Back in Byron

I woke up Saturday morning in Byron with no particular plans in mind. I just knew I wanted to meet up with Maren and Yuan at some point.  I had been told about the Byron Bay lighthouse because it was a big tourist attraction.  It sits on the most eastern point of Australia.  Hiking to it would be a good walk for a Saturday afternoon so I asked the girls if they would want to go there.  

We met up in town and did a little bit of shopping before we headed to the beach.  It was partly cloudy but decently warm so there were plenty of surfers out in the ocean.  We watched and judged their moves as they slid by.  Promotional girls walked by handing out free entries to bars.  A girl from Cheeky Monkey's was all too convincing with the "monkey money" she gave us and the allure of $5 meals as well as free champagne for women from 8-10 PM.  Us girls decided we would meet up at Cheeky Monkey's around 7 for dinner and see where the night took us.  We each bought a bottle of wine and headed back to our hostels to get ready.

Someone in the past wrote on one of our blocks,
"Get naked on a surfboard"

After I got ready, I went into the rec room for a bit to charge my phone and finish off my bottle of wine.  While sitting there, a guy named Conor from the UK made a joke about me drinking my wine out of the bottle.  I started talking to him and his friend Doug as they shot a few games of pool.  I said good bye to the guys and headed to Cheeky Monkeys. 

I met Yuan and Maren in the front of the bar and we walked in together.  We ordered our meals--I spent a whole $2 more just to get the chicken schnitzel.  The dinners were wonderfully cheap and the portions were fantastically large.

  At our table, we also had a Jenga set to play while we waited for dinner.  Mind you, Cheeky Monkeys is a sort of club/restaurant; a DJ was already playing loud music and giving away backpacker tours and trips.  Some of our Jenga pieces were blank but many of them had commands written on them already.  For example, Maren was probably the most shy of us girls at the bar that night and one of her Jenga pieces read, "Give someone a hickey".  Luckily, we all had a decent buzz when we got there, and the free champagne was flowing steadily.  We all danced like idiots for hours.  I stopped drinking when the free champagne ran out, which was definitely a good thing.  

Eventually I darted back to the AFL after having more than my share of wine.  I thought my evening was basically over...but it wasn't.  The night was definitely a blur but I know a few things for sure: I met back up with Conor and his friends in the rec room, we walked back into town to go get pizza, we walked to the beach, and Conor got arrested for drunk driving.  He was trying to help this couple jump start their car, but, of course, right when he hopped in the drivers seat, the cops showed up.  After the cop incident, the mood of the night was destroyed, so we headed back home.  

I'm not sure where we got it from or why we took it, but I have several bruises on my body to prove that we brought a shopping cart back to the AFL and tipped it over at one point.  I hit the ground like a sack of potatoes...