Byron Bay Wedn-Sat 4-14 February

Rise and shine on Wednesday (still in Christchurch) to make my way to the airport at 3am...

This I don't really like, to do stuff alone in the middle of the night/superduper-early morning - you never know what kind of people are up and if they're also up to something.. I mean, I'm up - anyone can be up..

But I got to the airport okey, and then I had to pay some money to leave the country - what the..!! never heard about that before - paying a fee so that they will let me out... stupid system... 25 dollars as well...

Oh well, you don't really have a choice when it comes to stuff like that - hmm, okey you do, you can refuse and then demonstrate as much as you can to change the system, but then you'll have to face a lot of bureaucracy to get your way, and you would most likely have missed your flight..

So I was the good little girl who payed and got on the plane.

Back to Australia!

oz - hello again!!

Had the most amazing luck - as always =)

I was supposed to land at 7am and then take PremierMotorService-bus to Byron at noon - well, I was in Brisbane 6.45am, and at the busstation at 8am. I changed out of my sweaty-sweaty-I'm-scared-of-flying-and-I-AM-going-to-die-airplane-travel-clothes, took it a little slow, and then thought I might go and see if there's an earlier bus to Byron - got to the counter and was told to run out the doors and get on the 8.30am bus - 'cause it was 8.30 =) great!

Here's a funny fact about oz - I landed in Queensland right, and I was going to Byron, New South Wales - just south of Queensland - but NSW is doing the summer time, and QLD is not. So when we crossed the border I had to change my watch one hour forward - but we're still in the same longitud area... They're just above/under each other... =) weird..

I had a room booked at Backpackers Inn by the Beach - but when I booked the accommodation last week in Wanaka, the lady I talked to was a real bitch, and she still is... Ohmigod! she's insulting everyone in sight, and is behaving like a dominatrix... Everybody I talked to was almost afraid of her, and wandered what she would do if we didn't "obey" fast enough - whip us out of the hostel?

It's a funny hostel though - very open, and looks like a djungel - well, it would turn out that I'm just being eased in for uni!




My room was a two bunkbed female dorm, so only four people - and man! the mess! I couldn't believe it - it was like a garbage dump =) a bit funny actually, that girls are capable of turning a living space into a battle field of such state... I know I can be very messy as well, but that's when it's my place and no-one else's supposed to live there - then it's just me and my mess - not me, my mess and three others.. =) sometimes guys are more neat... (I am pro feminism, but hey, I have to be honest girls - chicks rule, we know that, so let's give the boys something..)






I met up with Susanna - swedish girl from Karlstad (!) that I met in Newcastle last month - and we spent a bit more than a week together - lying on the beach, going out at night, doing some shopping at woolworths and hanging out on the internet - AND the most important thing of all, we had ice-cream every single day! The best ice-cream ever! The place is called "in the pink"-something, don't remember.. They have homemade ice-cream that tastes like little drops of heaven! Especially the Mars-flavoured-one, and peppermint, and lemon sorbet, and almost everything else! Don't miss out!!!

At the hostel I started hanging with Marios, greek guy from England, and the four swedish blokes - Emil, Markus, Anders and Bob - who was crazy from heads to toes. All the guys took me out Saturday night and, again, I ended up not paying at all, but having a hell of a nice time! =)





So there was some long, nice days at the beach, with long, dancing nights out on town..

The last two pics are of me and Susanna on our pub crawl - and here we're at Cheeky Monkeys:

First pic - tjoho! We're here and the music's great!

Second pic - ohmigod... the music really sucks... only one good song the entire night...

and then the rain came...

Tuesday one week after I arrived the clouds started to gang up on us, and that day was so moist you don't believe it...

The air was of the McDonald-milkshake-kind - you had to work to suck it in...

So Wednesday we went to Nimbin, just to escape the dull weather (in Nimbin it was actually quite nice, sunny, warm (and damp here too)).

Nimbin - the drug capital of NWS I'd say...

Here's where you find all the hippies - and everyone welcomes you by saying; "Hello, hasch, marijuana?" followed by "Cheap cheap! Hush hush.."

Our bus driver was the hippie number one (I thought so at first anyway, until I met some other folk..) - telling us all about his adventours since he was twelve-thirteen yo, when he started going down to Sydney/Melbourne and attending festivals just to get high, and how he much later took his family and moved up to Nimbin when they were followed in their old town - for being hippies - and how his daughters were born on a bed of flowers outside the house, in a circle of candles, the only medication being used was of course the mind relaxing cannabis... =)

Nimbin was awesome! It was like a rainbow - colors everywhere, toothless and mostly old people with shoe leather skin everywhere, a museum telling us all about how stupid it is to try and make a plant forbidden (it's nature for goodness sake - how can you make that illegal?!?! - was some of the propaganda), and lots of small cafés and shops selling clothes, pictures and postcards of the place.

