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4/21/07
Took an hour and a half flight to the Gold Coast where we'd be staying with Steph's friend's old roommate's parents (got that??) for the next few days. No sooner did we pull up at the house than Rita and David gave us a key to their home, made us dinner, and told us to stay for as long as we'd like. They live in a beautiful home with a lake in their back yard and are 5 minutes from Mermaid Beach.
4/22/07
Spent the day at the beach known as Surfers Paradise - the town is a bit touristy with lots of big hotels, shops, and restaurants, and in close proximity to a bunch of theme parks. Rita was kind enough to make us a delicious home-cooked Lebanese meal. After dinner, we headed out for a walk around Broad Beach, which has a ton of restaurants with outdoor seating (appeared nicer than those at Surfers Paradise).
4/23/07
Tough decision - national park or water park? We opted for Wet n' Wild Water Park because a) we figured when else are 2 thirty year-olds (ok - only close to thirty for Steph) gonna drag their butts to
a water park, and b) it is fun! So, we spent the day running from slide to slide weaving through kids and their parents. It actually turned out to be a good change of scenery from our "normal" daily activities. Our favorite ride was the Twister (we rode it 4 times in a row), which is a 2 person tube ride where you are sent down a short, steep slide into an enormous funnel and proceed to ride up and down the funnel's sides.
Went home and hung out with our favorite family in the Southern Hemisphere.
4/24/07
Although we were sad to leave Rita and David, we headed an hour south to Byron Bay, which came highly recommended by several travellers. The hostel where we stayed is Backpackers Inn on the Beach. It's in a great location (5 minute walk to town and the beach is in your backyard), but it's a much younger crowd who likes to party loudly (thanks for the earplugs Mom R.), and offers very basic accomodation. We spent the afternoon planning our activities for the next few days. I don't know who we think we are, but we signed up for surfing
lessons and a day of scuba like it was perfectly normal.
4/25/07
Another "must-do" - surf lessons at Byron Bay (or probably anywhere in Australia for that matter). We went for a 3 hour group lesson with the Black Dog surf school. It was soooo much fun - we both did way better than we thought we would. We both stood up on our 1st try and we were able to ride many waves (granted, they were small). By the end of the lesson, we were catching waves on our own without the help of our instructor.
April 25th is Anzac Day in Australia - the equivalent of our Veteran's Day, plus getting pissed (drunk) and playing a game called Two Up. We went to a bar on the beach to witness the celebration. Two Up is a coin tossing game where people bet against each other choosing heads or tails for money. Anzac Day is the only day of the year when its legal to play this game in public.
4/26/07
Took a day trip on the Grosshopper Bus to Nimbin and surrounding areas. It was basically a VW bus, painted in psychedelic colors (very hippy-like).
Nimbin is a small hippy-town where you can obtain and consume pot in a variety of forms (i.e. cakes, cookies or plain old marijuana). We didn't know what to expect, but as it turns out, people on the street offer it to you and there are numerous bars/cafes where you can smoke. We were a little apprehensive and did not partake.
That afternoon, we carried on and saw a bit more of the countryside, including a small waterfall (and that's being generous), a bit of a rainforest and had a BBQ. Although it was a fine day, it wasn't one of our better activities and we wouldn't recommend this trip.
4/27/07
So today Jay did something he never thought he would and Steph didn't do something she always thought she would.....scuba diving. After much persuasion by Steph, Jay decided he'd try it too - he ended up loving it and Steph didn't last for more than 5 minutes. In Australia, they offer what they call an Introductory Dive Course - as an alternative to becoming certified (which takes around 4 days) - you watch a short video, spend about an hour in a pool getting familiar with the
equipment and learning a few basic underwater skills, and then head to the open water for your dive, where you have to be accompanied by a dive instructor. There's usually one instructor for every 2-4 participants; however, we lucked out again and were the only ones taking the course.
After a short speedboat ride, we arrived at Julian Rocks, where Jay spent about 30 minutes underwater at a depth of up to 10 meters (pretty standard for the Intro Dive). Steph spent the remaining 25 minutes snorkeling. The water was crystal clear and the visibility was apparently around 15 meters. We both saw sharks, a huge sea turtle and tons of beautifully colored fish. Jay also saw an eel and a baby octopus. One of the things Jay found particularly interesting (and Steph found frightening) was being in an underwater world where the only way to communicate was through some basic sign language. The whole experience proved to be challenging, emotional and exhilarating all at the same time.
That night we took 1 more small step towards being shunned from civilized society - we bought a bottle of wine, sat in a park overlooking the ocean, and took
swigs from the bottle which was in a brown paper bag.
4/28/07
Surf lesson - part deux. Spent the morning fine tuning our skills with another group lesson. Again, loads of fun! The past few afternoons we spent walking around town and relaxing in cafes, getting a lot of reading done.
RANDOM THOUGHTS BY JAY AND STEPH:
- Best kept secret - Capital One credit card for international travel...no transaction fees
- Why is the U.S. the only country that uses farenheit and non-metric units of measure?
- Hostels in New Zealand are much better than those in Australia.
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Lauren
non-member comment
Love It!
Steph-You better not be feeling bad about scuba (I would do the same thing). Surfing looks great! Keeping all your info for our inevitable trip there (hehehe). Love you read the updates, especially on night shifts (where I am right now). Continue to have a great time with wonderful experiences! Love You Lauren