Lazy days in Byron

surfer crossing

The past couple of weeks have been delightfully uneventful, allowing Dave and I to enjoy the true beauty and relaxed lifestyle of Byron Bay. Our new apartment has allowed us to enjoy the peace and quiet in the middle of the sub-tropics, and is only a short bike ride away from the crowded streets of Byron Bay. The past two weeks have been a busy time for Byron and the Gold Coast because of 'schoolies'. These couple of weeks, 20 000 high-school graduates from all over Australia head to Byron and take over the city, partying day and night, celebrating their graduate status. In response to the flooding in of young people, locals tend to stay home and away from the city. This has led to the cafe that I work at to temporarily close for two weeks for dinner, leaving me only to have a couple of short morning shifts, and lots of time to relax! Dave has been quite busy at the travel company he works for, working five days a week, but still finding time for the beach and day trips.

our walk to the beach

While we have been lounging around the apartment, we have been making good use of our hammock on our patio, and great use of the ceiling fans. It has been the beginning of a hot summer, and our average day is 30⋅C, which has led to many trips to the beach. We are so lucky that it is a short five minute walk away from
paradise, a secluded bay on Tallow Beach.

Kurt learning to skate :)

Kurt, our 'pet' water-dragon

 When we get home, we have the entertaining company of a gutsy and curious water-dragon we have named, Kurt (he is named after a funny and unique friend of ours we met in Byron Bay, who has continued to travel). He is not very shy, as we often find him attacking our glass door trying to get inside, and from time to time he succeeds when we leave the door open for air. Kurt spends his days lounging on the patio with us, swimming in a small pool in the garden, learning to skateboard, and sometimes mating with other lizards on our porch... he is all around a great pet.

Becki's day off... bad hair day

our beloved pies

 Dave and I have a new obsession... pies. Australia seems to have the right idea when it comes to snack food, as you can find a pie shop around every corner, with a long list of creative flavors. Some of our favorites have been chicken and mango curry, bacon and cheese, or a classic peppered beef. Anything wrapped in delicious puff pastry is great in my books. Not only are these pie shops found everywhere, but they are open all night for the convenience of those who want to get a snack after the bar. Convenient, and delicious!

Our bike ride down Seven Mile Beach Road

 In order to keep our pie-bellies non-existent, Dave and I have been quite active around town. We took a biking day trip to see more local beaches and trails around Byron Bay. The ride was beautiful, along very rustic dirt roads. Despite my whining about the hilly landscapewe made it to the top of a mountain overlooking many beaches and a nature reserves. We took a walking trail down the mountain through the sub-tropical forest, to a beautiful beach surrounded by rocks (little did we know it was a well-known nudist beach in the area...). The sights we saw were breathtaking (not the people, the nature), and we are amazed that they are so close to our backyard.

view from the top of the mountain

spiders too!

scary snakes in our backyard!

There are a few 
 thins that come with beautiful nature, and that is unwanted wildlife. On our path to the beach, there is a threatening sign warning us that there are brown snakes. We haven't seen any deadly ones yet, and I hope it stays that way! The spiders however, we are finding more and more around the house. In the shower, on the ceiling, and on the porch! I spend a lot of time researching which ones are harmless and dangerous. The big bugs are starting to come out, especially the Christmas Beetle. They are similar to the June Bug, but they come out from now until Christmas, and they are huge! They aren't very smart though, and usually run into the wall, get dizzy, and die.

getting in the Christmas spirit

 It doesn't quite feel like Christmas is less than a month away with the hot weather and beaches, but I can't complain about the circumstances. Thank-you to my amazing family for sending some Christmas spirit my way! It will be a different experience being away from family this holiday, but we will make new traditions to bring home.

Thank-you to my wonderful family for sending me a little taste of Christmas!

A Canadian Holiday in OZ and an OZ Holiday in One Week... Plus Flying and a New Apartment!

