Australia: Byron Bay & Surfers Paradise

The night bus drops me off at Byron Bay at about 8 in the morning, I find the hostel to drop off my luggage and walk back to town to get some breakfast and coffee, especially coffee, because I figure that I’ll need it if I want to be able to kayak in the sea without falling asleep.

Byron beach and the cape

Byron is the most eastern part of the whole country, and it feels completely different to Sydney.
It’s a small town with a few bars and a couple of restaurants, but nothing too special (especially if you compare it to Sydney).
The atmosphere in town feels very relaxed

and the beach line is amazing. It’s one long beach that ends with a small cape into the sea, and the day that I arrive there are some amazing waves (that promises nothing good for the kayaking that I got planned ahead)

Just as I get back to the hostel the pick up for the kayaking arrives, and as we leave towards the beach the beach the driver tells us about how they saw a bunch of dolphins in the morning tour, but that we'll have to get through a bunch of waves to see them.

And while dragging the kayaks to the beach we discover that the latest wasn't a lie.
On the first try we catch a massive waves breaking onto us which makes us flip over and lose my sunglasses. But eventually after 3 or 4 tries we get into the deep sea (over the breaking waves). Once we got over the waves we had to wait for the rest of the group to get over them as well, and whilst waiting a group of turtles decides to come and greet us, swimming around us, under us and even sticking their heads out in a way of saying hi! While all these turtles are swimming around one of the guides tells us how they are the same kind of turtle as the ones in “Finding Nemo”.

When everyone arrives we continue the tour upwards, following the cape almost all the way up to the end, so literally kayaking further than the Australian land reaches. And while kayaking over there we manage to see a group of dolphins a bit further playing and jumping in the waves.

As the tour progresses the waves seem to get bigger so when we got to the end of the cape we decided to turn back around.

When we get back to the hostel I decide that I want to walk up that same cape where we just kayak around. The walk takes a bit longer than I expected, but then again, I found spots that where much prettier than I expected. At one point I even passes a few areas with public barbecues and locals grouping around them with drinks and great smelling meat.

To end the day I head toward one of the bars known for it's prize games.I meet a couple of Dutch guys playing pool and join them. Later on the bar decides to hold a pool competition while we are waiting for the beer pong on. And against all the odds I end up winning this one which got me a 50$ bar tab for the night. One of the Dutch guys decides to go home so being two we sign up for the beer pong tournament, with a main price of 150$ bar tab and a skydive. Sadly enough we don’t get past the second round in this one.

Next morning is the  day that I’m heading towards Surfers Paradise. It’s a city in the middle of the gold coast, and as far as I heard, it’s a little bit like Byron Bay, but bigger and busier.
And that exactly the same feeling I got when I arrived. It feels like a big city, with enormous skyscrapers and big shopping centres, but without the stress and rush that comes with a big city, you could even find businessmen just sitting on the beach boulevard enjoying their little break.

I had no activity planned here, so I grabbed my camera and left the hostel to see the city centre and of course, the majestic beach.

The centre was nice, and so was the beach, but there was no surfing going on, I asked around and it seemed that the sea was very dangerous at the moment, the storms on Fiji had ceased, but the sea was still shaken because of it you could even appreciate the storm leftovers here at the gold coast. The government even cancelled a surfers competition that was going to be held this week because of the dangerous currents and waves.

Surfer's Paradise by night 

I take note of this and decide not to go for a swim, but rather just spend a few hours relaxing at the beach, which has a few nice shadow spots (because of the skyscrapers)

As the sun starts going down I head back to the hostel, the plan for the night is all you can eat hot dogs followed by various drinking games, but not with beer like we are used to, every glass is filled with this cheap wine that comes in boxes of 5 Litres and they call "Goon".

After the games we head to one of the clubs in the center and spend the rest of the night around there.