Coffs Harbour

We were sad to leave Byron Bay on Saturday, the weather had been fantastic and we made some good friends in our dorm on the last day. However, all backpackers are just about doing the same thing over here so we may well meet some of them again in Sydney or somewhere even further south.

From Byron we had a four hour journey to Coffs Harbour, a small green city (basically a spread out town) on the sea. We're at Aussitel Backpackers, undoubtedly the friendliest place we've stayed at yet and quite clean, thoguh there are baby cockroaches popping out at me when i least expect it. However, I'm even getting used to them, this morning I picked up the tea towel and one popped out of it, iIdidn't even scream or drop the tea towel! Not that I picked it up and gave it a good meal and a comfy place to lay it's head or anything. The hostel put on big barbeques and a cheap activity every day and night so we've been making the most of these.
The first full day (the only one when it didn't rain) we made use of the free kayaks at the hostel and had a jouney down the large creek running through town. It was fantastic, fish jumping a foot or so out of the water, herons and other long-beaked birds trying to catch them.

The only things to be heard were the cicadas, the occaisional bird cry and the swish of our oars. Wonderfully peaceful.

We decided to book a horse riding trek through the forests for the next day, and regretted it slightly when it started to chuck it down during the night! Unfortunately it carried on for the whole of the next day and it seems it will be for all today, i'm running out of dry warm clothes. The horse trek still went ahead, and it was amazing, but very very wet. I had quite a tempermental horse who would refuse to trot along with the others, and cantered off when they slowed down again. Great fun! Will definitely be doing that again.

We've got a day to hang around today as we're getting tonight's night bus to Sydney to save us a nights accommodation. Proper skimping backpackers we are now! Though David did go out yesterday and buy us steaks that literally cost a night's accommodation! I was annoyed with him but the meat was fantastic. Haven't told him that though! So yeah, we're chilling out, watching loads of strange films, drying off and eating a lot today. We've found an interesting hostel in King's Cross (the names of places in Australia are half English, half Aboriginal, making an interesting contrast) of Sydney and are celebrating Valentine's day with the hostel's free wine and cheese evening, then going to find a nice restaurant and stuff ourselves! Hopefully not as expensive as the steak though.

Ta ta