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