The sun breaking through the clouds at 6 am

Anton and Sandra

Jesse and Nathalie

 I have memories of designing my Halloween costume so that it would fit over my snow suit... that was not the case this year! Halloween in Australia is not quite the same as a Canadian Halloween, as it was adopted later as more of a drinking holiday, and an excuse to dress up. Many people don’t acknowledge it at all, as it is an “American tradition, not Australian”, and backpackers are the ones known to celebrate it. I decided to be something Australian this year, and made myself a very simple Koala bear costume! Dave went to a second hand store and bought very mismatched articles of clothing, making himself a.... French tourist? (It’s hard to say, look at the picture and decide for yourself!) The creepiest costume of the night went to our room-mate Anton (a dead clown), and a close second to his girlfriend Sandra (a vampire)! The night started with a hostel BBQ and ended dancing at Cheeky Monkey’s across the street. It was odd to be dressing up in such a hot climate and not worrying about a coat to cover up with.

Robert and Marvin

Chris, Em and Koots

Earlier this week we also celebrated an Australian holiday, the Melbourne Cup! It is basically a horse race that lasts 3 minutes, where ladies dress is elaborate hats and cute dresses, and head to the bar in the middle of the day to gamble and drink! (Australian holidays really tend to revolve around drinking!) The whole city shuts down for the Melbourne cup... literally! The cafe I work in shut down at noon to allow everyone to head to the Beach Hotel together and watch the race. It was a fun day and a good way to understand Australian culture better. 

The next day was yet again another highlight of our trip! We decided to get up early and headed out to attempt to surf yet again. Tallows beach was beautiful at 7:30 am, filled with local surfers... and us. Our friend Andreas is quite a bit more experienced than us, and quickly paddled out to the waves. Dave, Natalie, and I got tossed and turned by the waves, trying to make it out, and leaving us to look a little less experienced than others around us. Dave had a couple of successful standing moments, but I was not as lucky. We are both still determined and know that every time we go we get better. When we got back to the hostel we had a knock on our door from Neil, the owner of the local hang gliding company, Flight Zone. We had been calling him for the past couple of weeks hoping to find a day with a strong wind to go hang-gliding, and he came to our door to let us know that the wind was perfect! We drove down to Lennox Head and prepared ourselves to hang-glide. 

Becki and Neil

View of Dave from above

Before we knew it we were jumping off a cliff and suddenly 600 feet in the air with Neil flying over the ocean, beach, and town. We both even got to fly the hang glider for a short period of time, making a couple of turns, dips and dives. It was an incredible feeling to zip around above the world, similar to para sailing, but at the same time more free and faster. Now that we have hang glided, who knows what the next step will be, bungee jumping, skydiving or some other extreme activity!

Dave and Neil

Suited up!

The end of this past week has been great! We started packing our backpacks up yet again, realizing how much stuff we have accumulated since we got to Byron a month and a half ago. There was a thick layer of sand covering the whole ground and all of our bunk-beds when we left our hostel room that has built up over time. It was sad to know that we are leaving such a great place where a lot of our fantastic friends live, but we were excited to move into our new fancy apartment! We have been told by all of the staff as well that we are welcome to come back and hang out at the Holiday Village whenever we want.

Lennox head

640 feet in the air!

 Yesterday Sandra, Anton, Dave and I filled the Holiday Village van with all of our bags and headed to our new apartment, a 5 minute drive down the road. It was better than we had remembered!  It is a small cabin that has an open concept, and floor to ceiling windows. Some of our favorite features include the porch with a hammock, a kitchen to ourselves, the giant bath tub, and of coarse free WiFi (lets all Skype now)! Our apartment is a 5 minute walk to Tallows Beach, and only a 15 minute bike ride to Becki’s work (on our sweet second hand bikes too). After we moved in, we had a small house warming party with our closest friends, enjoying our porch, some sangria, and listening to some awesome Swedish Reggae. All around we are happy with our new place, and hope to settle in for the next two months. This week has been very exciting, as we have been able to dress up and celebrate different cultures, jump off of a cliff, and relax in our new space. Life is good.

Ps, during the writing of this post, Dave got a call from a travel job to start training tomorrow at 11am, hopefully we are both employed again!

Our bedroom

Checking out of Holliday Village

The Girls

The Guys

Movember stache coming along nicely

Dolphins, a new apartment and some goodbyes

We drank it all!

