Day 33, Monday, March 8 2010
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We were planning on seeing the sunrise over Byron Bay at the light house, but since it kept on raining, we skipped that. We went for breakfast at this nice little turkish place at around 8 ‘o clock and afterwards headed up to the light house to enjoy the view.
The view wasn’t as good as it could have been because there were still many heavy clouds in every direction one looked and it even started to drizzle again. So sad as the look out was promising. I don’t know how many still functioning light houses still exist, but the one at Byron Bay definitely still worked and one could see the light revolving on its axis in the top part of the light house.
After enjoying the view, everyone got back into the bus and we started to drive to Surfs Camp, where we would be learning to surf. On our way to Surfs Camp, the bus decided to go crazy. Something messed up the fuel intake so the bus was sometimes going 60km/h and sometimes again 100km/h. We just made it to our destination, but we definitely ditched the bus. Beaver decided we would be going with the Oz Experience guys who still had enough seats left in their big 39 seater.
After getting a tour of the camp, and settling in our rooms we were ready for our surf lessons. THe surf lesson started with us being told about the Love and Safety rules. These rules are pretty basic and one would think of them anyway if one had any common sense: Don’t pee in the wet suits, don’t have another surfer in front or behind you, take care of the equipment, a fist in the air for help etc.
After this we were given a wet suit and a surfboard. Now came a rather bad part. We had to drag or rather carry our surfboard pretty far up the beach as there were many people at the close side of the beach already in the water and also learning to surf. Two people took two boards under each arm. I went with Joha and everyone else paired up as well.
Halfway along the beach Iris had enough. She was so frustrated that we had to carry our boards and actually gave up! I wasn’t close enough to know what was going on as I was wrestling my board myself but I only saw that she had walked back. Sorry Iris, but that sucked!
Anyhow, after we finally made it to a nice spot, or better a spot where our instructor was happy, we put our boards into a half circle. The lesson now continued with us learning to lie down on our board at the right spot. The next step was paddling. Now came the hard part; standing up. We were first taught the more advanced way to stand up, but practiced an easier, yet longer way more as this would probably help us stay longer on the board.
After testing all this on dry land and that a couple of times so that we were really drilled, we recollected the safety rules and then hit the water. My first tries were miserable, then I managed to stay on the board a couple of times and then the last few tries consisted of me starting to stand up, nose dive the board and fall face first into the water. All in all it was a wonderful first go at surfing and I hope that there will soon be another chance for me to exercise some more.
After our dinner, we all joined at Leslies place where we chatted a bit, some had a couple of beers and we admired the wonderful night which once again allowed us to examine the star filled sky whice also showed the Milky Way. We all tried to make some nice photos of the Muilky Way and the starts but this is definitely difficult to achieve satisfactorily.
We even had the chance to see a diamond python which was curled up behind one of the kitchen’s. It was a beautiful snake and we also took a couple of photo’s of it.