Byron part 2

I have been meaning to get to an internet cafe that I can upload pictures at, finally got to this one with my camera but forgot my transfer cable...oh well. Been in Byron for almost a week now. We spent our first 3 nights in a hostel that was really close to the beach. Met some more really cool people, including these 2 english guys, woody and wolfy, who we ended up hanging out with mostly while staying at the hostel. They have both been traveling for about 1 year and I think it was woody that had managed to rack up 18,000 pounds in debt (thats about $50,000 canadian!!). Idiots, but at least they know how to do it right.

After our 3 days staying in the backpackers we moved to a camping ground, which was nice because it was by the beach. Unfortunatly the great weather that we had before finally broke and we spent 2 nights in our tents in rain. So today with our heads down we moved back into the luxury of the hostel that we were in before. Other than that we have ended up at the same backpackers bar twice, which is one of those places that is fun but supposedly makes much more sense when your abosolutely slaughtered. It was still a good time and it was something we never really did in Sydney. I don't really know why but in Sydney we didn't really feel like we were backpacking and its a big city so there are more options.

Other than that there really is not all that much to do in Byron. The past 2 days the surf has been really calm, so its easy to catch the small waves but we can't do much on them. The beach is also really great for skim boarding because it is really flat and waves wash up really far. Thats all for now, we are just trying to get as much surfing in as possible before we have to sell our board and move on.

Byron Bay

Got back into Sydney on Saturday and met Mike on his last day of work so that we could go to the flea market to get cheap luggage to store our extra stuff at the Blooms whilst we prepared to travel up the coast. The plan was to stay in our flat for saturday night and then sunday night and leave early monday morning to head up for Byron Bay. I don't know what Mike was up to while I was gone but that night we found our walls with at least 40 bed bugs so we dragged our beds into the middle of the room and I barely slept all night, constantly in fear of being attacked. The next morning we called greyhound and found a bus heading up that night so we signed up. First picture is Mike, Fabien (new french roomie) and myself on our last night in Bondi.

The next day we actually managed to catch a rugby union game. First rugby that I have seen and I still think its pretty stupid but we managed to sneak down to good seats in the home team's section, so that was good times. After that packed up our bags and got out of our infested room and just made the bus by about 10 minutes. It was a 13 hour bus ride through the night, which is a great idea if you can fall asleep on a bus...Once again Mike didn't seem to have to much trouble, but I am running on 2 hours of sleep right now.

Got into Byron in the morning and found a hostel which is a 1 minute walk to the beach. The beach is huge and makes the sydney beaches look like Toronto beaches. The surf at Byron is incredible because the waves start to break at the tip of the bay and follow the coastline in. So if you get a good wave you can have a 100 - 200 m ride for about 2 minutes and then it just drops you off near the beach and you can walk around and do it again. Im sure that our surfing is going to improve so much while we are here. As of now the plan is to stay around here for about 10 days and surf as much as we can because north of here the great barrier reef blocks out the surf and there are deadly jellyfish and sharks... Other than that it has just been a day here but the town is supposed to be a quiet little beach town with a hippy vibe with tons of backpackers...sounds good to me. Second picture is just a usual candid mike moment on the beach at byron.

Tales of Interest!!!...in melbourne

Its almost 1 in the morning for me and I have to be up soon to catch my plane back to Sydney so I will try to keep this as concise as possible. I guess I will continue where I left off in my last posting. Made it to Melbourne, but just barely. Booked my hostel online on saturday from monday night to thursday night to make sure that I had a place to stay during the week before I bought a plane ticket. When I went in to by my plane ticket after getting in at the backpackers, it was a much better deal to stay over the friday night, so I assumed I would be able to figure something out for the friday night. But, more of that later.

