Easter Break Road Trippin

Easter Break (Part 1)
April 10th-April 14th

Alright so I last week I left off at the point when we were staying at Manly Beach just north of Sydney. We were supposed to meet up with one of my friends who is going to school in Sydney. For whatever reason it didn't work out so Will, Mike and I wandered around Manly for awhile and then since it was Good Friday everything closed at 10 pm. We did the only thing we could do, go to sleep in our luxury accommodation known as the Wicked camper van. It actually wasn't too bad; we slept three across with plenty of leg room. Although, should room was lacking somewhat in the early 1990s model Mazda cargo van. We slept alright, rising early with the sun and then dozing off until around 7 or 8.

When we finally did wake up for good we planned to do the usual tourist things. I drove the van to downtown Sydney where we parked in a garage near the Rocks for the day. We walked around the shops and markets until we found a breakfast place called "Pancakes on The Rocks." I was a little skeptical going in because it was rather expensive for breakfast food, but it was delicious! I'm not even normally a huge fan of pancakes, but these were amazing! After the pancakes we walked around and saw the Botanical Gardens as well as the Sydney Opera House. To be honest the Opera House looks a little ugly up close but from far away it is magnificent. In
the Botanical Gardens we saw trees filled with huge bats, called flying foxes and there were so many bats hanging upside down in some trees that they looked like cat sized redish-brown Christmas tree ornaments. That was pretty weird to say the least. We spent some more time in Sydney walking in Hyde Park and around Darling Harbour. When evening fell on us we decided to pack it up and go to Bondi Beach in hopes that the next days weather would be better the next day. Waking up in the morning was not great as it was cloudy and not exactly a beach day.

Time to get on the road again. Once about an hour or so outside the city we did some tourist recon at an information stop along the side of the highway. Will discovered a tourist drive with great views and many beaches and a few small towns we could stop along the way. Once we drove for an hour or so after that the weather began to clear up and we looked for a beach to plop down on a for a few hours. We came across along the drive a place called Avoca beach which was great! It wasn't the longest beach I had ever been on but it was very wide and had great sand. It was so weird though, the sand was squeaky! Whenever you walked or ran it sounded like a very small pair of tires were squealing or a perhaps hands squeaking along some glass (Mike suggested that it was probably due to the high silica content of the sand). After a few hours it started to cloud up so we decided to move on after exploring the town a bit and getting something for lunch. I got probably the best fish and chips of my life for $10 at this place called "burger girls." It was amazing except for the fact that (like many places in Australia unfortunately) they made me pay for the ketchup to put on my chips. At any rate, it was time to get rolling again.

Later that afternoon while we were on the road it rained some and then it was just cloudy. Kind of annoying but not terrible. We made camp that night at a place called Old Bar again, parking right on the beach, hoping for a cool sunrise to wake us up. Alas, it was not to be, we woke up to cloudy and drizzly weather. Whatever though, we still had a week ahead of us and it was supposed to clear up on Tuesday or Wednesday. We drove the rest of that day through places like Nambucca Heads which in the travel guides looked like something out of, well a travel guide, but in the pouring rain looked fairly similar to the Sandy River in Farmington, Maine. We parked that night on a yet another beach in Byron Bay, the eastern most town in Australia. It was still pouring rain but we decided to brave the weather and walk around town for some night life. We found ourselves at a local reggae concert which was sweet! Pints were $6 which isn't bad so we had a few of those and listened to some white guy serenade a bunch of hippies with some Matisyahu-esque music. We had a great time until the concert was over and we had to walk back through the heavy heavy mist (it never rains per say on my vacations) that was coming down and climb into our van absolutely soaked.

We were awakened early Tuesday morning by a stern police officer asking us some questions about what time we got into the parking spot and what we were doing etc. He kindly told us that he would leave the parking fine on the wind screen. Luckily we had been armed with the Wicked Camper handbook which said parking fines are nothing to worry about if you don't live here. So other than the hassling we got from the officer we came off from that incident unscathed. Its a good thing we won't be paying that parking ticket too because it was $81. That is absolutely silly.
Whatever though, no big deal. We moved the van to another beach in the same town and it was once again cloudy with patchy rain. At this point I was contemplating becoming suddenly relgious on the hopes that the weather would get better. While Mike caught some much needed rest the already awake Will and I adventured along this new beach until we reached the very tip of the Easternmost point in Australia. It was kind of a cool morning adventure and little did we know but that was the last we would see of the rain on the trip. We spent a few hours of the day in town at the main beach (where we had gotten the ticket) surfing, walking around to the different shops and buying gifts for friends and family. Once we had had our fill of this, to the van and the road to Surfer's Paradise. Though of all the places we visited on the trip Byron Bay was probably my favorite simply because of the hippie/surfer nature of the town along with the great scenery and low number people to number of beaches ratio.

We all piled into the van and severely looked forward to staying in the hotel room that I had reserved for Tuesday and Wednesday night. There was some confusion though as I had only written down a phone number and address for the hotel and not its name! Once we got that worked out though we eventually found the Crowne Plaza hotel, a block from the beach on the Gold Coast highway. It was amazing! We were on the 14th floor with two beds, a balcony and probably the nicest bathroom I have ever been in. We didn't even pay that much to stay there, only the cost of what it would have been to put the three of us in a hostel for 2 nights. Anyways, we walked the 2 km or so from or hotel up to the main shopping/night life/restaraunt area of Surfer's Paradise for dinner and relaxed in a bar. That night we retired somewhat early for our first night in a real bed in what seemed like ages.