Fast Times in Byron Bay

Have you ever experienced the feeling of walking into a town you’ve never been before, and instantly feeling at home there? As if you had just found that place on earth you’ve been dreaming of all your life?

It had happened to me a few times before, but never quite as strongly as it did when I arrived in Byron Bay. It was truly love at first sight. 

Imagine a small surf town that has amazing surf breaks, gorgeous beaches and scenery, a chill atmosphere, friendly people,  a really healthy vibe (the town has like 5 health food stores and 0 fast food chains restaurants) , a vibrant nightlife (fun bars and great live music acts every night), some unbelievable trails for running , and to top it all off.... fun gorgeous girls everywhere. Can you say Heaven on earth? 

The only unfortunate thing about all this is that we only had 48 hours in Byron Bay. Clearly, there was only one possible course of action. Make those 48 hours as unforgettable as possible. 

Here is the story of our short but oh-so-sweet stay in beautiful Byron Bay, New South Wales, Australia.

On the 6^th of January, Matt and I set off from Surfers Paradise, a great place in its own right, but overdeveloped and too commercial for my liking for the short 1 hour drive to Byron Bay. We arrived there sometime in the late arvo, drove around for a bit looking for a hostel to sleep in that night. 

1 hour and 4 different hostels later, we had to face the fact that the whole town was booked out. We were going to have to be a little creative about this sleeping situation. 

I could see Matt was worried about this predicament of sorts, but personally I was getting quite excited about all this. I love adventures, and I could clearly see an epic one looming ahead. I had no idea where we were going to sleep 8 hours later, but I knew one thing. Those 8 hours were going to be unpredictable, really fun, and perhaps even a little wild. 

We started weighing our options, and the one to emerge from our discussion was to park the Jeep in the middle of the town, and “set up camp”. Meaning, we were going to put all our stuff on the front seats, put the back seats down, lay down our foam mattress in the back, and hope for it to be relatively comfortable.

Operation “Transform Jeep into a bedroom” was going smoothly until it started raining. Not a little light rain, a friggin’ tropical downpour . There wasn’t much we could do at that point, so we took cover. While we were waiting for the rain to subside, we cranked up some tunes, poured ourselves a few rhum & cokes, all the while thinking that things could be a whole lot worse!

Once the rain stopped, we finished organizing the jeep, and upon testing this new set we agreed that after a night a partying we would have no problem sleeping there. Delighted about this realization, we started walked the 50m that separated us from what Matt assured me was the wildest bar in Byron Bay, Cheeky Monkey. With every step towards the bar I was getting a little more excited, and then, my excitement reached its paroxysm as I saw a sign indicating that it was Wet T-Shirt Contest night at Cheeky Monkey. Haha! This was going to be one hell of a night :D 

We got in, ordered a couple pints and started chatting up some of the fellow patrons. It was all good fun but somewhat tame until the MC got on stage and exclaimed that as a warm-up for the Wet T-Shirt Contest, they needed 6 contestants to come up on stage for a Trivia Contest. I instantly started jumping up and down to show my interest and next thing I knew I was up on stage with 2 other dudes and 3 girls. The MC then explained the rules: each contestant was going to be asked a question and a right answer would get them through to the next round, and a wrong answer would yield two options. The first one was to get off stage and be out of the game, while the second one was to take off one item of clothing and make it through to the next round. Woah, definitely a good way to spice things up!

The game got underway and slowly but surely everyone started getting wrong answers and taking off some clothing. Eventually, other contestants started getting off stage and it got down to me and this cute British girl.  Oh yeah, at that point I was only wearing my boxers and she was only wearing panties and was trying to cover up her boobs as best as she could with her arm haha!

Hahah just thinking back about it makes me laugh! The whole time I was up there I just had the biggest grin on my face. Here I was, half drunk and half naked, in my dream town, on a stage in a bar in front of about 200 people, playing trivia against a topless girl. Priceless! 

The girl and I went back and forth, knowing that we had no room for mistake because, well, we only had 1 item of clothing left each! Then, the MC  asked me the following question:  “At the 1996 Olympic Games, which country came second in the medal count”? I started thinking... “All right, 1996 that was in Atlanta, so the USA would have won it for sure... but who came second?” Everybody in the audience was screaming out answers... Germany, China, Brazil, Russia...  This was a sports question, my forte, so I decided to follow my instincts. “Russia” I uttered confidently into the microphone. 

