Cape Byron

I was really excited to finally leave Coolangatta, there just wasn't much to do. My Greyhound wasn't till 2PM in the afternoon and the courtesy shuttle bus only goes out at certain time so I left the hostel at 11AM. Just before I left I got to chat with one of the staff, Chantel, really nice girl from Brazil. She's quite young, early 20's, and have already travelled through NZ by herself. She'll be going to Fiji afterwards. Too bad I didn't get to know her sooner. On the shuttle bus there were 2 Swedes who were going surfing at Rainbow Bay. We talked for a bit about hockey, and Olympics had just finished and I mentioned about Canada beating Sweden, but they only watch the World Championship. They did tell me about a nice little surf town called Newcastle though. Matt was driving the shuttle bus. I finally learned his name on the last day. Really chill dude from New Zealand, kinda quiet. Once I got dropped off at the bus stop I still had 3hrs to wait.

It was only about an hr ride to Byron Bay, and soon as you roll into town you see heaps of restaurants and people. I had to call up Nomads to figure out where they were because their entrance was actually in an alley. I'd forgotten that I booked a mixed dorm, so I was bit confused when I saw a guy in my room at first thinking maybe he was just one of my roommie's boyfriend but then he had stuff in the room. There were 3 Irish girls, 1 German girl, and 1 Chinese girl who had a huge Guan Yu tattoo on her back, and she seemed to have travelled a lot. She was really cool. The Irish girls were really nice as well, and I hardly seen the German girl. I had wanted to stay at the highly recommended Arts Factory but it was all booked up. Once I've settled in and took a shower I went for a walk around town, had lunch at Asia Joe's. Apparently a lot of restaurants in town are BYOB. So I went to the bottle shop around the corner and bought a 750ml VB. It was kinda weird to be able to drink your own beer in public, but nice. It started to rain so I just went back to the hostel.

Our room unfortunately was right next to the courtyard. I had a hard time sleeping the first night because people partied till midnight. That's the hostel's curfew, then people would go out and party more. The guy and the Irish girls went out as well. The girls had asked if I wanted to go out with them but I was pretty beat. Throughout the night the guy and 1 of his friend kept coming in and out of the room till like 3AM. His friend ended up spending the night, sleeping on the floor. The guy from our room snored so loud that his friend had to get up at one point to make him stop. It was a Monday...

Today was sunny so I headed for the beach. I walked towards the Lighthouse, came to the end of the beach and I could either walk up the steps or cut across the rocks by the beach which I saw a lot of people do and I decided to do the latter to see what's on the other side. Turned out it was the Wategos Beach and it had a lookout point on top of a hill where people watch surfers catch waves. It was mesmerizing to watch a bunch of people on surfboards, waiting to catch the next wave. Some would fail, a few good ones would always catch it and surf all the way down. There was this chic who was really good. I could just watch them for hours!! I went further along the coast, took the trail up to Cape Byron to the Lighthouse. It was a very long walk but the view was amazing. Just before the Lighthouse was the "Most easterly point of Australian mainland." I had a steak meat pie and a strawberry milkshake for lunch from the café. I was getting tired of walking and just realized that there weren't any buses that goes up the mountain and I wasn't about to spend money on taxis, so I figured might as well finish the whole trail plus downhill shouldn't be too bad. The whole trip took me about 4hrs and I was exhausted, but I had to make a grocery run before heading back to the hostel.

Later on when I was having my dinner out on the balcony an Italian dude sat down with me and we started chatting. He was actually pretty nice. He'd already done his second year and was leaving the next day. Then a French kid sat with us and started going off about his crazy sex stories with girls. He was also working at the hostel for accommodation. Time for bed, I gotta be ready for the Nimbin day trip tomorrow morning. I just hope tonight wouldn't be as crazy as the first...