Onwards, to Byron's Bay

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

The next leg of the journey was considerably more painful, getting up earlier this time, around 5 and having to walk what I was told was a half hour walk to the bus coach carrying my backpack and bigger backpack which turned out to be an hour walk getting me there literally as the bus pulled up. After that it was just fairly bumpy, the road conditions in Australia do seem a little dismal, no offence to whoever looks after them but being used to English roads and being able to plan a world takeover in the back of a car or just sleep I was surprised by how difficult it was to type, on a laptop that seemed hell bent on flying all over the place! Using the loo became a very complicated procedure in such circumstances. Although I suppose Brighton has some worse roads but they aren’t 2000 miles long.

The journey consisted of boredom, a giant prawn and at Yamba a few people got on including one funny Swedish girl who complimented me on my iPod taste (beyonce and lion king soundtrack, not mine I swear!) and then proceeded to curl up against me and fall asleep, ‘strange’ I thought, ‘man she fell asleep fast!’ and eventually we got to byron bay where she woke up and also got off. I found out later she was staying in the same hostel as me, with an English guy who told me the Swedes were totally mental and all about Yamba and how cool it was, annoying the hell outta me as I didn’t have time to visit it before Byron, and I wanted to.

Byron bay, annoyingly, because I have a cold, is a surfing town! Meaning while here the options are surf, swim on the glorious beach, kayak with dolphins and party hard. I tried to swim, I really did, but its quite hard to when your body feels like crap and is imploring you not to! What I did manage was totally more exciting, I walked to the lighthouse dressed in the same gear I wore for the blue mountains, useful in cold mountains but not, I repeat not in the burning Australian sun! I needed this gear though as I wanted to complete my film and needed a couple of shots, which I eventually got after hours of walking around and seeing some spectacular views including a humpback breaching in the distance.

While in Byron I had the best burger of my life from a place called the corner shop, check it out its awesome, and also the best 2 sandwiches from the same place, which were equally godlike. I met an extremely cute Canadian girl and I really mean extremely, some really cool surfers who I almost thrashed at pool, and the guy who shared the honey at Coffs harbour, I forget his name which is really annoying as I’m sure it not hard to remember, anyway I was feeling pretty lame that night so he cooked for me, which was wonderful, being so tall he believes in big portions and I thoroughly approved of the many sausages, potatoes and broccoli (instead of salad, for me.)