I woke up very hungover thismorning to have to check out at 10am. The worst. We packed up and left our philosophical roommates. Thank god Chelsea, Phil and Adam were next door as it meant we could dump our stuff there and then shower later after the surf lesson.

Me, G and Chels went to the Aquarius cafe for a cold drink and breakfast before we came back for a sleep on top of our bags in Chelsea's room. The boys were still asleep but we settled in anyway. An english girl Abee had just moved in and she seemed really nice so we knew we were leaving Chels with someone nice when two of the musketeers had to move on to Sydney :)

It got to about midday and I wasn't feeling recovered at all! I was dreading surfing! Anyway, we walked round the corner to MOJO surf shop and checked in for our surf lesson. There was at least 15 of us that got on the bus with no other than Wobs (the Nimbin driver from the other day who turned out to be a really good surfer!) He drove us about 20 minutes away to a really nice beach where we wetsuitted up and headed down to the sand. Surfing is so much more technical than I thought! He explained about rips and how the direction of the wind affects everything. He then had us doing a warm up which was more like a warm up for a netball match...far too extreme for my sorry state. He had us stretching and jogging and sprinting up the sand. Nightmare. Next was the four steps to surfing. Something like:

1. 4 strokes when the wave is about to hit you
2. arch your back and hands by your shoulders
3. lift your back foot up slightly ready to...
4. push off up into a two foot stance

It sounded simple but doing it in the sea was a complteley different story!! I tried and failed to do it so many times, as did G. When learning to do anything else you start easy and work your way in. Sport you generally start and stop, even skiing you ski then get a slow lift back up to recompose yourself. Here, you get hit by a wave, fall off your board and have to drag it all the way back out, feeling like a drowned rat and being hit by waves. Surfing is not my thing! I told Wobs this and said how much I was hating the sea so he helped me out a bit and I actually stood up!! Wahoo!

By the time they called us out 5 minutes later I was definitely ready for this and quite relieved they had! I had some water and some of the oranges they brought down whilst doing some whale watching of one that was about 400m offsore, only to find out that was only a midway break! However, it obviously did me good as I aaaalmost stood up a few more times by myself after that!

It had been worthwhile it is just definitely not something I have a talent for (or something I would like to attempt to gain the talent for!)

We showered down and got back on the bus into Byron again. At the other end we watched a hilarious slide show of photographs of us falling all over the place and decided to order some for laughs later.

We stopped for a well deserved Subway on the way back to the hostel before showering and packing up in Chelsea's room. We then had to say goodbye and leave her with the boys forever :( We were leaving a very good friend.

We caught the hostel's shuttle along to the bus stop where the Greyhound (20 minutes late) picked us up for the long 13 hour journey to Sydney at 8.30pm. It was a really, really busy bus and we were super lucky to get seats next to each other. I barely slept all night though! :(

But...we were on our way to my favourite city in the whole world Sydney!! :)