Where: Nelson Bay to Port Macquarie, NSW
Dinner: Rice noodles with tuna fish, curry and egg. Yes, quite random.
Such a good day!
Woke up to our beautiful ocean overlook this morning thinking about how people pay millions of dollars so that they can have views like this when they wake up. I'll take it for free this time around, thanks. From Nelson Bay we drove back south to get off of the peninsula (they pronounce this word peninshula here). Then we turne east to get back on a coast highway and from there we ended up at Seal Beach, the most beautiful beach we've been to yet. It was the most brilliant turquoise near the (white) beach and then turned into a bright blue further out. It looked seriously tropical. We were able to climb out on some rocks and check out some tide pools. I just couldn't get over how beautiful the water was. We talked to a couple who had been out kayaking on the calm water and they said that even further up north, while it does get warmer, it didn't get too much bluer than the water was today at Seal Beach. It was sunny today and fairly warm so we decided to put out suits on and give the water a try. The wind proved to be the main problem, but the water was just a little too cold for me too. I got in to about my waist, and the water was really clear. We watched as a school of fish came up near the shore and stuck their mouths up out of the water. We also watched as a couple of birds swooped down to the water to grab fish. As usual, there was some wildlife to observe. I went back to lay on the beach while Pat took the full plunge in the water. He didn't last too long though. He's been researching spear fishing because he really wants to do that, and today there was a guy out spear fishing with all the proper gear so Pat enjoyed watching that. We have seen a lot of people fishing along the coast so Pat is going to get his fishing license online and maybe he can catch us some dinners! Tomorrow I guess we're going to look at spears and some sort of wetsuit. He's pretty excited about it. We laid on the beach for a while in the sun before showering off and heading up to a nearby lighthouse.
After parking the car and walking up to the lighthouse I discovered what I think it my new dream vacation spot (for now at least). The lighthouse is the most picture perfect lighthouse ever. Bright white with painted trim and a huge rotating light at the top. Right below the lighthouse there are three different little house that they rent out for guests to stay in. It's all so idyllic! Not only that, but the beach views from the hill are absolutely incredible. The perfect blue water and long white sandy beaches, as well as some mountains nearby and more off in the distance. And the hill is really high so you can see a long ways down the coast. Oh man, I would love to stay there for a few days! I really enjoyed our time up there. We finally had to climb back down the hill and continue our drive northwards.
We stopped at a park along an inlet, which I guess is a popular fishing area. There were lots of people sitting along a wall fishing and we saw a few people catch some large fish. This got Pat more excited :) We haven't been shopping recently so we used items we had to put together an odd concoction of ride noodles, tuna fish, curry powder and fried eggs for dinner. It's actually turned out pretty well, and we were just happy that we remembered to stop and cook in the daylight instead of trying to do it later in the dark. We drove another hour north in the dark until we reached the bigger town of Port Macquarie, where we're staying tonight. We found a spot down by the ocean to park, and then we went to a bar to get a drink instead of spending the whole evening cooped up in the van. We've decided that going out and doing something in the evening is a better way to pass the time, especially when we're in a city and there are actually things going on at night. As we were parking a car came racing down the street pulled into a parking space near us then turned about and raced back out of the parking lot. I'm pretty sure we were disrupting their drug deal or something. Oh well.
Tonight as we were scoping out our sleeping possibilities I saw the same horrible huge spider as last night crawl onto the windshield. This time I was able to stop the car and Patrick became my absolute hero when we got out of the car and found a stick to move the spider with. I couldn't watch any of it because I literally had my sweatshirt hood covering my whole face, but I could hear him talking to the spider trying nicely to get him to move. It's pretty sweet actually, he's so nice to them! Had I had the guts to even look at the massive thing I would have just swatted it on the ground with a stick and then ran back to the car. Pat got a leafy branch and carefully brushed it on the ground then got it to climb on the branch so that he could relocate it into a grassy area. What an animal friendly man I'm dating :D Meanwhile I was huddling in the car with the doors locked (because that's going to make a difference!?) I will admit, I was pretty useless on this one. May I never see another one of those spiders in my life!
Seeing our first really beautiful tropical looking beach today got be more excited for what we'll find up north. Apparently Port Macquarie is considered the entrance to the subtropical environment, so we'll see if that seems to be true. It's been really the cold the past few days, but hopefully we're actually starting to get northern enough that the weather will get warmer. It's a good think we left Melbourne when we did because apparently it's been really cold down there. Life in a camper van is not as enjoyable if it's really cold out. Luckily tonight isn't bad, so I'm off to read!
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