Byron Bay Beach

Today we got up around 9 and got ready and went to the beach. On the way we dropped into one of the many backpacker travel agents as we'd had trouble booking something online so we were hoping they'd book it for us. The guy went on and on for ages but we eventually managed to book the trip we wanted. 

We now have all the accommodation and travel booked from this point forward, up the coast to Surfers Paradise, Brisbane, Rainbow Beach, Hervey Bay, Airlie Beach, and Cairns, before flying down to Melbourne at the end of the month, and onward to Auckland a couple of days later. So that's all fab!

We got to the beach around 11. It was a beautiful beach with white sand and big waves. We set up camp and covered ourselves in suncream, hoping to avoid a repeat of burning at Bondi. After a while sunbathing we went in the sea. We were faffing about in the fairly shallow area for a while. Then an Australian girl came over to us and told us to watch out because there was a jellyfish right next to us. I have never seen Lauren move so fast. She legged it out the sea. I wasn't too far behind. The girl told us yesterday that the whole beach on the other side of where we were was shut yesterday due to bluebottle jellyfish, which are harmful.  She said they're hard to miss because they're bright blue. This one she saw wasn't bright blue and she didn't know if we had to worry about it but we didn't hang around to find out. We didn't go in the sea again.  We left the beach around 4 and headed for the showers at the hostel. The showers here are so much better than the ones we had in Sydney. You don't just feel like you're being dribbled on with these ones.

Afterwards we went for dinner, our first meal of the day, at a place across the road called Cheeky Monkeys. We had 50% off vouchers so we had $5 cheeseburgers with chips and we got a free drink. They were offering beer, wine or cider. I asked for diet coke. The guy behind the bar was like "that's not very financially efficient". I told him I don't like beer, wine or cider. He almost died of shock when I asked for no ice. The burger was actually pretty good but I was so hungry by this point anything would have done. The only other thing we'd eaten had been a couple of crisps.

Afterwards we went for a stroll round Byron Bay town and back to the hostel to decide on what trips we wanted to do in Cairns. Tomorrow is supposed to be 32°. I may melt.