Happy High Herbs - Nimbin / 14.12.2018

Today we drove into town at 9:30 in the morning after a slightly longer and more restful sleep with the hostel shuttle, because there would be a tour to Nimbin starting from the bus station today. Nimbin is a small hippie (and big stoner) town near Byron, whose reputation precedes it. That's why we thought, if we're already here, why not take an old painted school bus there and check out what everyone is talking about. There are rumors that weed is sold on every corner, even though it is legally prohibited in New South Wales.

The drive was pretty fun and Ev, our bus driver and tour guide, played cool music the whole time. He also enlightened us about the drug situation, but winked at us and of course he knew that some of the people we had already talked to were only taking this trip for shopping reasons.

After an hour of sitting on the bus, Ev dropped us off on a street in Nimbin and there really was only that one street. No one really knew where to go and we were pretty confused by the small town. There were rainbow fences and benches everywhere and we decided to just walk up and down the street and explore the many little shops. Each one had some kitschy glass pipes or other hemp and smoking mixtures, but also funny knick-knacks, like flip-flops that look like a fish is eating your foot, and cute necklaces and bracelets. I bought some colorful bracelets and Linni bought a tree of life necklace, after we admired the large printed drug cookie recipe behind the counter. It was really a mystery to us how Nimbin could be the way it is, because if the police were really to search for drugs here, half the town would be in jail.

At some point we came to a building with a huge entrance in the shape of a hemp leaf and since we were curious about what the herb witches looked like, we took a look inside. Two people from our group was whispering quietly in there, so somehow you knew they had just bought something not so legal. We asked them and behold, the old thin woman behind the counter was apparently selling weed.

Later we came across another suspicious but very nice and cheerful-looking woman, because she had the craziest hippie clothes on, bright red dyed hair and a flower crown around her head. She also discreetly asked everyone if they wanted to buy cookies and when she wasn't standing on the street, she sat at a small table and predicted a few people's future. She gave us 2 mangos, which we accepted surprised but happily - hopefully they didn't contain anything mind-altering.

Overall, we got a pretty good impression of the town and the whole rainbow lifestyle was somehow cool.

After about an hour, Ev collected all of us again, whispers were everywhere - there were definitely guilty parties at work - but he just smiled amused. He had already lectured us all, there wasn't much more he could do.
On the drive back to Byron Bay, we stopped at a small waterfall, which was really very dry and only a small trickle of water flowed into the deep gorge, and Ev prepared a delicious Aussie barbecue for us on the public grills. The sausages weren't even half as good as the ones in Germany, but it was still meat and we couldn't afford that very often.
We stayed here for a while, rested on a beautiful meadow by a small lake and listened to the kookaburras - quite large, furry birds - singing. In the evening we went back.

Since there was no shuttle bus running at that time, we had to walk the entire way to The Aviary, but we were just glad that we didn't have our heavy backpacks with us. Also, time passed surprisingly quickly, but we were exhausted and eventually crawled into our tent after a little salad chopping.

Song of the day: Because I got High by Afroman, because Nimbin is a stoner town and our bus driver played it on the way there.