Mini Road trip: Gold Coast to Balina via Byron Bay

Day 1:  An early Tuesday start leaving Sydney at 7ish.  The early morning flight over the eastern suburbs revealed a nice day and an aerial view of the eastern suburbs.

Arriving at Gold Coast Airport I picked up the car and headed straight for Coolongatta.  It was a bit of a debate as to whether to get in at Dbah, Snapper or check Burleigh.  In the end I opted for snapper.  Nothing was classic and the wind was beginning to get up, but it was good to lok in a surf.  Very strange place to surf- the point is like a wave machine.  Unfortunately the wind and choppy east swell made it much more disorganized than it looked from above.  Had a little cruise down the coast checking miles of average beach break before heading to a rainy Byron Bay.

Day 2:  An early start paid a dividends.  So did a bit of driving.  Winds were offshore and there was a short period but decent size easterly swell.  Nowhere in Byron looked any good but success was found at Broken Head.  I surfed for 3 hours before feeling destroyed.  Without having food or water I was starving and thirsty.  So headed to Ballina via Lennox Head.  Ballina is a cool and quiet little town.  After smashing a pie and then an ice cream Lennox I spent the afternoon driving around.  A bit of night out of Byron with a few beers meant a late finish and another awesome pie.

Day 3:  Rain and not much surf- well not any good.  I checked out the Byron Bay Lighthouse and Australia's Easterly point.  Also a quick surf at sharky Tallows.  It was pretty dumpy and hard work. The common theme continues.  After a 30 min session more driving and a stop at the 'Humble pie' company.  I wouldn't say this pie was exceptional, but it was good.  I finished up the evening arriving at Surfing Australia in Casuarina.  Healthy dinner and early bed were the order of the day.

Day 4:  Early start to the coaching day at Surfing Australia.  A productive day.  Once I bothered fighting the current caught some fun rights with some footage review.  An avro technique skate and a short surf in what had deteriorated to dumpy onshore closeouts.

The day finished with driving up to the Goldie for a night in Surfer's Paradise (not paradise by the way).  The highlight was free beer in one bar.

Day 5:  Got in a surf near Burleigh Heads at a beach break while it was small but clean.  Headed on to where the trip started at Snapper to pack up the board and dry the wettie.  A last lunch and beer at the Rainbow Surf Club with a great view of snapper.  All rounded up with a Gelato Messina, who have an outpost in Coolongata (how un Queensland, before flying back to Sydney.

All in all a fun little trip.  Not the best waves or weather, but saw plenty of big name surf spots and enjoyed driving round somewhere else in Oz.

Around Eastern Suburbs

I finally completed the Bondi to Coogee walk.  I also did the treck up to Watson's Bay from Bondi.  lthough not coastal all the way there are some nice pockets en route and Watson's Bay itself is great.  Easy ferry ride back.

A trip to Cockatoo Island

I have been enjoying free Opal card travel at the weekends.  So when there is no surf there is plenty of exploring to do.

On a sunny Sunday last weekend I took the ferry out to Cockatoo.  It was a completely free day out and an interesting one too.

Cockatoo was a prison and then for nearly a century shipyard (bizarely).  Its now a tourist attraction although not a busy one.  A kind of Sydney Alcatraz.  Plenty of semi abandoned industrial buildings and equipment.  You can even stay the night, but a few hours was enough to see it.

Passing landmarks

  And another one

Cockatoo with a view

And things to see on the island too

Around Sydney

My priorities were to open my bank account and get an Aussie mobile number which I achieve.

Unfortunately a bite I got in England which had swelled up huge- so I got my first experience of a n Australian medical centre and pharmacy.  I need to sign up to Medicare since there is a reciprocal agreement.

In the afternoon the weather was good so went to the CBD, Hyde Park and did a walking tour.

The long journey

It seems obvious that Australia is quite a long way- so the journey was to be long.

A while ago I had booked on Ethiad as it wad the cheapest one way (excluding China Southern and Malaysian).  I was also keen to fly on an A380 as I am a bit of a plane geek secretly.

