Gold Coast, Byron Bay and NYE

We got the greyhound to surfers paradise and spent all of ten minutes there. Marty and family came to pick us up in their people carrier (good job cos we'd got our rucksacks etc) and took us back to their house in the hills (near Mt Tangerine, ha ha) where we met the residents: Angus the dog (after Aberdeen Angus steak), kevin the pig (think Kevin Bacon) and a variety of hens (12 in total) as well as a visiting snake who sat in a tree for the duration of our stay :s Marty is the brother of Janine, who I met in Hong Kong. He is very funny and his family very accommodating. They took us to see the view of Surfers Paradise from Mt Tangerine but due to the weather all we could see was grey clouds n the occasional glimpse of a skyscraper that night we went to a Thai restaurant and had a really nice time chatting away and watchin the twins, 10 yrs old mess around. The next morning we had fresh boiled eggs n soldiers (fresh bread) yum! With a cuppa tea of course then played with Angus. Hel went to say hi to Kevin and ended up getting 'tusked' in the bottom! There was blood and all im going to say about our relationship after me tending the wounds, is that its moved to whole new levels...! Once all the excitement had passed we took a walk in the afternoon to explore the local neighbourhood. That evenin Hel and I played UNO with the girls, Sai and Tia whilst Cheryl did a mega BBQ. A few glasses of wine later (one of whih accidentally got split over the Cards- agh, sorry hel!) and we were watching a movie on the homescreen tv :-)
Since our next stop was Byron Bay, Marty and co decided to spend the day there so we all went in the perople carrier to BBay, Hel and I checked into the YHA then we all regrouped for lunch. We went down to the beach then said our goodbyes and thankyous! We had had a few lovely days away from the norm of backpacking and it was a welcome change

On the way into Byron we ended up queuing in traffic for an hr or more cos everyone wants to be in Byron for new yr, so to pass time we played eye spy (FYI this wasn't for the kids benefit). Watching everyone walking to and from campsites with surfboards or crates of beer (or both!) felt like we were on our way to a music festival, which made me have a good feelin about Byron before exploring. After Marty and family left us at the beach we decided to take a look around and whilst doin so bumped into the 3 Welsh lads we'd shared a dorm with in Hervey Bay. We arranged to go for drinks later that eve then went shopping!

The next morning we went bakini shopping for Hel and then headed to the beach for some sun (finally some sun!)... This was NYE so we also went to the licquor store (that sounds so American!) I mean bottleo, to ge our supplied n headed back to the hostel to get ready. We'd met two English girls in our room so had a bit of dinner then joined them for drinks on the balcony, and of course drinking games. Which don't work that well with wine :s anyway, we seemed to bypass midnight on our walk, which turned into a run, to the beach where upon I jumped on Whiteley so we spent 'new year' rolling around in the sand like kids! Ha ha

The next day it was raining (typical, have you read about the rain here?) so we had a lay in (nothing to do with hangovers) and then I walked through the rainforest to the lighthouse on a broadwalk, and back to the bay along the beach. It was really grey n miserable but, I did enjoy the walk.

Which I repeated the next day with Hel in the sunshine this time with much better views.

And that meant I could have an icecream at the lighhouse...yumThere was a Sunday Market that hel n I popped along too which was nice, hippie and the sun was out which made the day even better. We even tried to arrange hang gliding at Byron but the weather wasn't suitable...too windy or not enough wind, and we couldn't hang around for the weather so headed onto our next destination, by local bus, Lennox Head.