Well, yesterday I went on my tour of Nimbin, which was a town unlike any I have ever seen in my life. We got into a tye-dyed bus at 10:15, which was driven by a short-haired hippy who told us stories about the many different areas around Byron Bay as we passed them. “this hostel was once a slaughter house, but it was bought and shut down – and a vegetarian restaurant opened up across the street! Kind of a karmic justice, isn’t it?”
The town of Nimbin is built inside an extinct volcano. When I first heard this, I was expecting dust and dirt roads and not much greenery (you hear ‘volcano’ and that is the image that is usually conjured) but it was actually the most beautiful, green, lush, hilly place I’ve seen in a long time! The scenery driving up to get into the volcano as well as driving down into the volcano was just breathtaking. A few of the roads were pretty scary because we were right next to a cliff and there was no wall but it was still pretty neat.
It took about an hour to get to the town of Nimbin, and it was so interesting. All of the shops were colourful and bright and it was exactly what you would think a town run by hippies would look like.
Seriously, it was like if you took the sixties and put it into an extinct volcano, and there you have Nimbin.
After we wandered around the town and had lunch, we got onto the bus again and went off to the market. It was kind of like a flea market run by hippies. Is anyone catching the hippy motif on this trip?
After we had wandered around the market for an hour, we got back onto our bus to go to see the waterfall. The waterfall was located inside a rainforest, which brought back so many memories of Costa Rica! We only had a short time at the rainforest/waterfall, so I didn’t really have time to explore. All we really had time for was to eat a slice of watermelon and look at the waterfall for a few minutes, and that was it. We didn’t go swimming. Some of the other groups did that but I think because we were running a bit late we only were able to see the waterfall from the top of the cliff. It was a huge and deep cliff, but the waterfall was very cool. The bus driver told us that normally the waterfall wasn’t as big, but because of all the rain we had gotten lately it was much more spectacular than it would have been. So I guess there was one good thing about all that rain!
After the waterfall and watermelon, we got back on the bus and headed for home. It was really a great trip, very interesting and I’ve never really been to a place like that before. It was like an entirely different culture.
I didn’t really do much last night after I got back from the trip, we just went and had ice cream and sat on the beach and watched the waves and looked at the stars. I took a goodbye picture of all the people that I hung out with while in Byron Bay, since most likely we wouldn’t see each other again.
If you have noticed, the pictures are smaller and I was able to put them right side up! I figured out a way to do it (sometimes) on computers, but it only works if the computer lets me save files. I made them a smaller size to make them upload a lot faster. Since I’m paying to use the internet by the half hour.
And now to leave you. I’m going to be on a 12-hour bus trip this afternoon to get back to Sydney for a day or two so I can the work stuff settled… or get more information on “wwoofing” if that’s what I choose to do. Most likely it is what I’m going to do. It would be neat to stay with different Australian families and experience their day to day life… and experience the REAL Australia.
I’ll give you one last picture… this was from a couple of nights ago when we were playing Jenga at a restaurant. I was making a funny face so I wanted to share. Good times… good times!
