Waking up has never been a fun occasion for me, waking up at 5.30 on a Saturday didn’t make it any better. It was a dark day, literally; I looked out of the bus window and thought wow the moon looks bright, then I realised it was the sun I was staring directly at, somehow my eyes hadn’t disintegrated and that another dust storm had hit the east coast. It was nice to have someone I knew on my first greyhound journey and it passed with only a few tears (we watched seven pounds, one of the best films ever made) and we spied some interesting birds on the way. Eventually we ended up in Coffs Harbour where Lisa departed to god knows where and I was picked up by a very friendly YHA driver who took me to an equally friendly hostel.
Coffs I discovered is a pretty small and quiet place, I think it had a total of 3 pubs, for some reason I can’t fathom its referred to as a city. Here I met some very interesting characters including a guy from Bristol with a hilarious accent that I had to take several seconds just to process every time he said anything to me (much like Joey from Northern Ireland I met during my first week) which is bizarre as he’s from my country and only a few hours away. An American who played world of Warcraft until the cows came home (but Coffs has no cows), a German girl who got bounced around like a space hopper on speed and a very tall guy who gave me some honey for my lemon and ginger tea!
I should point out at this point that on my third day in Sydney I got ill, possibly to do with surfing in very cold water then drinking far too much straight after (not water obviously) but however it happened I still have the cold. Hence the lemon and ginger tea (Twinings of London which I was very pleased to find) and my joy at being offered some honey which improves the flavour so wonderfully! This is very frustrating for me as it makes swimming and all the wonderful activities one can do in water, which are quite abundant up the east coast quite unpleasant. So if I don’t mention my sea kayaking and surf experiences it’s because there wasn’t any. Anyway back to the story.
I went for a walk with Lisa along the beach, explored the local Sunday market (in a car park just like at home) and ate some kanga bangas (kangeroo sausages). The market was fun, got some very cheap fresh veg. the sausages were quite tasty although I couldn’t eat them all so I left the rest with the tall guy and the beach was extremely long, beautiful like Bondi but massive and we got lost in the woods at the end of it. As soon as we left the hostel I realised it was cold, however my bravado refused to let me go get warm (clever mechanism that) so I didn't go back in for a jumper, I'm still caught off guard by the short but extremely hot days, I guess the time to be about 4 and 10 minutes later the sun sets and I'm frozen! Confusing. The walk back almost had icicles hanging off my nose, ok i exaggerate but still. We got back to the hostel, I said goodbye to Lisa and watched several episodes of chuck before going to sleep.
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