Cloudy cold day at Byron Bay

Sunday, November 9th

My sleep was pretty horrible with drunken people waking me up at 3am.  Not only did they wake me up, the girl that slept on the bunk above me decided to bring a dude back with her to bed...making out, doing their thing.  I was a bit annoyed how rude she was, especially when we were in a 16 person co-ed dorm.  I started making lots of movements to make the bed squeaky so they knew they were being annoying.  Eventually the dude left and she slept.  Ugh!

At 6:40am we all woke up to go to get ready for our morning hike to the lighthouse.  Bad weather seems to follow us from Perth to Melbourne and now Byron Bay.  It was a shocking awakening when we walked out of our dorm and it was cold and misty.  Not so nice.  We thought Australia is supposed to be warm!

Not only did the cold weather not agree with us, the fridge was still locked.  Nightly the hostel locks the fridge to prevent drunk people from raiding the fridge at night.  It makes sense.  So our planned peanut butter and toast for breakfast didn't work out so well since everything was in the fridge.  Instead we had trail mix and peanut butter.  Oh wells.  What can you do?

The walk was a bit chilly, but eventually our bodies heated up from the "exercise."  The walk was through main beach and through a small part of the coastal forest before we reached the lighthouse.  It would of been more enjoyable if it was a bit warmer and sunny.  Byron Bay is one of the nicest surf spots on the east coast, and unbelievably there were surfers.  It seemed too cold to be surfing and the waves weren't that big.  We also went to the most eastern point of australia.  So that adds into my collection of being at the most "blah" point of "blah". I've been to the most south western point of africa (cape of good hope) and the most northern point of norway (north cape).

People actually run to the lighthouse.  It's 1.7km each way, but straight uphill for half of it.  It sounded like a good idea at first, but I'm glad I decided not to do it.  At first I thought maybe later in the afternoon we could go for a run, but decided not to in the end.  The day was pretty gloomy so we didn't know what to do.  We got some fish and chips to share for brunch at 11am.  They grilled the fish instead of frying and it was very yummy.  The fish sticks weren't bad either.  We sat by the cloudy beach eating it.

Afterwards we checked out some shops in  Byron Bay.  One photo shop showed us how Byron Bay looks like on a beautiful day.  Check it out on www.johnderrey.com. There were also lots of cute little clothing shops, but all too expensive for us backpackers.  Even bottled water is expensive, AUD2.60 ($1.35).  We're so lucky the exchange rate is working in our favor.  It would of sucked if it stayed at AUD0.98 to USD1 compared to now USD1 to AUD0.675.

  

We then stopped by wicked travels to use the internet since we have one hour free internet usage there from our hostel.  That's actually a good way to attract tourists to go there to book tours.  We ended up using them to book our Fraser Island guided 2 days 1 night tour and our prosail 2 days 2 nights whitsundays sailing trip.  We got a AUD65 discount for booking both with them.  They also helped us fine tune our itinerary, cutting a day out in Brisbane and adding a day in Magnetic island.

 

We used the internet while waiting for the tickets, mostly to do our banking stuff.  I also needed to look for accommodations in Cairns since Connie is joining our trip.  So it was a bit hectic.  Eventually I gave it a pause since I was waiting for Natasha to get back to us.  We ended up going back to mainbeach backpackers to make our sandwiches.  We made peppered pastrami sandwiches with spinach and had strawberries and banana on the side.    It was yummy in my tummy.

 

Since the weather continued to be yucky, we decided to check out the movie theater.  We ended up catching the Brad Pitt and George Clooney movie Burn after Reading.  To save money, we stopped by the supermarket to pick up some candy and chips instead of purchasing it in the theater.  The movie was entertaining, but wouldn't call it good.  It was just goofy.  It killed some hours before dinner time.

 

For dinner we decided to finish our spinach salad from lunch with cherry tomatoes and fish.  We are now trying to conserve on food purchases since all these excursions are expensive.  Unfortunately, the hotel booking thing for Cairns got complicated, so I had to sit on the internet to sort it out (since it was my friend joining the trip) while Bernice and Steph had dinner by the beach.  Eventually Steph and Bernice brought me my food, and I ate outside while speaking to Erik on the phone/gchat.  He was very nice to help me sort out the hotel issue.

 

When all was said and done, it was dark and time for a shower and packing for our departure the next morning at 7:45am.  While we were packing, a German girl in our dorm was practicing her guitar.  She is lugging a guitar and a flute on her trip.  Wondered what she is doing with her time in Australia.  She said she lived in Kentucky for some time and said it was obvious by our sleeping clothes (college t-shirts and track shorts) that we were from the States.  I guess no one else in the world wears college t-shirts.  I'm wearing my favorite lehigh tshirt from freshman year.  Oh those good years.  I miss it. I'm also missing New York a lot now...my family, my friends...all the people I love.  In less than 6 weeks I'll be in New York again.