Byron Bay!

Hello!!!

I am never to sure how to start these entries, but figure a simple hello works best. :)
This past weekend I went on another trip! This means that the last four weekends I have spent out of Gold Coast. This next weekend is a long weekend, however we have decided to stay here and work on all our upcoming homework so when we start traveling again in May we won't be stressed about it!


Let me give you a little history on Byron Bay. It is a really small town where everyone walks around barefoot, it reminded me a lot of Lake Tahoe without the big hotels and casinos. Besides it's beauty the big thing it is known for is it is the most easterly point in Australia. There isn't much else to tell you about history otherwise I would go on!



Anyhow, let me tell you about my weekend in Byron Bay! It was definitely a last minute decision, we booked everything on Thursday and left Friday morning. I am going to break this down to days and hopefully it will make this entry a little more organized then the past couple entries about traveling.


Friday April 24th-
Friday Morning I woke up at around seven (after staying up until 3:00 AM to finish the Third Twilight book) and finished packing for my weekend. In true Chelsea Fashion I packed late, and also packed way to much. Packing is a skill I don't think I will ever acquire. After packing Beth and I went to catch the city bus into Surfers Paradise to catch the bus we would actually be taking into Byron Bay. We got there around 9:30 AM and our bus left at 10:00, so we went into to surfers to find breakfast. We didn't do anything fancy we just went into the grocery store and got some muffins and water to take on the bus with us. After going to the grocery store we met up with Sam who was also going with us. All three of us met at our orientation in Sydney.

The drive to Byron was nice and short. It was only an hour long, which is another thing that attracted us to going into Byron for the weekend. We got to the hostel a couple hours to early for check in, so we all changed into our swimsuits and headed down to the beach. It was a short walk from the hostel which I enjoyed!



The beach wasn't really crowded, but then again none of the beaches here get crowded like they do back home since the population is so spread out. We all just relaxed in the sun listening to our Ipods for a while before it was time to head back to our hostel.


We stayed in the Arts Factory Hostel which has some pretty interesting places to stay. We stayed in the lakeside cabin which was an all girls cabin that had a wrap around deck and was right by a lake. However it was really random that there were turkeys walking around outside of our cabin. You could hear them jumping into the trees all the time and then when you went outside there were at least ten you could see. The other types of hostels were a giant tepee you could sleep in, a double Decker bus, and tents.

That night we kept it casual and went to see Gran Tarino in the cinema that the hostel had. It was a really good movie, but a lot different then expected. The movie theater that they had was really cool though. You walked in and it was a hallway with a black light and stars and planets were painted on the walls. After that hallway you turned and then there was the theater. Instead of a traditional cinema layout this one had love seats that you could sit on, that were Zebra print. It was very interesting thats for sure!

After watching our movie we all headed back to our cabin and went to bed. :)

Saturday April 25th-

The next day we went to Nimbin because everyone said it was a good place for a day visit. So we booked a tour for $20 and then headed up there at around 10:30 in the morning. On the way we saw a waterfall and drove through an extremely curvy forest! Then we got to Nimbon which has a population of 400 people. It was where all the hippies went back in the 70's and it is still just a bunch of hippies. It revolved around weed though..there were shops like "Happy Herb High" or "Bringabong" (instead of billabong) and when you walked down the street within one minute we got offered weed 8 times (no worries I didn't buy anything!). It was definitly an interesting place thats for sure! We were there long enough to walk through town (which you could walk through town in under 2 mintes) and then we had lunch and got back on the bus. It was kidna sad though because there were families eating lunch with seven year olds sitting right next to people we were selling drugs. The kids didn't seem to even notice what was going on around them however when people were offering "cookies" the kids kept asking for them..which I am sure these are not the type of cookies they were looking for!

That night we were all exhausted and didn't really want to do anything but we forced ourselves to go out because people said we had to visit Cheaky Monkeys and we knew people would ask us about it when we got back and didn't wanna feel like losers and saying no lol. Cheaky Monkeys is a bar in town and so around 830 (yeah really early!!!) we went out. We got there and it was ladies night so we got free champagne, we each had one glass and then we decided we wanted to go back to our hostel and go to bed haha. We were a bunch of lazy bums that night thats for sure!!!

Sunday April 26th-

This is the morning we checked out of our hostel and also left Byron Bay. After checking out we went to the grocery store to buy stuff for a picnic on the beach! We went to the store and got yogurt, bananas, pretzels, and stuff to make pb & j with. We stopped and had breakfast (yogurt and bananas with Peanut butter toast..well bread since we didn't have a toaster lol) and then we went to walk up to the lighthouse which is the most easterly point of Australia. It was about a 2 mile hike and so we didn't think it would be bad except for the fact we took a wrong turn somewhere and took the longest way possible going up and down huge hills along the way!!! Finally we get to the lighthouse and we are all sweating so much because of how humid it was (we were literally walking through a forest to get to the lighthouse) we went up enjoyed the view and hung out for a while.



Then we went back down to go to the beach..which was just one hill going down...not the 4 or 5 we took getting there! If we would have stuck to the road and not taken a wrong turn the walk would have been SO easy but instead we ended up going for an unexpected hike lol. After that we got to the beach and went in the water because we were so hot! Then we dried off and had our pb & j sandwiches hung out for a bit and then went into town to wait for our bus to pick us up. We got Baskin Robins and I tried New Zealands national ice cream "Hokey Pokey" which I didn't care much for but hey at least I tried it right?? Almost immediately after eating our ice cream we hoped on the bus and headed back home!

So that was my weekend in Byron Bay! I do have pictures but they aren't on my computer yet, but keep looking at Picasa for any updates.

Love & Miss you all!!


P.s. This post was a LOT longer then I expected it to be, sorry about that!