Finished work last sunday. Only managed to get in 3 weeks at the Blue hotel but really enjoyed the job. Things slowed down at the end but both Mike and myself managed to work the last saturday night on the same shift. Because there were so many people eating at the restaurants that wanted their cars parked we managed to run a little private "valet" on the side and make a couple of extra bucks and keep things exciting at the same time. The first picture is from the top floor of the hotel looking down at the bar on a crazy sunday night : The next one is of mike and myself in uniform (earpieces included) doing our best to look like the bouncers, except for my goofy intimidating smile...at least mike looked the part.

Back to Melbourne...Even though the flight and accomidations were a little more expensive then they would usually be because of the commonwealth games, which are basically a chance for Australia to win at every event when the good countries aren't there. So I probably didn't see a typical week in melbourne but there was always a million different street performances or something cool to see. All in all my impressions of the city is that the actual "city" part is one of the nicest that I have ever seen, lots of cafes and interesting areas to check out. Those parts are much nicer than Sydney, but the water front and beaches around Sydney that are right in the city are tres jolie. Both such great cities and would be happy in either, but if had to pick one to call home, it would probably be Melbourne...with a summer home at the beaches down the coast :P The 3rd picture is for Aaron and Josh: me at "od laver arena", which should really say *rod laver arena*, where the australian open (tennis) is held.

Spent most of my days just wandering the city and eating lots of international food...my idea of culture. There is this hippy bohemian area called Fitzroy that I really liked and spent quite a while in hoping that some of it would rub off on me and just ended up feeling like more of a square than usual. Caught a tram down to St Kilda beach area which is similar to Bondi in its surrounding streets but the beach isn't nearly as nice. My lonely planet book told me that around there was an old jewish area filled with bakeries and delis so I went searching for a fat sandwhich. Unfortuantly all I could find where some blackhatters and a falefel shop. Went to watch a squash qualifiing round for the games at the sports park where they hold the grand prix every year. I chose squash because it was the cheapest tickets that I could find and I also had no idea that there was doubles squash, specially considering that I thought the courts were too small for 2 people. But it was really nifty to watch anyway and happened to catch south africa playing. At the same complex they had ping pong for the commonwealth games going on. That would have been brilliant to see but the security was to tight to get in.

A couple of other weird things around town: In one of the department stores around my hostel, in 4 of thier window displays, there were 4 guys living inside of them for 15 days. There was a kitchen window, a bathroom window, bedroom and a playroom where they would dance at try and communicate with the outside world. Also some of the main streets in town, in order to make a right hand turn, cars would pull over as far into the left hand lane and wait till the lights changed to make their turns. Its almost as if they tried to think of the best way to surprise and kill tourists that can barely deal with left hand traffic not to mention the huge hook turns. It would be like making a left hand turn in downtown toronto from the right lane :

Other than doing a walking and food tour of melbourne, I did the asian tourist thing and hopped on a bus to take a day tour of the great ocean road. They picked me up at 7:40 in the morning, so I had to borrow a german dude's cell phone in my dorm that I craftily befriended and use it as an alarm, since I lost my cell and subsequently my only way of telling time and waking up with an alarm last week. Besides borrowing hans' (real name constantine) cell phone for an alarm, the only way that I knew what time it was for the whole week was by taking pictures when i needed to know the time then looking at the time stamp right after...genius! Anyway, the tour is an all day trip down the great ocean road, which basically as its name sounds runs from Melbourne (not so obvious i guess) along the ocean (the obvious part) all the way to southern australia. Even thought it was a really touristy thing to do, it was worth it. We stopped at a Aboriginal learning centre where they showed us how they hunted and about their history, which seems pretty similar to any country that has had the blessing of being colonised by europeans. The rest of the drive was basically along beautiful surf beaches and coastal resort towns. If I ever make it back to oz, I will have to rent a car and take more time to camp and surf along that coast. However the main advertised highlight of the tour is to see the 12 apostles. They are huge monolithic stones that are out in the ocean, plus for an extra 60 bucks I got a 10 minute helicopter ride of the area. It was really worth it, scary at first, specially walking under the blades but once your in the air you forget about it and just try to enjoy the experiance and not sit there the whole time trying to set up the perfect picture and stare through your camera the whole time. The 5th picture is of the apostles. 6th picture is infront of the helicopter that I rode in.