The MC flipped the card and said “The 1996 Olympics were in Atlanta and the USA won... and that year, 2 countries boycotted the Games. China was one of them... and the other one was... Russia! Hence, in 1996, it was Germany who finished second in the medal count at the Olympics”. Noooooooo. Hahah, oh well!!

I put my clothes back on, got off stage and headed to the bar to get a beer (all this thinking had made me thirsty!!!) and got congratulated by everybody on the way there. You could just feel that the vibe in the bar had shifted and that it was about to get real rowdy. Oh, and the wet t-shirt contest was still up ahead!!! PLL (Percentage of Loving Life) was sky-high!!!

The rest of the night was just great, I got to witness my first ever wet t-shirt contest and it was as entertaining as I had imagined it. Eventually the 2 finalists took off their tops and it became sort of a topless dancing contest. The crowd was going off and everyone was having a blast.

Once that was over, the staff cleared up the stage, the lights went down, and the dancefloor got out of control. I was totally enjoying the new found semi-fame I had earned from my trivia performance, and I was just all over the place dancing it up with everybody. Rowdy Phil was truly in fine form. Matty was out there ripping it up as well and we were loving life... Until we went up to the bar for a refreshment, and the bouncer tapped my shoulder and said “Your buddy’s had too much to drink, he’s outta here.” I tried to argue but then I looked into Matty’s empty eyes and realized that yeah, he was gone. I gave him the keys to the Jeep and told him I’d see him at some point in the next 12 hours. 

I grabbed my beer, went back on the dancefloor and to my utmost surprise, 10 minutes later Matty had reappeared with a new t-shirt and a cheeky smile on. All I heard him say over the music was “I’m back baby!!!”. Hahahah! 

From there, I’ll have to admit that things got a little blurry. I ended up befriending a lovely local girl and once the bar closed, we decided to go on a nice stroll on the beach. It was great fun, we really had some great conversation. I really feel like we got to know each other better while at the beach!

Eventually it was time to head back to the Jeep and I got lost in the middle of the town but somehow made it back to the Jeep around 5am and got “into bed” with Matty who was passed out cold. 3 hours later I woke up with a sore neck and sweating because it was like 35 degrees in the jeep. Only remedy was to pop the trunk open meaning that until we got up, people would be walking by us on their way to the grocery store. They probably had a good laugh looking at those 2 dudes sleeping in their underwear in the back on a Jeep. I know I would have ;)

The next day I was admittedly feeling a little rough. However, I am a strong believer in  getting up and being active to get over a hangover.  Hence, I headed off to the beach with my surfboard to catch a few waves. They were huge that day and paddling out to the break turned out to be a bit of a mission, but once I was out there, everything felt right once again. I ended up staying out for a good 4 hours, surrounded by some unreal surfers, just taking it all in and trying to ride the best I can in those 6-7ft curlers. 

 

I came out for some food, and next up I set off one of the best runs my life. Right next to the beach in Byron Bay is a small mountain with a lighthouse at the top. I started climbing the mountain and was getting a bit tired when I had one of the coolest sights of my life. On my left, a cliff overlooking the ocean and the beach. On my right, luscious vegetation and palm trees. In front, this gorgeous fit girl running down in front of me. If that wasn’t enough, exactly at that moment, a black Lamborghini rolled past us. Palm trees, ocean, beach, beautiful girl, beautiful car, all in my field of vision at once. All this amplified by the endorphins flowing through my body. Wow. 

That night we went out for a few drinks a place called Woody’s Surf Shack. While it was a slightly less eventful night, I was quite content sipping my drink and watching the surf videos being shown on the flat screen TV’s all over the bar. Having spent 4 hours earlier trying to simply catch the waves, I was mesmerized by what some of the guys out there can do on those waves.

The next day, unfortunately, it was already time to kiss Byron Bay goodbye. On our way out, we stopped in a place called Nimbin. I’m sure some of you will have heard about it... While I won’t get into the specifics , let’s just say it is a small hippie town in the middle of nowhere that could be described as “the Australian Amsterdam” haha! Strange place, but it was good to see!

 

All in all, the Byron Bay adventure was a massively positive one. So much so that I’ve promised myself I’d be back sometime, somehow. There is a company called Power Super Foods for which I would love to work and that has its offices nearby, so I’m thinking I might go there for a few months after my MBA. I’ll be graduating in November 2011, and I really don’t see myself going back to Canada at the start of Canadian winter/Australian summer, so... who knows, Byron Bay might be my next destination!