As our independent travel week commenced Emma and I took off to the gold coast to hang out with the hippy, world traveling backpackers of Byron Bay. We spent our week with sandy bottoms, surfer babe hair, and some pretty gnarly burn lines. On Tuesday of that week we were driven away from the sandy shores due to an unfortunately rainy day. Emma and I decided that it would be a good day to use our free bike rental, which came with our surf lesson we were taking that Thursday!( See Emma’s post from last week).
We walked into the rental shop to see the honkin pieces of metal staring at us. We’re not in Portland anymore! As we maneuvered the bikes out of the shop we realized how difficult of a task it was going to be riding around on the beach bike tanks that went from 0 to 10 in a matter of hours. This was especially true in a place with no bike lanes , cars that yield for no one, and tourist that were only paying attention to where the nearest gelato shop was.
Since we had 8 hours of bike leisure we decided to hit up two places in our day excursion:
- Byron Bay Lighthouse
Second to our epic surf adventure, the lighthouse was one of the best parts of the trip. We rode our bikes around a couple of round-a-bouts, up a couple of minor hills and landed at Cook’s point. We parked our bikes and took off on a trail that led us up the highest point in Byron Bay, which for how flat Australia can be it was a pretty good trek. At the top we witnessed a couple of people taking off to go gliding! Finally we reached the outstanding view of the lighthouse. Whoa!
- Arawak National Park (aka beach/surf glory land)
After getting back to our bikes we headed off the landmark of Cheeky Monkeys (a crazy bar that all of the tourist go to for 5$ meals) and towards our beachy destination. After a mental debate on which way you were supposed to go around a roundabout, a bike malfunction, and a couple of dark grey clouds we found the sign for Arawak National Park! This sandy and wooden trail led us to swamps, pelicans, beautiful greenery, and a couple of backyards.
Once we made it to the beach we instantly got out our cameras. The sand was perfect. The water was perfect. The weather was, eh, kind of perfect. We even got to watch a group of people taking a surf lesson and observed what our upcoming fate would be like.
Here are a couple more picture to finish off! Cheers
P.S. Hi mom and dad.