However the real highlight of my tour was when our tour guide was walking us through a cool air rain forest (much more comfortable than the one we hiked through in the blue mountains) and informed our group that they filmed scenes from endor in return of the jedi in the same valley. It was my term to act like an school girl and after the group went ahead I hung back and set my camera on timer and did my best princess leia gun pose (more of an episode 4 look but really who would notice?)

Well this has been my longest and latest post (may explain complete lack of grammer and coherency and spellcheck), but I wanted to wait till the end to put all of my melbourne trip in one post. As for what I am doing on friday night, instead of my previous plan of just hanging out in a bar with my pack until they kicked me out then going to the airport really early, I called family friends, the Haydens and stayed with them. Really glad I did because they are all really great people. As a bonus they even threw in a friday night dinner (done one if every australian major city i have been in!) and got free use of their internet. Quickly now: I get back to Sydney early tommorow morning (1 hour flight) and have to buy a bus ticket and package for some of the island trips up the coast before we leave on monday. Once we start moving up the coast I will have more regular posts because we will finally be traveling frequently and hopefully there will be heaps to write about. Getting late and I know im ramblin...

Blue Mountains

Finally made it up to the Blue Mountains to go camping. Both Mike and myself had days off on Weds and Thurs so we caught a 3 hour train to Blackheath (in the blue mountains). The night before that we hung out with some friends and went to grab a beer at a bar, which turned out to have $7 pitchers...so I watched everyone get drunk :( Made it home at about 3 - 4, only to wake up at 6:45 to catch a 7:30 bus for the mountains. Since we knew we were going for just one night and 2 days we werent to worried about food so we just picked up random things that seemed cheap and good in the local in IGA. A little planning would have helped, because our meals ended up consisting of corn, cheese and mustard sandwhichs one day for lunch, 4 muffins and a can of fruit salad for breakfast and beans and cheese sandwhichs for lunch...All of that wouldn't have been to bad if we didnt underestimate how hard the hike was going to be. It took us about 5 hours each way to first get down the 180 m cliff (can make it out in the top picture) and then travel 6.5 km through the rainforest path. I dont think it would have been as hard if we knew what we were getting into, but the views really made it worth it. To top things off, Australia not only has leeches that swim in the water, we found out that they also have forest leeches. They wait on the ground then when you walk by, attach to your shoe then crawl in your socks!!! Both of us had them attached our feet and even after you get them off they dont stop bleeding for hours. At least I can now add leeches to jellyfish, in my list of "things that terrify me, that I will find in Australia"...all I need now is a scorpian sting and shark attack to round out the list :|

Continuing our theme of unpreparedness...We both naively wore our puma and addias running shoes into the slippery rainforest. Suprisingly it was Mike that had the big wipeouts. And I have now proved my theory (first proposed camping at the ottawa river in early fall) that buying the cheapest sleeping bag that is rated at +7 degrees C doesn't mean that you will be comfortable at those temperatures at night, only that you will only just barely survive the night, shivering and unable to sleep. But once again despite all of this, it really was worth it. At night a swamp wallabe came into our camp, which to us looked exactly the same as a kangaroo. Also once we made it down the cliff, and past the waterfall, into the path that cut back and forth across the river, it felt like I was in Algonquin Park. The only difference was when you looked up the red cliff faces that surrounded the park would catch the sunlight.After climbing back up the same path the next morning, we caught the train to Katoomba, to see the famous 3 sisters rocks (Second Picture)

I am finishing work in 2 days and right now I am trying to book a flight and a hostel in Melbourne. Unfortunatly, this week is the commonwealth games in Melbourne, followed directly by the Australian Grand Prix, so there are very few places left to stay and at a reasonable price. I should be looking for something right now but 2 days notice would be almost too responsible. (Final picture is somewhere along the trail on our way up on the 2nd day)

