first store I went into had nice, big, cool-looking towels for $60, so I passed on that and got a good-sized one for $30. It's a good towel, too. Kept me nice and dry and served
as a blanket on future greyhound trips. I head back to the girls and try to sleep for a little while, when of course they decide they want to go shopping. I just kind of hang around while they go in and out of shops, looking at touristy stuff and stopping for Subway before finally heading back to the hostel. When we check in, I find that I'm the only guy in a room full of girls... 2 Swedes, 4 Brits, Hayley, and me. I only remember one of their names, Paloma. One of the English girls said her cousin was going to study at Cornell.
I drift off to sleep... without a pillow or blanket, which I didn't need. For an hour. I was then woken up by Hayley and got ready for my first surfing lessons. I've tried to surf before but really just laid on the board a lot while trying not to drown. This time I would actually be getting some useful instructions. About a dozen of us convene in front of Aquarius and hang out while waiting for the Mojo Surf van to arrive. Once it finally gets there, we all pile in and
head off to Lennox Head, the home town of one of the Mojo surfers and apparently a very large sandbar area with lots of little waves suitable for beginning surfers. We never had to get into water higher than our belly buttons. When we arrived, we all put on our stinger suits and carried surfboards on our heads down to the beach where we would begin our lessons. Basically we learned the parts of the surfboard, which way to stand on it, and the all-important method for getting up from laying down to cool poses. I will now illustrate.
1. Lay down on the board with your feet at the tail, or even barely hanging off the board.
2. Position yourself head-on to the beach, then constantly watch behind you to avoid being wiped out, and to pick out the wave you want. Today the wave you want is a wave that has just broken, as the white wash will carry you in to the beach.
3. When the wave you want starts pushing you, paddle with it for two to three strokes, then it's shift time.
4. Push up with your arms into a half-assed pushup position.
5.
Pull your left foot in toward your crotch as far as you can with your knee hanging off the board.
6. Quickly stand up on your left foot and position your back foot between the rear markings on the board.
7. Maintain your balance by leaning different direction with your hands pointed toward the beach.
8. Strike cool poses.
9. Fall off backwards, never forwards, or just hop off your board if you're in the shallows.
Voila, surfing. After learning these steps, we did some stretches and running around to get us limber. We then went into the water and repeated steps 1 through 9 until either our muscles were too sore, or we swallowed too much sea water. We took a break for some water and oranges and a few group photos, then continued surfing until it was time to head back to the hostel for our discount meal. From the looks of this entry, it may take me more than just today to write all this out. Surfing was a lot of fun. Soooo we arrive back at Aquarius and all get cleaned off and showered up so that we could head to Aquarius's little bar and continue meeting people. Here I met Dave, Steve, Dana, Zach, and Tiffanie. Ulrich had already known all of them because he sort of dated Dana and played rugby with Dave. I knew Dave and Steve would be fun to hang out with because they seemed like normal guys like me, and did air guitar a lot and sang along to every other song like I do. So we formed our air guitar band as we drank Toohey's and hung out with everyone. I made a few little people out of napkins to amuse us and made a little flower for a girl whose birthday it was. At one point here two girls from Norway and South Africa approached me and Ulrich and asked me where they knew me from, because I had a very familiar face. I immediately told them I had starred in several action films and that Ulrich was my agent. We were in Australia to film some awesome beach explosions and gun battles. They didn't believe us of course, but it was still fun to put on the act. Eventually after the group had had a few beers, we all shuttled over to a bar called Cheeky Monkey's, where we would be getting our discount meal, only $2.
We waited in line for around 30 minutes before finally getting let in. We had delicious chicken parmesan though, it was awesome. Lots of dancing, drinking, someone was there giving ridiculous hairstyles to some of the girls in our group. They had a couple of contests for jugs (pitchers) of beer. All in all a good night of rocking out with Steve and Dave to old songs that the bar was playing the videos of. Please don't stop the music and Don't hold back were said probably 50,000 times. Eventually we decided it was quitting time at Cheeky's since a lot of us were running on very little sleep and were somewhat drunk, so I headed back to the hostel and slept like a brick despite the Brits throwing a little get-together in our room. My memory is a little hazy about the next morning, but I'm pretty sure I slept in til about 11:30. I ran across the street for some Subway and hung out for a while before our next surf lesson commenced at 1. We got to Lennox Head and did just a brief overview of yesterday's lesson and some stretches, then hit the waves again. We were on a different stretch of beach this time with slightly bigger waves which more fun to surf on but a lot more tiring to swim out to. I caught a few waves and at one point caught the same wave as two others, which was pretty cool until the guy in the middle wiped everyone else out. Good times all around, at this point I was pretty sore and developing rashes on my knees from sliding onto the foam board over and over. Some of the girls had some bad rashes that lasted the whole trip.
That night they fed us some roast beef and potatoes at Aquarius, then let us loose. We decided to hang around the Aquarius bar for some time, then set off in search of bars. We first went to Beach's, a nice place with a live reggae band. I learned some German from Ulrich and our new friend Patricia. Half the fun was watching the hippies dance around in trances. After we were drunk, a few of us set off to buy pizza and made our way back to Aquarius, as we knew we had a 7 a.m. bus ride to look forward to. After we got back to Aquarius, we ended up staying up and having a lot of fun just hanging out and telling stories and stuff.
The next morning was pretty hectic... The itinerary said we had to be at the bus stop at 7 for our 7:30 bus ride to Hervey Bay. However, Aquarius's checkout office didn't open until 7 so we were all kind of freaking out a little bit. It turned out to be needless worry though, and we all got on our Greyhound and said goodbye to Byron Bay. Well, that does it for this first entry, and that was only the first two days! I bet you're excited for the rest, but I've got to take a break from typing and get some fresh air and groceries. More to come tonight. Love and miss all of you.
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nayners
non-member comment
woot!
that all sounds like so much fun! i'm so glad you finally blogged... have a great time!