I was impressed with the A380 and had a smooth flight to Abu Dhabi.  There was a seat in the middle free which was a bonus.  The seats were comfortable, the windows large, the plane was very modern and also the way it was compartmentalized meant that it did not feel like a big plane- except when you look out the window at the wingspan.  Unfortunately at 6hrs this  was much the shorter of the flights.

I did not rate Abu Dhabi airport at all.  There was no where to sit until they opened the gate and kept having to go through multiple security layers.  It seems in the Arab world they only give a s*** about you if you have loads of money.

The long 13 hour flight was less comfortable. The 777 seemed old and cramped compared to the A380 and a bad seat selection by me probably didn't help.  When I made it to Sydney there was a long queue for passports.  However once I got through it was easy.  So long as you don't try and bring organic matter in there is no hassle.  The train to town was easy and took 10 mins.  Handily the station was also next to my hostel.


Overall a long but in the scheme of things not too painful journey.  I thought Ethiad were okay but not nearly as good as they think they are.  Granted the food was good and they take surfboards.  But I don't want to watch videos about Man City or a stupid advert about the airline before every film or tv program.

I'm off to OZ

I am at Heathrow, waiting to begin a long journey to Oz.  Many months of planning finally coming to a head.

Final Days in and around Rio

It’s clear that I haven’t updated this blog in a while.  In this time Chelsea have even won the Premier League (YES!!!).  Now waiting at Galeo Airport gives me the perfect opportunity so I will cover off the last three days.

On Friday Maria had a day off thanks to a national holiday.  In the morning I headed for a casual surf down at Arpadoar.  There was a big swell hitting the whole coast.  I had avoided going in the day before as it had been raining heavily, and as mentioned in the last post rain equals sewage due the lack of proper sanitation in much of the city.  The left was working really well but with a crowd of 30-40 on it I opted for one of the ‘peaks’ further down.  It was still croweded and dirty but managed to score a left.

The weather was great and later on headed to Bar do Bacano- ‘my favourite bar in Rio’.  I hadn’t been there since my first trip in 2013.  We had to wait to get a seat but it was worth it.  I unintentionally managed to order 2 600m bottles of Orignial and had Maria’s Caipirhina- needless to say ended up pretty wasted.

Afterwards we headed to nearby Parque Large for a quick stroll around.

When the weekend arrived we agreed to hire a car and drive down to the national park around Prainha and Grumari.  We had done this before, but this time instead of exploring we were heading for cleaner beaches and a mini road trip.  After picking up a car at Localiza it was a fairly easy and scenic drive.  

Passing Prainha the waves were much bigger than expected and the paddle out looked brutal.  Prainha is certainly exposed- on a 5ft swell the waves were well overhead.  We carried on to Grumari where we got lucky on the parking space and also the waves.  A decent clean left was running right down the first part of the beach.  Grumari is the beach featured in the beach scene of ‘City of God’ and is probably the nicest in the immediate Rio area.

Waves were really good- with fun lefts and the odd shorter right.  You will have to see pictures Maria got of much better surfers than myself (below) to get the full picture.

Following a while on the beach we headed for a late lunch down at Guaratiba.  Unfortunately the restaurant, which did fish Bahia, style was not so good and quite expensive.  Generally I would avoid eating fish in Brazil- they seem to have a tendency to deep fry the whole thing and serve it with paste.  It ends up being far to heavy and lacking that fresh flavour.  This seems to have happened every time we have gone for local fish on our trips.  However at the town we saw another wave in the across the river mouth which was pretty small and clean,b ut had some shetler from the wind hitting the exposed beaches.  Clearly an option for big and stormy easterlies.

We had such a good day at Grumari we kept the car and headed back the next day.  Waves were smaller but still fun.  After hours on the beach we headed for luch in the restaurant by the beach, which was definitely and improvement on the previous day.  The only issue with Grumari and the area around was a large and aggressive bee population (they are everywhere).  Maria got stung and I certainly came close a few times.

The car journey back was pretty smooth and was even able to get a parking space very close to Maria’s flat.  I was so knackered and despite applying strong sun block ended up somewhat burned.

Sitting at the airport this concludes a great trip in Rio and around South America.  Now many hours on TAP await before returning to London.