How We Spent Our Summer Vacation, Part II

Rebuffed by rain at Mt. Warning we headed down to Byron Bay on Sunday morning.  The ride down was a piece of cake.  It's only about 60k further south from the mountain.  When we arrived the sun was shining and the town was packed.  Byron Bay is a small town built on the bay from which it takes it's name.  James Cook (Yep, Captain Cook) named it such on his expedition to map the east coast of Australia.  Cape Byron is actually the eastern most tip of Australia.  On top of the hill on the cape is a gorgeous white light house.  It really makes an idyllic setting.

We got into town about 10:00 and set about finding a campsite for the night.  This turned out to be a real pain.  Every campground in town was packed with people.  We had been told that everyone was on vacation this week, but we didn't think they literally meant EVERYONE. The town was over run with people on holiday.  We actually had to sit in traffic for thirty minutes or so just to get into town.  We quickly found out that the prices for camping during the week were out of control.  Most places wanted to charge us $35 per person per night.  That's $70 a night to sleep in our own tent.  We weren't going to have that so we decided to drive a bit and check our options.

We checked at least five different campgrounds or "caravan parks" as they're called here, in Byron and then started going to other towns. Most of the other towns were just as packed and not nearly as nice as Byron was. We drove all over the place with no luck. So we spent most of the day driving and after nearly 200k we wound up back in Byron and camping on the high school football field for $40.  We felt defeated.  The woman hosting at the football field told us that they had just raised their rates to sort of keep up with the rest of the town, but she felt that the prices people were charging were "just ridiculous".
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We had been sitting in the car all day so we decided to check out the beach.  It was the best decision we made all day.  We had done very little (read: none) research about Byron before we went there and were surprised constantly by the beauty of the place.  We first drove up the hill to the light house and found the parking lot full.  We snapped a few quick pics and drove back down the hill.

At the bottom of the hill we found a trail head that climbed back up and around the point.  The hike did us a world of good.  We both felt a lot better after streching our legs a little and working up a sweat.  Plus we got a bunch of great pictures.

Here's one of Leah at the eastern most point of Australia

                                  

 and here she is after we climbed the hill, you can just see where we were in the last picture down below.  I was a wee bit sweaty by the time we made it up.

After the climb we went back down and walked on the beach for an hour or so.  By the time we were ready to head to the campsite the skies were looking a little dark.  Here's a picture of me doing one of my favorite things, sitting on a rock by the sea.

Tuckered we grabbed a sandwich at Subway (Seven, Seven, Seven dollar foot longs!) and ate a quick dinner before it started to rain.  Once it did start to rain in earnest we fell asleep pretty quickly.  Despite the camping frustration we were feeling pretty excited to try scuba in the morning.

It rained most of the night and it actually helped us sleep.  We woke up about 6:00 and headed into town to get some coffee.  We're both getting used to drinking one cup of super strong espresso instead of the normal pot of joe.  I have noticed that people look at us a little funny when we drink a "long black" without sugar.

Our class was scheduled for 8:00 and we took our time having coffee and actually ate a nice brekkie.  A luxury we don't allow ourselves too often these days.  Full and rested we headed up the street and into my new obsession.

Tomorrow: Discover Scuba!