Hi you lot, me again!
Time to update you on Byron Bay; which can only be described as the place of dreams!
After our twelve and a half hour Greyhound journey we arrived into a very grey and wet Byron Bay. We found our accommodation but the room wasn't ready so we were made to sit in this little poolhouse for two hours in the pouring rain after zero sleep, ha. Good start. With moving further towards the tropical north the humidity had risen and the tropical wildlife (which I thought I'd said goodbye to in Asia) reappeared. We had only been waiting five minutes when Matt spotted THE biggest lizard that I have ever seen in the wild, no joke, it was the size of a small cat. Despite all of this we could see how cool the main town area looked. After some serious afternoon-napping on my part we braved the rain and humidity and went to explore….and were proven right.
The small town is hippy and surfer-central and just has THE coolest laid-back attitude and atmosphere. Dreadlocks and bare-foot shopping are the absolute norm as are crazy spaced-out buskers and shops full of crystals, incense and peace/love tokens. Instead of graffiting a name, people graffiti 'All you need is love' on a wall. No McDonalds, No Hungry Jacks. Heaven. So many people that I've spoken to have said how much they loved it there and no one can specifically say why, just that it's a really special place to be. I think it takes more than a couple of days to really 'get' Byron Bay so, to anyone who's planning on going, please stay a while!
The weather was very humid but overcast for the first four of five days, despite this Matt, ever the Brit abroad (and he won't mind me saying this) managed to burn his back, ha. To be fair the sun is so much more powerful over here, just when you think you're fine you remember that sunscreen is required in all weather conditions! Our accommodation was on the western side of town and in order to get to the beach we had to walk over a disused train track (so cool) and through a mini 'jungle'. The first time we did this was quite a shock, the noise from the insects and animals was deafening, we were literally running through the foliage hoping that nothing was touching our legs or landing on our heads, ha. Walking out onto that bay for the first time is quite something, it's so just so naturally beautiful, completely untouched, for the most part just forest running into white sand running into sea, overlooked by a little white lighthouse on a beautiful headland.
So basically our little life there consisted of walking as far around the bay as we could manage (on our first time of doing so we accidentally stumbled upon the unofficial nudist beach - just one old man chilling out on his own, ha) and getting thrown around in the waves and currents, SO much fun. We eventually progressed to a body board (it was a child's one but we'll keep that quiet) which we called 'Kenneth'. Loved him! Saying that I couldn't really get the hang of it, the waves just kept throwing me under the water but Matt, ever the sportsman (and he definitely won't mind me saying that) was a pro after a few attempts, gliding into the shore on Kenneth , all pleased with himself whilst I was being dragged to a different section of the beach, water up my nose and in my eyes with my bikini half hanging off every time, HA. Matt said he'd just look up and see my white bum staggering out of the water. Good times. We'd spend the evenings in the town just wandering around (as everyone does) eating even more Gelato and then walking along the beaches again. One event which won't be remembered as Matt's favourite however was the day that we saw a snake (he has a seriously funny thing about them). Someone had told us during the day that they'd seen a 'yellow belly' around the pool (we don't know what this means) and on returning from the beach Matt was adamant that we shouldn't walk though our little jungle walkway (we'd already seen some king of huge turkey/rooster thing there earlier that day). I was like "No, no don't be a baby, we'll be fine, I'll lead", in I stride, all confident and half a metre away from my foot I see the snake slithering from one side of the path to the other. It wasn't a skinny one either. I froze, shouted 'snake' and we both RAN back in the other direction, ha.
Just as the weather was beginning to improve it was time for the boy to leave again, sad to see him go but happy as it ended on a lovely note, as I said in the last blog, we became engaged on our last night there together.
After he'd gone I got myself right back into the cheap accommodation and booked into a really cool little hostel called Aquarius. By this point I was supposed to be in Brisbane (Matt was supposed to fly from there) but his flight was literally the day after the river had peaked in those awful floods and although the airport and the greyhound to the city were still officially running we didn't want to risk Matt not being able to catch his flight or me getting stuck in the city; Matt re-arranged his flight (and in doing so had the flight from hell, ha) and I 'unfortunately' had to stay in Byron a little longer. I met a really lovely Scottish girl 'Debs' the first afternoon of solo-travelling. Our hostel offered a free dinner to anyone who bought a drink from the bar at a certain time. I literally still had my beach clothes on and Debs had the clothes on that she'd worn all day on the Greyhound and we ended up having the best 'Let's just go for one drink' night ever. By the end of the night we were in town rocking out to some band, whom I repeatedly kept asking (for some reason) to play Song No.2 by Blur, it never happened.
By this point the weather was absolutely perfect in Byron and I was spending everyday on the beach or in the shade of town. During one of the last days the waves were huge all day (the pictures don't really do them justice) and a freak wave would just flood the whole main beach in a few seconds (I had a couple of grabbing-all-my-stuff-in-a-panic-and-running moments ha). The hippies (I hope they don't mind being called this, I'm sure they don't) were absolutely loving this and I spent the evening sitting on the rocks, watching them watching the waves, beating their bongo drums and hugging each other. I was texting Debs to say 'you need to come and see these waves' and this old guy came up to me and was like 'stop texting, you need to feel the magic here, it's beautiful'. Before dusk the surfers had been enjoying the waves too, I saw a surfer surf all the way through a barrel wave for the first time, everyone was clapping and going mad, so cool. The bay looked so beautiful that evening, huge pink clouds, crashing waves and a bright moon above; not bad for a Sunday night in January!
Debs and I met another English girl from the hostel who we ended up going out with on my last night there. We started in 'Rails' a quite well-known live music venue and ended up in 'Cheeky Monkeys'; a really cheesy backpackers place but good fun nevertheless. There's no dance floor but signs everywhere saying 'Please do not dance on the tables' - needless to say, the rules are not followed, you couldn't buy a spot on those tables, ha.
I had to be up at 6:20 the next morning to catch the Greyhound; it wasn't pleasant; the fact made worse as I was SO sad to say goodbye to Byron Bay; more so than I had been with any other place, but I knew I had to move on up the coast as I was already running out of time.
All in all, nothing less than magical place.
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