It was nice to visit Nimbin, but to live here you really need to be in the "mood" so to speak - you can't have an anti-hippie-attitude, 'cause then you'd not stand being here even for a couple of hours. It's really a special place.

Here's some pics from the museum and the town:

If you wonder what the last bit of the buisness hours-sign says, it's:

"Lately I've been here just about all the time, exept when I'm someplace else, but I should be here then too really..."

Our driver then took us into the rainforest to a 100 metres high waterfall - Minion Falls - not that grand but still high - Susanna and I spent some time contemplating bungy jumping from the platform, that it would be quite scary - and people who did the Nevis in Queenstown were another 34 metres up... that's really high...

The last stop was at this hippies house in the middle of the bush - he'd made the area around his house into a frickin rainforest - and he calls it his 'garden' - well, my idea of a garden doesn't have 13 species of snakes on it (especially not one of them in the kitchen), and there's no leguanas big as dogs at my place either - not even to mention spiders...

Huuuh.... I mean, the porch by the pond was nice and all - and we relaxed and watched our driver and two other guys taking a swim - but the walk through the 'garden' was not something I had signed up for...! =) I know, I'm a chicken when it comes to certain animals...

Look mamy - here's my new boyfriend!

hehe..

The day was complete with some ice-cream on the way back to town!

After dancing around at all the clubs until late, it was time to say 'bye to Susanna - she was leaving the morning after to go north - but I'll see you back at home te sommarn! Uteservering blir!!

Later that night (or well, early the next day), the rain finally came - well, I thought 'finally' 'cause then the humid damp air would perhaps be a little lighter - but hey was I wrong... It was as hot and 'heavy' in the air as ever, only now it was several tonnes of water pouring down added to the mix...

I was at woolworths the next day when another shower came - and yeah, wow we really are in the tropics eh! After doing a lot of grocery shopping, I'm normally quite hungry, so I decided that I didn't want to stand there and wait for the rain to stop (that could take a while..), so I asked for some more plastic bags at the counter - stuffed all my groceries and my clothes - except the bikini of course - in the bags, and then I raised my head and proudly walked all the way back home =) I got a few laughters, pointers, cheering, whistles and honkings on the way, including the commentary: "You're probably the most sane person on the streets" - since everyone else was running, hiding under newpapers, getting soaked to their bones - and I was just wandering around taking it easy =)

Fun! and according to me, the only way to do it!

The rest of the weekend it continued to rain - but I gave up the bikini-walk and dug out my raincoat + pants instead. Got myself an aussi number to my phone - won't give it out here though, you have to be my friend at face to get it - and then I decided on Saturday that this was it! I was sick and tired of the rain, not being able to do anything, sharing a dorm, sharing a kitchen with not enough utensils in it and gross fridges where everything got smashed by others - well, I had started to see the light in the tunnel you know! My exit!

When it's the end of a trip, you start to look forward to the next part (at least, I normally do), so I was dying to get to Newcastle and get into my own room!! Get hold of my computer again!! Having my own shelf in the fridge with my name on it!!! Having a whole cupboard in the kitchen with my name on it!!!!

oh gosh, it's like I said to Carol and Christian - just thinking about that almost made me have a tiny orgasm...!

=)

I know, I'm fairly easy... oh wait, that doesn't sound too good - ah well, you know what I mean! ;)
I wasn't really tired of travelling around, but I was just eager to get to the next stage - you know, if I'd had two more months to go, I wouldn't have longed for my own room, or feeling slightly annoyed by the kitchen standards, 'cause then I would have been in the middle of it all - but when it's near the end, and yeah, you can see the light in the tunnel - then you want to get out =)

So I changed my travel plans - got myself some new tickets, and borrowed a bike from the reception and biked up to the lighthouse and the most eastern point of Australia - 'cause I had to go there now when I was in Byron and leaving the next day. It was soo much fun to bike there and back - I know Marios, you're raising your eyebrows again, wondering how on earth that could've been fun in the massive rain - but as I've already told you, sometimes when things are too extreme, then all you can do is laugh!

I thought soo many times during those two hours that "It can't possibly rain more than this", only to be proved wrong a couple of seconds later - it was in the same class as the rainstorm on New Years in Port Douglas, then at least les parents will know how it was =)

Go back, pack, eat, check out (because I'm leaving too early tomorrow) and say goodbye to Marios and Glen (also english) - and that is that!

Might see you another time Byron - but for now, over and out.
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