On Wednesday, September 24th, my friend and I had bought a ticket to Brisbane after previous plans had fell through. Once again, spontaneity and lack of thinking (first started in middle school) had set the course for what was to come. We arrived in Brisbane at 11:30, downtown at around 12am. Not having booked hostel reservations, Mat and I walked the streets for about an hour only to find that every single hostel in downtown Brisbane was full. Fortunately, three girls that were on our flight had their hostel reservations screwed up, were then given an empty room to stay in; so Matt and I seized the opportunity and bunked up with our friends (in this creep ass hostel) while enjoying a 60 dollar drink card (that the girls were given, but then gave to us) in the remaining bar that was still open. I'll spare the details, but it ended up being a pretty sweet first night in Brisbane.
Day two we took the train to Surfer's Paradise (funny name for a city). Apparently people surf there. The hostel that we stayed in contained people from all over the globe, but I'd like to mention our crazy South African roomie who would never sleep and our Italian roomie Fabio who was, well, reminded me of some crazy Italian. Anywho, we ended up seeing some friends from San Diego who are studying in Sydney and chilled w/ them for the night. The second night in surfers we were conned into a pub-crawl consisting of over 400 people (including some from uni). It was a shit show. Many good looking people. And we ran into an ol buddy Grant Walker from Laguna Hills. However, by the end of the 2nd night I was ready to move on and escape from the trendy and yuppie club scene.
The next day we caught a grey hound to Byron Bay, Australia, AKA my new favorite place. What used to be an artsy, bohemian, musical town where canned heat and other great bands played at, is still the artsy, bohemian, musical town with just more people and a little more money goin around. Jack Johnson actually owns a house 5 clicks down the road. We stayed at a hostel containg two Swedish girls, two German girls, and then two french girls. What a dream yah? Nothing really happened but it was funny because while we were hanging out, everything I would do they'd say "oh that's sooo american" and make a big joke bout it. Hmm. Anyways, the second day in Byron Bay we took a tour to the little town Nimbin (aka little Amsterdam) through "Jim's Alternative Tours". Boy was that a doozy. Have you ever heard of the Merry Pranksters? Well lets just say same idea here for Nimbin. As I stepped on the bus, amazing, chill, and insightful music was blasting. After picking everybody up, we began our hour drive towards the little town while Jim narrated the drive with stories and his favorite music. He also gave us advice about how to tackle nimbin. Again, I wont go into detail, but the Nimbin experience was quite amazing and out-of-this-world and I would definitely reccomend this tour to anyone who is looking for a genuine and strange experience. So on the drive home, everybody was in sort of in a different state of mind. Jim would take us through long rolling hills and wild corners with certain songs programed to fit every bit of it (we even climbed a huge hill just to play his 5min12sec song to play while rolling down the 5min12sec drive down the hill). After an hour of driving around beautiful countryside, we stopped at this old american hippie's house. His name was Paulie and he moved to Nimbin from NY in the 70's. After offering us fruit, informing us about his way of life, chilling in his little lakeside deck, and going on a little forest trek, we hopped back on the bus and drove through a rain forest, stopping an a 128 meter waterfall, stopped to pick up some food, and finally, finalllly all 25 of us were dropped off back to our hostels. WHEWWW! what a day. We loved Byron so much, we decided to skip our Fraser Island trip and stay in Byron for a total of 3 nights, the last being spent at an alternative hostel called Arts Factory. Arts Factory reminded me of a hippie commune packed with musicians and all different races of hippies that you could wonder up. This is also the place where great bands used to perform in the 70's.
Byron Bay was amazing, but we had to keep on trekin'. We headed up north past Brisbane in our just rented "Wicked Campervan" ('88 toyota van stuffed w/ a bed n kitchen) towards the Sunshine Coast to a town called Noosa. It comparable to being the "Laguna Beach" of Australia. There were many little ritzy and yuppie restaurants with tons of teens running around with their families. Everything closed at 12 but during the daytime, surfing was the number one activity. Mat and I rented surfboards for two days and walked around to different breaks (however the condishes weren't that great).So I've also noticed that the girls in this part of Oz are more attractive than up in TSV. Sorry tsv but its true. There are more backpackers, more city folk, more beach goers, and just more people. On our last night in Noosa, just before we were about to leave the Koala Hostel, this girl tapped my window n asked me a questions about the van. To make a long story short, she ended up being an extremely cool, funny, and very cute girl from Switzerland which is extremely awesome. We talked for a long time and wanted to talk for more, but matt and her friend wanted to leave. Hopefully, someday, I'll meet up with her again n pick up where we left off. However, unfortunately, FB just told me she has a bf. wtf. Well, whatever happens is how it happens.
Anyways, today I woke up next to some beach south of Noosa, jumped in the ocean, rinsed off, drove to the Steve Erwin (God bless his soul) Zoo called the Australian Zoo, checked it out, then drove back to Brisbane, hopped on a flight back to Townsville, and just like that, my lil adventure was past.
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