Ok so me and Pam are now in Byron bay.  As you probably know we went on a surf trip which started on Monday.

We got up at ridiculous am, i think it was around 6:30, we then packed up, said our goodbyes to the boys, checked out and walked accross the road to the bus station where we were getting picked up from at 8.  Just walking accross the road was hard enough with the weight of the rucksacks!  The bus then turned up and about 14 of us got on and headed up north.  First impressions of the surf camp...hmm..remote is an understatment!  We turned up and it was pretty much in the middle of a rain forest.  We dropped our stuff off in a cabin thing and headed to the main bit of the camp where we had lunch n stuff.  We then went off to the beach and had our 1st surf lesson from Naz.  The beach was called Bluey Beach and it was absolutly amazing!  While we were in the sea Pam noticed a fin behind her...she freaked straight away obviously but it actually turned out to be dolphins riding the waves...about 5 of them.  It was amazing, and thankfully not a shark!  That night was mad!  We were all on sangria so got totally smashed!  The surf instructors also arranged some drinking competions which were fun.  Our team won two of them the other team won one.  Whey hey!  That night because we'd all drank so much we all slept great too.  Without the alcohol i doubt we'd have slept at all!

So the next day was an early start.  We joined another group making it to about 35 people and got on a propper coach rather than a mini bus thing.  The beach they took us to was amazing!  Although the waves were pretty small it made them easier to surf.  For dinner that night we went to a pub in Kempey.  Here we had pizza which was nice.  Although when we got on the bus we realised that there'd been quite a few mozzies around, I'd been bitten twice on the arm and pam unfortnatly had been bitten on her cheek just below her eye.  This then decided to swell up which looked as if she'd been punched in the face!  (thankfully its gone down now) We were all in log cabins again that night in a place called Way Way Forest Lodge, I felt it was more remote than the previous place.  Wasn't as much drinking tonight either, instead it was chilled out and we watched the film Starsky and Hutch.  That night was still pretty eventful though, Pam found a huge cochroach in the bathroom so we obviously kept that door shut all night, there were spiders everywhere and to make everything just that little bit more worse one of the girls in our room had a night terror and woke up screaming at the top of her voice.  This freaked us all out!  I think that night I had about 3 hours sleep!  Pam managed to sleep well though, lucky thing! 

Yet again another early start, to be honest I was thankful to be leaving this cabin!  The journey to the next place was about 3 hours so managed to get some sleep then.  We arrived at a national park in Yurdygir and were shown how to put up a tent.  Me and Pam then attempted to put ours up, we were actually quite successful!  Although Zak (one of the instructors) came over and gave us a bit of help.  After setting up camp we all got a surf board and went down to the beach which was just as beautiful as the other ones if not more so.  We stayed here til quite late then walked back up to camp absolutly shattered!  The instructors had previously collected $15 from everyone and put it all together giving them over $500, this was then all spent on alcohol!  They made a punch and bought loads of beers.  The punch went down way too quickly and it didn't take long until we were all pretty merry!  We had pasta that night for dinner although by the time we ate we were all drunk anyway.  We then sat round a camp fire all night finishing off the punch.  It was a really good night!  Although of course it got a little bit more eventful.  Some australian lads camping further down the road to us decided to join our group which was fine until they started throwing fire crackers into the fire.  This became a little bit dangerous so they were asked to stop.  After that I passed out and went to bed, however Pam didn't go to sleep straight away and heard that the ozzie lads threw more fire crackers and it all turned into a bit of a fight.  Stones the thrown, windows were smashed and tents destroyed!  I slept through the whole thing though and was completly clueless about what had happened until the next day! 

Last day of surf camp we went down to the same beach.  Pam did a lot of sun bathing that day.   I attempted to surf but the waves were really strong, did ok though.   We had a surf competion that day too, me and Pam decided to just watch though.  We then went back to camp, chilled out for a bit and packed everything up.  We drove another hour and a half north and finally arrived at Byron Bay!  It was about 6:30pm by now though so it was dark.  We all met up for dinner at 8, which was actually 8:30 because we took longer getting ready than expected!  We booked into a hostel called Backpackers Inn and were sharing with Caroline, Josie and Emma, all of which we'd met in camp.  After dinner that night we went to a club called Cheeky Monkeys where we met up with loads of people from our first week.  This was really nice and we all got drunk and danced about!

Today woke up pretty hung over, packed up and moved onto another hostel called the Arts Factory.  Its pretty much full of hippies but its really cool, nice laid back atmospohere, think we're just going to get all the washing done today, we're pretty much living in a sand pit at the moment!

Anyway, we'll do another blog soon!

Love Gem and Pam x