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Published: February 7th 2010
Byron BAy
Some random plant i foundHey ya'll,
2/2 Back in Sydney,
(special shout out to Brittany Dow who single handily ran the wedding on no sleep and who travelled from CA to be there.) you’re in there now Dow! i missed her on the perth blogs!
Since flying in Brisbane from Perth we’ve covered 1800km in our camper van making it back to Sydney in 6 days time. Our last planned stop was at Byron Bay(thanks Rhetro) which was a killer surf town, on the smaller side, in which had the kicked back surfer vibe along with long stretches of white sand encompassing a huge bay! It was so good I even got Johnny to snorkel in jelly fish infested waters. The views were amazing and the surf I here gets really good here. We even spotted a sting ray in between one of the sand bars. We just stopped by for a short two hours because we were running a bit behind schedule on making it to Sydney for Johnny’s flight.
The last two days we’ve spent a lot of time on the road and have not been stopping much. The scenery has changed from white sand ridden beaches to densely
Byron Bay
Johnny on the sand bar filled sky high eucalyptus trees surrounding the highways inland. Driving in Australia is much different from the US. Instead of traffic lights and stop signs they have these things called round-a-bouts which are similar to our traffic circles. Except when you come to them there’s a huge sign with a circle in it and usually has 3-5 different routes you can take. So sometimes you will go almost all the way around the circle and the exit almost right where you started and you have to yield to the people coming from the right but you have the ride-a-away from the people on the left; it’s crazy, all while being on the wrong side of the road. I think I did pretty good driving except for a few turns I tried to turn into oncoming traffic. I would have been way lost if it wasn’t for my navigator Johnny he did really good and I got desperately lost when he left, like right away! As soon as I left the airport I was lost and just pulled over at a McDonalds to assess the situation and search for some sort of MapQuest.
We got into Sydney a day early on
Byron Bay
Sting ray we found in the sand bar area the 31st and we found no where to park the van in the city so we decided to go to the blue mountains, east of Sydney(thanks Victoria) about a hour and spend the night. The Blue Mountains is a huge national park, not sure how big because it’s in hectares but its 1,000,000 hectares. It looked pretty big and we toured some easy hikes to Wentworth waterfall, overhanging cliffs and a monument called the 3 sisters. It was a very photogenic place and was a great last stop before I dropped my brother off at the airport. It seemed as though I can spend a week out there and not get bored that’s how big it looked to me.
The last night in the van I spent behind a dumpy little bar in Kings Cross where we 1st started out in Sydney. I got pretty lucky because it’s hard enough to find a parking spot let alone a place to spend the night without the police knocking on my door. I kept my dive knife pretty close this last night it looked pretty dangerous outside I don’t even think a convict would sleep here; but everything turned out fine and
On the road
some random rest stop I watched super bad back to back and fell asleep.
Upon awaking it was time to start the adventure of finding the drop off place for the van. I started at 9:30am and after 5 calls to the company, 80 wrong turns, a short visit to the highway in the wrong direction and 800 curse words I made it!!! I made it about 10:45!! Bullshit! But I was really really glad to be out of that van because I was so sick of trying to drive through the city, it was terrible. I’m happy to be in the hostel with clean clothes, clean face, and a clean body!
Tomorrow I fly to New Zeland…
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Auntie Sharon
non-member comment
Ahhh, jeez
Hi sweetie...I'm so far behind that you're going to be back before I finish! But, I am loving your blogs! My heart goes out to you kiddo...it is SO finding your way around and then driving on the wrong side of the street totally turns your brain into mush. I get it! I'm a softy, so I actually got tears in my eyes thinking of you trying to get through all that...I would've been a mess! You did GOOD!!!!! Love you and can't wait to hear all the stories first hand :)