G'day Guys!!

We arrived in Coffs Harbour on Monday evening in the middle of a torrential storm - great!! We were picked up from the coach stop and driven to the hostel where we checked into our double room - we had an ensuite and a TV!! How cool!! We quickly settled into the hostel, it is very clean with good facilities. It is so nice we extended our stay to 6 nights!

Tuesday the weather wasn't much better, so we walked 2km into the city, where we spent most of our day looking around the shops, before returning to the hostel to chill out and make our plans for the rest of the week.

Wednesday, as the weather was much better we decided to go exploring. We thought we'd head for the local attraction 'The Big Banana', so we grabbed a map and set off. We walked down to Park Beach and all the way along it. Park beach has a couple of kms of clean golden sands. From here we took the very steep costal path over Macauleys Headland, from which we got brilliant views of the surrounding coastline. After being careful not to step on the many lizzards crossing the path we eventually made it to Diggers Beach. This is basically a smaller version of Park Beach, with a nudest section at the one end, luckily nobody was bearing all that day!! From here we headed inland & 5km after leaving the hostel we arrived at the Big Banana. We have to say, as this is the most famous local attraction, it was quite a let down. The ice rink was only open for an hour and was packed, the snow slope was closed, so we went on the toboggan run, which although it was fun, it was not what we'd planned. We walked through the banana plantation to the skywalk, this was meant to go to a lookout point - but guess what - the lookout was closed! It wasn't all a let down as we did get some great views over the hills and across Coffs Harbour from the skywalk. We then went to the banana cafe where Emma indulged in a frozen chocolate coated banana. We have one thing to say about this - NEVER FREEZE BANANAS!!!!

We left the big banana and made the 5km trek by foot back to the hostel, having to make a pit stop at Hungry Jacks (Australia's Burger King) for Lee to refuel.

Thursday morning we walked down to Jetty Beach and along the Historic Jetty. We sat on the jetty taking in the views across the harbour and spotted a dolphin in the bay. We returned to the hostel for some lunch before being collected by the owner of Valery Trails Horse Riding School, to be taken for an afternoon of horse riding.

Valery Trails is about 25km from Coffs Harbour and set in pine creek forest. Here they have over 60 horses on 310 acres of land. We got kitted up and were given our horses. Lee had Digger, and Emma got Woody. We soon set off on our ride which took us through fields, forest trails and creeks. Lee did very well and got plenty of chances to practise trotting (or as Lee calls it - running). Emma managed to stay seated on the mischeivous Woody even when he bucked and tried to kick the instructor off her horse, and got lots of time to canter along the forest trails. Over 2 hours later we returned the horses to their stables, before relaxing with some refreshments and then being dropped back to our hostel.

We had a great time, but are still feeling the affects 2 days later.

Love Emma and Lee

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