Our four day tightly scheduled trip was quickly headed to a bad start when our flight out of Townsville to Brisbane was delayed. Our delay caused us to miss our bus that would have taken us straight to Byron Bay, so instead we took a train to Gold Coast, hung out for a couple hours, then jumped on a late bus to Byron Bay, New South Wales, that ended up arriving at 1am. Not a fun travel day!
We woke up the next morning and headed to the beach for a couple hours before kayaking with dolphins. Our instructor was the epitome of an Australian "surfer dude" and absolutely hilarious. As we battled the 4 foot waves and got smashed in the face a few times before we hit the calm water. We were lucky enough to be out on the water for about 2 hours, wher
e I obviously got a great tan and a nice full-body work out ... and we saw the biggest group of dolphins our instructor has seen in a while ... LUCKY us. Must have been some birthday weekend luck. My instructor told us to each take turns standing up on the kayak to be the "lookout" for dolphins... I was the first to stand up, got way to excited and flipped right over into the water HA! The dolphins were very "playful" with each other. a.k.a. they were being naughty with each other and we watched every moment of it. That night we went out to Cheeky Monkey's and we had so much fun! The whole town is very oriented to clubbing and people our age, so I wasn't surprised that the bar was bizarrely set up without a dance f
loor and only provided long and wide metal tables for everyone to dance on. It was different, but ... efficient. The hangover really helped the next morning when I had to wake up to SKYDIVE!Skydiving was insane, incredible, terrifying, ridiculous, unbelievable, thrilling, amazing, heart pumping and I would absolutely do it again! I had such a body high all day and just looked up at the sky in disbelief!
After skydiving we had to catch a 3 hour bus ride, north, to Surfer's Paradise, Gold Coast, QLD. This city is so oriented to surfer chicks/dudes with a mix of serious business people that like to party at night. There were so many sections of shops, restaurants and strips of clubs to choose from. On my birthday, we got some delicious breakfast at a waffle house then headed to the gorgeous beach. The beach was packed and the weather was beautiful. After the beach we headed to the liquor store, grabbed a sandwich and headed back to the hostel to shower and get ready to go out. Luckily, on our way back we got stopped by some promoters of a pub crawl ... why lucky you ask? The promoters were desperate to even out the girl to guy ratio for this pub crawl, so desperate that what cost everyone else $60, cost us $15. Free entry, pizza and a free drink at every bar ... YES PLEASE!
Waking up the next morning at 5:30am with a hangover was not so fun, but all in all a weekend that started out quite terrible, ended amazing! I saw so many beautiful sights and made some great memories with an awesome group of girls!
(Uploads won't work tonight, but I will try again this week!)
Jess, you certainly had an adventurous and memorable 21st birthday. Love you and miss you. Mom
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