December 21, 2009
8pm
Bondi Beach on the eastern side of Sydney is supposed to be “the” beach-the one you see in movies, the one the rich and famous go to, the one where anyone who is anyone hangs out. We pictured this huge golden sand beach extending for miles full of gorgeous people and movie stars. What we saw when we got there was a half mile stretch of beach with a rundown boardwalk and murals on their concrete walls that really just looked like graffiti. It wasn’t so terrible, really. The sand was decent, the water temp was tolerable, but mostly the sky was cloudy and the beach full of fat lazy tourists like ourselves. Didn’t stop us! We joined right in the laziness.
There were actually minimal options for food and drinking establishments, but we desperately wanted a daquiri or margarita, some frozen beverage. We finally found a bar serving them (at an outrageous price) and decided to indulge. Unfortunately, the margarita was not frozen like we desired, but rather “on the rocks” essentially. Appeared more like a martini…but with tequila (small amounts of it, too). For some reason, our margaraita disappointment did not stop us from ordering Mexican food…which was served to us in rabbit size portion. So much for that. I guess thats how all those movie stars can stay rail thin and still hang out at Bondi Beach. My theory is that they are all at their own private beaches on Tahiti or Fiji for the holidays, and thats why we didn’t see anyone. That, or they didn’t want to be shown up by Chris’s rugged good looks.
The next day we took the 5km walk from Bondi to Coogee, which winds along clifftops and along a few other less crowded beaches. The views were decent, but not the best we’ve had. We stopped after a bit for breakfast at an oceanside cafe, taking in the views and people watching. It was fun to hang out at some of the less crowded beaches, though. Chris enjoyed playing in the waves like he was 5 years old. Somewhere along this walk is the house of Heath Ledger…er, I guess now it probably belongs to his parents or daughter or girlfriend or something. Needless to say, we weren’t able to pick it out.
We decided to make another attempt at surfing since our hostel offered free surfboards for use. We only had the one lesson behind us, but thought sure, we can do it. Wellll we were wrong. The surfboards we had at our lesson were quite long and broad, providing a lot of stability. The board we had from the hostel was smaller, making it a lot more difficult to balance. In addition, the waves at Bondi broke very unevenly and irregularly, making it difficult to catch one. Kathleen managed to stand up once, and Chris was at least able to ride the board in on his stomach, but the uneven surf and rip tides got too dangerous and tiring.
As you may have inferred, our hostel, and the Bondi area in general, is dominated by the surfer/hippie culture, and it seemed like most of the people working at our hostel were into the funny stuff. Our first night, we also had a false fire alarm we had to evacuate the building for. Someone smoking in their room, probably. Good thing it wasn’t real, though, since it took the fire department about 15 minutes to get there. Such are the things that come with staying in a cheap hostel. The accomodation itself really wasn’t bad, just wasn’t our crowd.
It is hard to believe, but our trip is just about over. We can’t even comprehend how quickly it has gone by or how sad we’re going to be to leave. Aside from the 10 foot long cockroach (I SWEAR he was that big!), pretty much every experience we had was fun and exciting. Hopefully we manage to entertain ourselves one last time before heading back to the States. Post again soon!
