Now, let’s see…where did this intrepis traveler last leave you…Ahh, yes, Coolangatta. Well, it’s been an eventful couple of days, kids, so pull up a chair and a pack of your favorite Tim Tams-I’m currently munching on the Tim Tam Crush, which might just be my favorite so far.
From Coolangatta we mercifully left the main highway and headed inland to explore Springbrook National Park. For my Canadian friends, the national parks here aren’t like they are in Canada. They’re tiny and numerous. Very tiny. Like, you can drive from one end of Springbrook to the other in about 15 minutes, and that’s going between 40-50 km/h. We went because the Lonely Planet guidebook promised us waterfalls and pretty views. And we weren’t disappointed. In fact, it’s probably been one of the best detours so far. I was determined to do at least a little hiking, and no amount of complaining from Glen could change my mind. On the way to the trail we decided to hike, we saw some pretty amazing views from the lookouts-we were quite far inland, and from some you could see clear to the coast. Finally something to look at other than endless fields of sugar cane. The hike we picked was a mere 4 km, but ended up taking us about 2 ½ hours to do. Why? Well, we had to stop and take pictures of the pretty waterfalls. There were three of them, if I remember right, and 2 of them you got to walk behind, which was awesome. There were also several caves/crevasses/cracks in the rock that we got to walk through and fiddle around in. So naturally some fun was had puttering around in them, seeing how far we could wedge ourselves up the walls. The rest of the hike was through rainforest, which was cool and looks pretty much like you’d expect rainforest to be. At one point we stumbled across some green birds with bright-and I mean vibrantly bright-red bodies that were hanging out in a couple of trees eating the leaves. They were the kind of birds that you’d see selling for a couple hundred bucks in a pet store in Canada. Overall it was an excellent day, and a welcome deviation from the major highways.
We spent the night just south of the hippie/surfing Mecca of Byron Bay, on a beach called Broken Head. This morning we were picked up by Krazy Kat’s surfing and plunged into the Pacific for a lesson. And it was excellent. They showed us how to get up on the board in a way that’s much, much easier than the way I was taught in the last lesson I took-which was eons ago in Tofino. We puttered around in the water for probably 2 hours, and I actually managed to get standing-and I mean fully standing, feet on the board, actually riding the wave-several times. Oh, if only we had more time, and we could stick around for a few days… But the nomadic life is calling.
We spent the afternoon wandering the patchouli-smelling streets of Byron Bay, checking out various shops and munching on some delicious doner kebabs-they’re actually just donairs, I don’t know why they call them kebabs if they’re not on a stick. Doner kebabs, by they way, are my new favorite food. They’re delicious, and have just enough vegetables that I can delude myself into believing they’re healthy.
Tonight we make camp-or park the hippie campervan-in a fantabulous caravan park just north of Ballina. Seriously, it’s the nicest caravan park yet. The showers have shower curtains, and they’re spotless! Cue angelic cherubs here…
Anyways, I should probably get to sleep now, as I believe we have some craziness with macadamia nuts and perhaps cliff diving planned for tomorrow.
Please forgive any weird formatting that might occur on this trip. For some reason Blogger doesn't seem to like Oz too much.
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