So today is our last day in Byron Bay, we're moving on to Surfer's Paradise first thing in the morning.

 Byron Bay is beautiful, we arrived on saturday at the arts factory hostel which is basically a hippie hostel. totally into greenpeace, has recycle bins everywhere and teabags hanging off trees (we still haven't worked out why but you get the idea) saturday we basically did nothing but wash all our clothes since they smelt from camping, and we went supermarket shopping.

On sunday we met up with all our friends we'd met on the first week and we lay on the beach all day sunbathing and going in the sea! the sea here is amazing, the waves can be huge and send you flying. and then other times its calm and you can just float around. on monday all our friends moved up the coast to get jobs so we went to the beach that day with some people we'd met from the room (catherine chris john and jenny) and we met up with Fran aswell who we'd met in the pub. oh yeah, the pub! the best one in byron bay is called the rails and its basically the old railway station - pretty cool.  on monday some of us walked the full length of the bay to a lookout point and took some really good photos (that we'll upload when the computers decide to do it faster than one photo every 10 minutes) we had plenty of water fights that day... and the boys attacked us with sand which pretty much turned into war on the beach.

Tuesday - what a day. i don't even know where to begin! we booked in with jims alternative tours to take us for a day trip to Nimbin. which is the hippie capital of australia. The bus came to pick us up from our hostel in the morning and this crazy hippy guy with long hair gives us this lecture about greenpeace, the environment and how they've managed to protest so much that no fast food chains like mcdonalds have been allowed to enter byron. this little lecture went on a while and i just have one quote that i remember (because it made us all laugh so much) he said "why is it that pharmacutical companies are allowed to supply 90 yr old men with pills to get hard ons but we aren't allowed to smoke a joint - this world is crazy".

so then we set off to Nimbin. You'll have to see the photos to understand what i mean when i say it was mad. crazy hippies with dreadlocks and bare feet walking around and all the shops were painted really bright colours! the whole place was basically just one street and as you walked along it people were shouting "marjuana for sale" as though it was completely legal (don't worry parents we didnt buy anything!) suddenly all these hippies would start shouting "TAXIIIIIII" at the top of their voices! and then this police car drove down the road really slowly looking around. basically all drug dealing stopped for a the time being when people shouted taxi. it was surreal like we were on another planet! we then got back on the tour bus with the crazy hippie called dougie! he took us up into the mountains on this little old mini bus to meet his friend who lived in the rainforest! so we're going up and down this valleys with this guy driving like a nutter, he drove down this hill really really fast and the brakes failed ......

yes we thought it was a joke too but it really wasnt. we flew into the middle of the road at the bottom and eventually managed to stop. thankfully we're in australia and theres nothing on the roads so we didnt crash into anything but if that had been england and parbold hill that could have been nasty.  so we managed to get to the rainforest with the broken bus, and then another bus was sent to us, thankfully with brakes that worked! we were taken into the rainforest to this little hut by the river where this hippie lived. now we thought dougie was crazy but it was actually nothing compared to this guy. he was actually completely insane!!!! he gave us a lecture about gamma rays and x-rays and painting by numbers?! (yes we had no idea what he was talking about either but god it was funny!) he was just stood there talking to us about complete crap and smoking a joint. surreal again! so then we got onto the new mini bus with the working brakes, only to find that it wasnt big enough! 10 people had to sit on the floor as we made our way back down the mountains. on the way back to byron we stopped at minyon falls - brilliant view not much more to say about that!

so we were driving slowly back to byron through the mountains after a completely mental day - we all felt exhausted from the weirdness of it all! when suddenly this boy racer overtakes the mini bus on a corner and fell off the road! it was dark by this point but we all knew that it couldnt be good. thankfully the guys car had got caught in some trees and he was fine, but just after the trees was literally a vertical drop it was horrible to see. so yeah completely and utterly crazy day to say the least but an australian experience and a half and we wouldn't have missed it for the world!

today we're recovering on the beach again! have a lot of washing to do later before we move on, and apparently a guy comes to the hostel tonight to do a fireshow which we're looking forward to seeing!

we'll update in surfers paradise!

love to everyone x x x x