...Because it makes you feel good

Not to much has happened this past week. Pretty much all of last week I worked nights, which was boring. The only highlights were checking in the band Tool. I have never heard any of their songs, but Mike was like a schoolgirl around them. They checked in under the aliases of: Random Encounter, Rusty Trombone and Barry McCockener :| Also today we both notified our boss of our intentions to leave. Im going to work till Sunday and go see Melbourne for about a week and Mike is going to stay at the hotel till I get back, then we will head up the coast. Also on Weds and Thursday we both have days off so we will finally head over to the Blue Mountains and go camping.


Yesterday I managed to leave my book on a bus and then left my cellphone later that night at Mackers. I think i left it on a table and after stuffing half of an icecream cone in my mouth and blacking out from brainfreeze. I hope they have as much trouble charging the phone as I did. Later that night we returned home to find our french roomates throwing a french only party, but we crashed it anyway. It seemed the same as any "english" party except that they broght these 2 wheels of cheese that they all worshiped (seriously) and then took pictures beside it, then melted it over potatoes. It was delicious. That night made ammends with one of our french roomates who accused us of eating his pizza and offended the rest of them when they kept on making us smell the cheese we didn't recoil in disgust. I think they were proud of their cheese's ability to disgust the non-french and were shocked when we ate it. One person even said that the bacteria inside of it can make us really sick...crazy. The second picture I found while waiting for a bus at 5:30 this morning.

Mardi Gras

Last night was Sydney's Mardi Gras. Which is basically the same as the one in New Orleans except that instead of beads and topless girls Sydney's has "dykes with bikes" and "asian lady boys float"...Its really just their gay parade but it falls in line with mardi gras, so i guess that is why they call it that. So armed with our FEMALE german escorts we went down to watch the festivities. It was so packed we couldn't even see the streets for most of the time, just the tops of most of the floats. I dont remember all of them but there was a group from canada and I even saw an israeli flag or 2. Theres not much to say about it, because it was just more or less the same thing all night with some people in some pretty crazy costumes. Never seen the one in Toronto but I imagine its basically the same thing. Fun night and even more fun to watch Mike's reactions everytime a guy expressed interest in him. I guess I just didn't have what they were looking for...damn!

Been working at the blue hotel (really nice and expensive) for a week now. This will definatly be my last job here before we travel, but it sucks that we could only find it so close to the end because it is really a lot of fun. Most of day you just stand around and carry peoples bags up to their rooms and you get to park the occasional porche, which at first was nerve wrecking driving on the wrong side of the road, but now is fun. It is weird because the hard part isnt driving on the left side, you constantly think of it, but the turn signals are on the other side of the wheel so I always turn on the windshield wipers when i want to make turns and more dangerously sometimes forget to check in the oncoming lane when making turns : Other than that it, the job is great, we get radios with ear pieces and joke around all day. It almost makes me look forward to work...almost. Also a lot of men have been checking into the hotel for the parade this weekend so when you're bring their bags up to their room all you need to do is hum "milkshake" or anything by madonna softly, and they always tip you...hey for money, anything is possible. On another tangent, the actor that played kip dynamite from napolean dynamite stayed at the hotel. It was kind of disapointing that we couldn't ask him about the internet and everything but it was still funny to just see him. Apparently stars stay at the hotel all the time under aliases and get snuck in through the side enterance.

A quick update on surfing and getting stung by jellyfish. I seem to have hit a plateu with surfing, getting slightly better but not making a lot of ground. But on the brightside, I am really getting good at getting stung by blue bottles. You get so used to it and the pain isnt that bad, its more of the idea of having them float around you that terrifies me. They only wash in when the wind blows towards shore, and it really only stops people from going in the water when there are tons of them but that is rare. Thats all i will say about them because I know that they sound a lot worse then they really are. Final picture is mike and myself with 2 people from his fan club :)