Ever since I have been back home in Australia I have felt restless and a constant thought in the back of my mind has been “where should I go next?” or “where will my next adventure be?”.
Lack of funds being an obvious problem initially upon arriving back, overseas trip have to be on the back-burner for a period, but that doesn’t mean I can’t travel close to home! So one weekend I decided that’s just what I do – off to Byron Bay!!
Initially I had planned to make this an extended weekend with some surf friends. You may or may not know that I have decided to take up surfing (it seems an obvious choice to replace snowboarding, right? 😛 ), and although I manage to go maybe once a week I thought “Hey, a surf trip is totally in order!”. That initial plan however fell through when some people couldn’t make it and then others bailed, until I asked another girlfriend of mine and it ended up just being the two of us.
What should have been a camp trip was now a hostel-beach getaway. I think I can life with that…
Byron Bay is about a three-hour drive from the Sunshine Coast (a short distance by Australian standards) so a normal two-day weekend trip away was just the ticket. Although we had the near cyclone and lots of rainy and windy weather just the week before, this particular weekend turned out to be beautiful, with blue skies and hot weather.
Time to hit the beach in Byron Bay!
Our first stop was, what else, the beach. After grabbing a quick burger for lunch we ventured to main beach and plonked ourselves down in the warm sand. The water was absolutely gorgeous. Hardly a breeze, tiny waves, and just the right temperature. Bliss! In the early afternoon my friend went shopping while I caught up with an old friend I had met in Whistler who I hadn’t seen in almost two years. It is SO good to catch-up with people you met years ago on your travels and talk about your old adventures and the new. Just thinking about it makes me smile…and makes me want to go snowboarding again. It doesn’t take much, does it? 😛
Mmm lunch!
Now, let me tell you about the hostel. Actually, the first thing that came to mind as I pulled into the parking lot was how nice it was to be exploring and adventuring again, even if it is just two days! As soon as I walked into the reception area of the hostel I just immediately felt at ease and like I totally belonged. Nice to know some things didn’t change in the last 6 months. We checked-in, got our keys, and went to our room. Because it was just the two of us we had booked a private room (plus I soon discovered that this was my friend’s first hostel experience!), and after a fierce scissor-paper-rock battle I had to concede the double-bed for the single top-bunk. All good! 🙂
The Arts Factory Hostel in Byron Bay – BRING MOSSIE REPELLENT!
The hostel itself had a cool vibe. Lots of people, lots of rooms and a pool smack-bang in the middle of it. My friend chose a lounge and I got itchy feet and wanted to make new friends, so I joined a beach-volleyball game going on right next to the pool. It was all good fun until it got a little later in the afternoon…and the millions of mosquitoes started to appear. I mean…WHO builds a hostel right next to a SWAMP!?!? You should have seen the size of these things. I am used to Australian mosquitoes and the marks they leave on me (they love me), but this was ridiculous. I had to run for cover and spray myself from top to bottom in repellent. Mmmm delicious smell…. 
For the evening activities we decided to hit the town. As much as you can hit Byron Bay I suppose . We grabbed sushi for dinner (yum!) before heading to what the locals call the “Beachy” for some drinks. There are way rowdier places to go, I concede, but we decided to keep it tame so we could be fresh for our surfing session tomorrow morning. We did, however, decide to go stroll down to the beach for a bit where we, to our surprise, stumbled across a silent disco! How cool is that? All you had to do was give them an ID, grab your headphones, dance the night away on the beach and in the water, and then donate however much money you think that was worth at the end. Such an amazing experience!
Not that you can see much, but that’s me dancing away at the silent disco on the beach!
That’s right! We booked a surf lesson. Well…my friend did and I went along with my own board to see how I’d go and get some pointers because….quite frankly, it’s really hard! When we got to the place we found out it wasn’t in fact a group lesson, but we scored a private just for us two. Score! This enabled us to get way more one-on-one time with the instructor and it showed. My friend stood up on her first wave!! Damn natural 😉 I was also fine on the long board, plus then I grabbed my own and got lots of handy tips. Sadly the surf was too slow and small for my mini mal, so I just kept sinking as I tried to stand on the board. Or maybe I’m just too fat for my board – who knows. 😛
My friend at her surf lesson 🙂
By the end of the lesson it was lunch time (and as we know my life revolves around food) so my friend went back to the beach to tan while I met up with yet some more friends. This time old travel buddies from Turkey and Greece. Again…how cool is it to catch up with people you met a year ago in some random part of the world, and then there they are back home right where you are. Great times 🙂
Byron Bay has some super markets on the weekend, so after lunch we went to explore the hippie goodies on offer. I bought a yummy chocolate chai tea and we both got a henna tattoo on our foot (’cause we’re like…totally hipster or whatever haha) before it was time to say goodbye to a super chill weekend and head back to reality.
Short but sweet. I definitely need to get away more often! Australia is such an amazing country, and I must turn into a traveler in my own country 🙂
Fun in the sun in Byron Bay!
it's that little feeling of ... Wanderlust 