Day 116 Monday 4th January 2010

Stacey says

So we hopped onto the Greyhound in the morning, and headed to Byron Bay. 'Boring Bay' as the moody coach driver called it! We passed the Big Banana leaving Coffs Harbour, then pulled into a café for a break which was home to the Big Prawn. Arriving to the YHA hostel we settled in and went to find a nice pub to have a nice cold refreshing beer! Byron Bay is quite a busy little town, very trendy, laid back, with lots of hippyish people walking around. The town was a typical surfy town, lots of surf clothes shops, and lots of bead jewellery shops, beach clothes shops, I had to strict on myself refraining from buying more stuff, my bag has got too heavy again! We got talking to a couple from Sunderland staying in the same place, and agreed to head to Cheeky Monkeys later for some drinks. Steve very kindly cooked us a chilli con carne tonight, as I wasn't feeling good and had to lay down. The YHA was again a really nice hostel, lots of people lying around in hammocks, a nice pool area, really relaxed and friendly staff, I couldn't close the door to my room, so all three men on reception came round to inspect it and try to fix it… At 7 o'clock we headed to the bar, queued for a ridiculous amount of time.. And joined our friends.. It was quite mental in here, people dancing on tables, competitions on the stage and the sort.. At the end of the night Steve was doing his best Geordie 'Double Decker' (Barry and Steves fav!) and Ant n' Dec impressions.. The couple were very impressed!! Hmm…

Day 117 Tuesday 5th January 2010

Johno says

Today we planned to head to the beach, it was quite possibly our most favourite beach so far with white sand and clear water. The waves were the largest I have ever seen and just a couple of metres into the water the waves were over your head (I know that isn't hard for me but still they were really high) after a few jumps in the water there was an absolutely massive wave that washed me to the shore in a cartwheel fashion - I stupidly went into the water with my expensive ray ban sunglasses resting to my head and soon enough lost them out to sea… I spent the next ten or so minutes trying to hunt them down in the water, after I had pulled my swimming shorts up as the wave also knocked them down my legs too! Stace thought from our spot on the beach that I was 'having a whale of a time' playing with the waves but I was really trying to frantically hunt down the sun glasses in between 5 metre waves!! Haha. Then finally I spotted a shadow in the water and it was my ray bans, wow I couldn't believe it and then bam another unexpected huge wave hit me and I lost sight of the glasses again…pulling my shorts up for the second time I found them again and made a dive for it … they were safely in my hands despite having a mouthful of sea water and salty eyeballs!! Stacey nearly cried when I told my tale (ok at first I did pretend I had lost the glasses having them in my pocket) thank goodness I spotted them in the water!! We made our way back to the hostel for some lunch and I saw my first huge spider on the roof of a restaurant, it had quite an audience due to the pure size!! It was nearly the size of my hand and looked pretty scary!! Glad that box is ticked now maybe I will stop looking for them.