Kitchen from the living room

Apartment and Patio from the kitchen

It has been about a week since our last update and although we are still in the same place, much has happened. The big news to start is that we have found ourselves a place to live for the next two months! We discovered a two bedroom apartment, 10 minutes biking from downtown Byron Bay which we will be moving into on November 11th with our current roommates Anton and Sandra. After searching online and on billboards for a while, we found this place through a friend of a friend who lives in the same area and we signed on for a 2 month lease to take us through the beginning of January. The place is fully furnished leather couches, a hammock on the patio, a BBQ and Wi Fi.  We do not yet have any set plans for afterwards, but we will figure that out as we get closer to the time. The apartment is a short 5-10 minute walk to Tallows Beach, although the walk is through estuaries and wetlands which are apparently prime brown snake habitat. However once arriving at the beach we realized the risk in the walk is worth the reward as there are kilometers of beautiful white sand in either direction and only the odd person walking about to share it with.

Tallows Beach to our left...

...and our right

After agreeing to take the apartment we spent the day on the beach hanging out, swimming in the waves and swimming with some dolphins! Well that may be an overstatement, we stood knee deep in the water while dolphins played in the waves and ate their lunch. We have learned that the best way to find them is to follow the seagulls which circle in swarms above where sharks and dolphins are looking for an easy meal. This does make for a scary moment figuring out which it is, but it was quite awesome to see them for the first time of hopefully many more. The whales are now mostly gone to Antarctica for the summer, but I think the dolphins will replace them nicely for our sightseeing needs.

Driving to Sydney

Tequila to wash down the steak

Delicious steak dinner

As much as we have loved all of the places we have seen, and are excited for all the things we have not seen yet, it truly is the people that we have met along the way which have made this experience so incredible. Since we have moved into the hostel a month and three days ago, we have had a consistent group which has stayed solid as a majority of the travelers come and gone. As wonderful as our time together has been, we are all on slightly different schedules and at different stages of our travels and visa's. Last Thursday we had to say goodbye to three members of our crew as Carla's visa expired and she had two return to Chile. This meant that Morgan, her boyfriend, and Roman (the two frenchmen) headed off to Sydney with her to say goodbye. From there they will look for farm work further down south. As sad as it was to see them go, it also gave us a great excuse to party all day and night Wednesday before they left. The daytime was full of games and music before transitioning to fantastic steak, fried onion and mashed potato dinner and everyone's choice of their favorite shots. It was a great night for everyone (even Becki, although she did fall off a table while dancing at some point at Cheeky Monkeys), and made for a very hungover goodbye when they left the next morning. It is great that with technology and social media it is so easy to stay in touch with people, and we hope to all meet up in the future. However, the next couple of days felt very strange not having such large personalities around the hostel at all hours of the day.

Emma, Carla, Anton, Roman, Sandra, Chris and Morgan

Life isn't all about partying in Byron Bay though, this past week Dave and I have been working lots, finally bringing in the money as well as spending it. Dave continues to work at the hostel driving the bus, and I have been working 40 hour weeks at the cafe One One One, due to a shortage of staff. Unfortunately all this hard work and lack of sleep has led me to catch the flu that is making its way around the hostel. I have pushed past and am becoming more myself yet again.

Even though we are in a HOT  climate (25-30+ C every day.... not rubbing it in at all), our minds still remain in Canada. Last week I was very happy to stumble upon real Canadian maple syrup, leading to a delicious breakfast of home made french toast with bacon smothered in sweet syrup. We have also become aware of the very temperamental climate in the US and leading to Canada soon, Hurricane Sandy! We hope that everyone stays warm and safe and enjoys a day or 2 off of work (hopefully). Baseball isn't really shown on TV here, but we have been keeping up with updates from the World Series. Our thoughts go out to Steve Zagrodny as he went to the Giants vs. Tigers game yesterday, and had to sit in the cold and rain watching his favorite team lose.

That is all for now, we hope to make these more regular, especially once we get our apartment with Wi Fi, but until next time goodbye to everyone!