Byron Bay, Australia

During the past two months and change we have bumped into a lot of Australians and when ever we mentioned that we were going to go to Australia they would mention the Whitsundays and Byron Bay. Since we would be passing by Byron Bay on our way from Brisbane to Sydney we thought we had to spend some time there.

Since we were on the road at 7am after getting up at 5am and doing a nature hike, we drove from Lamington National Park to Surfers Paradise for breakfast. Surfers Paradise sounds like a small surfing town where the surf is perfect and people are laid back; I was expecting something like Santa Cruz, CA. Instead, Surfers Paradise is like Miami. High rise condominium towers everywhere with more going up every minute. Lots of high end shops and almost no charm. Lara wanted to stop in Surfers Paradise because it had a bungee jumping platform and Lara had, "Bungee jump in Australia" listed as one of her must dos on the trip. We got to the bungee jump platform and it was some guy who had a bungee setup off of his construction crane. This, and the fact that it didn't open for another 2 hours made us leave Surfers Paradise without much hesitation. The surf did look good, but it looks good all over Australia.

We kept heading south after Surfers Paradise driving right along the coast. The high rises and sprawl ended pretty quickly and the short (2 hour) drive to Byron Bay was really nice. Driving in Australia isn't as hard as people think it is. In Australia, like almost all other British Commonwealth countries, people drive on the left side of the road and the steering wheel is on the right. Driving on the left side of the road isn't hard at all. Driving on the right side of the car with all of the controls and mirrors reversed is kind of hard. The hardest part was actually the most humorous. Since the controls are reversed the turn signal and the windshield wipers are reversed compared to American cars. We can't count how many times I tried to signal a turn and the wipers started going off. It's better than plowing into an oncoming truck I guess.

We got into Byron Bay around noon and spent the remainder of the day there. Byron Bay is as good as the Australians make it out to be. The town is really laid back, with no high rises or high end stores. It's mostly small hotels and cool boutique shops. The beach on Byron is also fantastic, but so are most beaches in Australia. We spent the day walking around the town nursing a sunburn and in the evening we had a barbecue on the beach. Australians love their barbecues. They have nice gas powered barbecues at all beaches and parks. If you want to barbecue you just bring some meat and grill it. Awesome.

The following morning we got up and jogged around the Byron Bay Lighthouse and the eastern most point of Australia's mainland. After our jog we got back on the road.