I got on the bus in Newcastle at 9.35am yesterday morning and didn't arrive in Byron Bay until 8.45pm! It was a long long day and I was definately ready to get off the bus! It didn't really stop raining all day and not just little showers, proper torential downpours! The bus was very old and not built for lots of rain and as a result there was a river running down the aisle and if you sat on the right hand side of the bus you got rained on!

This morning I woke up to slightly better weather, there was actually some blue sky!!!!!! However just before I head out for my 1st surfing lesson it started to rain - booo!!!!! I arrived at the shop and it turned out that there was only one other person booked into the same lesson as me so we got pretty much a private lesson! We sat on the beach and got a chat on the general "rules" of surfing, had a few practices of popping up and then were straihgt into the water! It wasn't atall cold - but then I did have a full wetsuit on! the current was so so strong and it was really hard work to even get out into the waves!!!! The other guy in the lesson stood up on his first attempt.....then it was my turn and I was totally wiped out by the wave! It took me about 3 attempts to get my balance and sort out where I had to put my feet but when I did eventually catch a wave I rode it all the way to the beach and one of the locals gave me a thumbs up - good times! :) I couldn't believe how quickly I had managed to stand up and even though I didn't feel exactly elegant and I had some pretty spectacular wipeouts I was proud of my first efforts at "surfing" It was a very good work out - fighting the crazy current through crashing waves while trying to control a 9ft surfboard isn't the easiest thing in the world!