Day 356! Holy cow! I somehow missed that yesterday was 10 days till 365 days of travel!! An entire year… that’s crazy (far outttt as the Aussies would say). I left the US on January 3rd, but I think time zones and it being a leap year will throw off the exact date being a year. I don’t believe I’ve miscounted my days, but if someone wants to check let me know (just kidding, that’d take too long). But now it’s 9 days till a full year of travel and today Sammy and I went on a little adventure to the very popular destination of Byron Bay.

We had a bit of a fun time last night… but that wasn’t holding us back today! Our alarms went off at 7am and we rolled ourselves out of bed to start our day!

Today, we were waking up early to get out on the road to visit Byron Bay. A town I’ve wanted to see since hearing about the work holiday in Australia. I cooked us up a quick breakfast before we set out on the road.

Byron Bay is a surf town just an hour and a half from Yamba. Back in the day, Byron Bay was known as a quiet hippy surfing town, with good vibes and good waves! Now it’s exploded to a tourist hot spot and is filled with work holiday visa holders, locals, and holiday goers. Unfortunately, it’s become overcrowded and the locals are a bit bitter about it, with lots of them moving away. People say Yamba is similar to Byron Bay 20 years ago.

The drive on the highway was a fairly uneventful ride. It had some nice scenery, but kind of looked like every other road I’ve ever been on… minus the fact it had koala crossing signs. But I never spotted one!! I was quite disappointed.

Sammy and I chatted and listened to music the whole drive. I was tempted to take a nap, but I decided to put it off till later. I had work scheduled for later in the day, so I’d definitely need it before starting that.

We made it into town a little before 9:30am and drove into a very busy main road. Even though the towns blown up… there’s still only one road that goes in and out of the town. This causes a lot of traffic problems (so just a heads up if you ever plan on going and driving there). Because of this, I saw a ton of people biking/ebiking all around the town!

You could probably have guessed this, but parking was a bit of a nightmare too. Everywhere was packed and you had to pay $5 in every spot you parked for the hour. But thankfully we found a spot and set out to explore the main part of the town.

Our wandering led us to a coffee shop so Sammy could indulge in a morning cup of caffeine. As you can see in the picture, there was a lot of plants everywhere, which I really enjoyed!

This part of the town was filled with retail, restaurants, cafes, and bars. I’ve heard there’s a fun night life in Byron, but that’ll be saved for another adventure the next time I’m in town.

We wandered around this spot for a bit, until I needed a bathroom. So we walked towards the beach and I found a public toilet. This beach was the Main Beach and had a beautiful grassy park directly next to it and the beach stretched far in both directions. But it was super windy, so the waves were really choppy. This brought out some incredible kite surfers that were catching crazy air time and spring into the sky!

After our parking meter ran out, we ended up making our way to another beach around 10am. This beach was called “The Pass.” It was all the way at the end of the bend of the beach and had a really nice set of waves coming off a section of rocks. It also had an overlook that Sammy climbed up to, but I passed on it because of my foot.

We sat and jammed on the guitar, Sammy went into the water, and I (sunscreen on) sat in the sun enjoying the beautifully hot day. I absolutely love how much access to the beach I have! It’s incredible. There were tons of people out and about enjoying the day as well.

We ended up leaving the beach around 12:30pm, when our parking meter ran out. But we decided to go back into town for lunch! Something noticeably different about Byron Bay to Yamba was how touristy it felt. Yamba is a tourist destination, but mainly for Australians. Byron was full of internationals, travelers, holiday goers, and now locals. The town just felt like a beach tourist town, but a really fun one! Yamba doesn’t really feel that way, mainly because of how few people live here.

But while wandering around trying to find lunch, I had the thought, “there’s probably some really cool people I could meet living in this town.” Pretty much because there’s just that many more people living there! But I think I made the right choice of where I’m working and living. Much more my speed right now.

We went to a burger restaurant called Main Street Burger Bar. We both got chicken sandwiches and a bowl of poutine. But this of course reignited the debate on if this is a chicken sandwich or a chicken burger. From what we came to and also found online, in the US we decide what it’s called based on the inside of the sandwich. However, a lot of the world basses it on the outside (in this example, the buns).

After lunch, we did more perusing around store fronts. We popped into some thrift stores, surfing brand stores, and funky little shops that had all sorts of knickknacks that I’ve seen the same items for far cheaper in Thailand.

Most of the workers were young people, probably around my age or a little younger… but some were on the older side and I could tell, they embraced what Byron Bay used to be.

We thought about going to another beach when our meter ran out again. But we felt like we had experienced Byron Bay and thought it’d be a good idea to head back to Yamba. I had work tonight anyways so it didn’t bother me too much to get back earlier than expected.

The ride back started off a ton more scenic than the ride to Byron. But I still didn’t spot any koalas… I was a bit disappointed!

By the time we got home I was zonked and ready for a nap. Sammy decided it was time to head out. So we gave each other a big hug and he went on his way. Before my nap though, I FaceTimed my parents!

There wasn’t a whole lot of new things to chat about, but it was still lovely as always to catch up and speak “face to face.”

After this… I threw some laundry in and passed out for around 50 minutes! I woke up feeling refreshed and put my laundry in the dryer. This is when I scarfed down a snack of hummus and rice crackers, because I didn’t have time for dinner before work.

But… as I was watching the new YouTuber turned tv show host with his own show, Beast Games, I got a text from one of my managers saying I wasn’t needed in the end… this was 15 minutes before I my shift. That was a bit annoying, but I was okay with having the full day off!

Instead, I went to the pub to hang out with my friend Will, Sam, and Sam’s girlfriend Piper! We hung out for a bit and chatted, I only had a drink before having a lot of water the rest of the night.

Turns out, the bar ended up getting swamped, so they said they probably should’ve had me come in. But at the time they didn’t need me. It was a great way to spend the rest of the night and we sat with a couple of Swedish tourists in Yamba on holiday.

But, it was time for bed. So I made my way home and crawled into bed exhausted.

Tomorrow I was originally working the day and early afternoon. But tomorrow night I’ll be back to work! It’s about to get busy here!

– Elie