Alien Surfgirls - Agnes Water, 1770 / 12th and 13th November 2018

At 2 o'clock in the morning we arrived 25km away from Agnes Water with our bus and this time we were really kicked out in the middle of nowhere on a dirt road. However, the shuttle bus from our new hostel, Cool Bananas, was already waiting for us and we were a little annoyed when we had to pay $20 for it - but okay, it's okay for a 30-minute drive.

But what caught my attention the most when I got off the bus was the starry sky - thousands of stars were hanging above us in the clear night and it's hard to believe, but you really get used to the stars at home and it was so strange not being able to immediately recognize the Big Dipper. But I did see the constellation of Orion directly above us, which I already knew from Corsica and as I suspect, it was even a kind of Big Dipper for Australians, because you could see it immediately when you looked up. However, here it is on the other side of the world, upside down, which made me really feel the distance.

So Linni, another guy, and I got off the bus after an internal farewell ceremony for the $40 from our travel fund and got into a nice older lady's car - the hostel owner - and drove along the empty road, where we could see a few wild kangaroos at one point.

When we arrived, we were shown our 8-bed room, woke up all the other people, and then fell dead in our bunk beds.

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We slept until about 8:30 am and treated ourselves to some toast with bitter-tasting orange marmalade because that was the only thing left from the free breakfast at 9 o'clock.

Then we went to the little shopping street because we had to replenish our noodle supply and we also found a cute little jewelry and souvenir shop called Rock Store, where I bought a nice shark tooth necklace with 2 turquoise turtles on the sides and a cute anklet with colorful stones. Right next to it, there was a surf shop where we got information about the surf lessons here. We had heard that Agnes Water has the cheapest surf lessons on the east coast and that the baby waves here are perfect for beginners. This is basically the beginning of surfing in Australia on the way down to Melbourne.

We signed up for the next day and then went to the local library. I chilled out in a bean bag chair there while Linni Googled some things about finding work on a computer.

On the way back, we saw a really fat, large lizard climbing a tree in the bushes and at first, I thought it was a snake because the tail of this thing just looked so snake-like and dangerous.

Other than that, we bumped into Anna from Airlie Beach again in our hostel and found out that she also wants to do the surf course with another nice guy named Jonathan tomorrow, whom we asked about his name in a little clever maneuver because Anna had forgotten it, which she was embarrassed about because she had been with him all day yesterday. She told us that they had lost each other and she couldn't even call him, which we found quite funny.

Otherwise, we fell asleep pretty early that day when we really just wanted to rest in bed for a bit and ended up sleeping for practically 12 hours until 9 am, but I think that's okay given our arrival time here.

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The next day, we started around 10 am to go to the Surf 2 Reef Surf School because that's where I would try to stand on a surfboard for the first time (Linni had apparently already been in a beginner's surf class somewhere 3 years ago) - kiteboarding somehow didn't count, even though I had only managed to do it well once recently.

Our group was surprisingly large - yesterday when we inquired, the woman told us that there were only 10 people in the group - today it was 40. Lol.

After we had absorbed a few explanations about health and dangers, we took the 5-minute walk down to the beach where a trailer full of surfboards was waiting. Then each of us took 2 boards - one under each arm, one in front, one in the back - and then neatly lined them up next to each other in the scorching sand.

Afterwards, we put on the really stylish blue and black surf vests and sat in the shade of a tree to watch our main surf instructor, who explained the surfboard to us and showed us how we should stand up. He also explained how the lesson would go - there would be 3 surf instructors standing next to each other in the water and we should form a long line, go into the water one by one, jump on the surfboard, and then line up after the instructors, paddling in 3 rows so that we would also get some one-on-one time with a coach and not crash into each other.

We applied some sunscreen again and then we practiced standing up on the board on land a few times. There was also a photographer who started taking pictures of us at this funny sight.

A few minutes later, we went into the water, which was a welcome cool down, and we started. I always positioned myself next to the first instructor who explained everything to us beforehand and who looked like a typical old surfer type with a big beard, long hair, sun hat, sunglasses, and at least 5 layers of sunscreen on his face. So when it was my turn, I paddled towards him, he greeted me with a handshake and a 'Eyyyy, cool banana!!' after he glanced at my bracelet (everyone who checked into our hostel got a cool blue and yellow Cool Banana wristband) and when the next small wave came, he gave my board a push and I tried to stand up somehow. At first, it didn't work at all, but eventually I kind of got the hang of it (but only a little bit). So it went on for an hour and a half and it was really a lot of fun and I was looking forward to our planned surf camp in Byron Bay even more.

After we finished, we received a beginner's level 3 surfing certificate and we went to see the pictures taken by the photographer. There were some pretty funny ones, but both Linni and I found a cool one of ourselves and just bought it for $5 because you can't always save money.

Afterwards, we had a big portion of noodles and rested for a bit, only to go out again in the afternoon around 4 pm to rent bikes and see the sunset at the beach in 1770. 1770 is the only town in the world named after a number - it's called that because Captain Cook reached and discovered it in 1770 with his ship.

It took about half an hour to get to the cape and the Captain Cook monument there, but the roads were very hilly so we were quite out of breath when we arrived. We also had to stop at a yellow kangaroo sign in between to have a little photo shoot and we also had to take a picture of the 1770 town sign.

Linni wanted to keep riding further from the monument, but I didn't feel like it and so I waited for her there. But then 10 minutes later she sent me her location and wrote that she couldn't find her way back and hardly had any battery left, but I should come to her, so I tried. But I turned the wrong way and ended up on a stone staircase through the jungle with my bike and the sunset wasn't too far away either, so we decided to watch it alone and meet up again at the hostel afterwards. I found a really beautiful viewpoint overlooking the sea and some sand dunes and rocks in the Corsican style, over which the sun was starting to glow orange. So I sat down on a rock ledge there and decided to try and reach Janna with a FaceTime call to get updated. Everything was just really chill until the sun went down and I had to go back up the stone staircase to the road, but that was soon done too and I had Janna's voice in my ear with headphones, accompanying me through those difficult times.

When it was already a bit darker, I suddenly saw some movements next to the bike path in a field and recognized a lot of wild kangaroos (I counted 9, but I'm not sure if there were maybe more), so I parked my bike and tried to get a little closer to them carefully while I told Janna how scared I was that they would jump at me and conspire against me.

Suddenly, a voice came from behind and I got a huge fright, but it was just another girl who also wanted to see the kangaroos and lived at Cool Bananas, as I later found out. Now I didn't have so much fear of being killed and afterwards we walked the rest of the way back to the hostel together.

When I arrived, I met a worried Linni who then told me that she was about to send out a search party for me because I had taken a little longer - so in the future, we will try not to lose each other or preferably not at all.

For dinner (a garlic baguette from the microwave.. and our little bit of leftover salad), we sat down with Anna and laughed a lot about really trivial topics until I got stomach ache while we finished the Frenchies' Corona bottle and later a cool guy joined our group.

Song of the day: Mr. Brightside by The Killers, because it feels like it's played somewhere at least once every day.