SUN SUN SUN — design to explore

This weekend was suuuuuuper chill as the sunshine finally returned to Sydney. Spent most of the weekend just chilling and relaxing at the beach :) 4.6 Bronte Beachhh

The weather in Sydney is FINALLY living up to the expectations with all the sunshine we got this past and today. I started my day with heading to the bookstore, purchasing a book, and heading to Bronte Beach. It was a 15 minute bus ride, but once I got there the beach was fairly empty and the weather was perfect. I laid my towel out, and hung for a few hours before grabbing lunch at one of the local cafes along the beach.

Really enjoying doing these solo adventures around Sydney, its fun to explore and not worry about other people (as harsh as that sounds) but its awesome! Hopefully I can do some bigger and longer solo adventures in the future!

4.7 Maroubra Beach

The sunshine continued! What a shocking surprise, so Monica and I trekked our way down to Maroubra beach on the worst 40 minute bus ride ever that induced so much car sick ness. But once we got there, again it was wonderful. Maroubra is definitely a more local beach, and not as packed as Bondi, so we enjoyed all the personal space we could have. We got there later in the day, we went into the Maroubra town to grab some late lunch/early dinner at Inferno Grill, where I had quite possibly the greatest burger and fries on the planet. Better than burger palooza, it was INSANE. Didn’t even take a picture because I just wanted to eat it haha.

4.8 Wattamolla Beach

Today was our adventure day, as Monica, Grant, his two friends visiting, and I rented a car for the day and drove into Royal National Park to Wattamolla Beach to go cliff jumping! Grant had been there previously and was leading the way. The beach was about an hours drive, so we got on the road at about 10 in the morning, and made a Macca’s (mcdonalds) stop as well as a beer stop (the beers were for later), and then we were on our way again.

Once we got into the park, we all lost cell service, put our phones away, and that was it for the day, didn’t touch the phones again, and we honestly didn’t even miss them. We got to the beach and it was absolutely beautiful, it stretched out really far and this strange river ran through it with rock formations, and that is where we cliff jumped. We set our stuff down and lathered on the sunscreen before heading into the water.

To get to the top of the cliff you had two options, walk along the hiking path (easier option) or climb up the rockers spiderman style (harder option). So naturally, I opted for the spidey option, because who doesn’t feel the need to scale rocks and risk the potential for a concussion or paralyze-ation? So I climbed up the damn rocks, and damn it was tough. If dad were there, he definitely would be commenting on how not nimble I was, so I soldiered on. Some of the rock steps I literally had to bring my leg all the way up to boob height just to get onto the first step so you can imagine me struggling a lot through this one, as Grant (who is over 6 foot) easily traversed. Finally, and cautiously, I made it to the top of the rock and walked to the edge. It was kinda scary being up so high, but I was soooo excited to jump that I volunteered to go off first and literally ran out.

Being airborne for that long was crazy, it was a 30 feet cliff or so (?) and there is a point when you are in the air falling that you can just look around at everything and its just insane. But then you hit the water. And if you are a girl DAMN IT HURTS because female bathing suits naturally give you a wedgie, so when you enter the water with the force of a 30 foot jump that sucker just wedges right up the butt and it quite honestly is one of the strangest pains I have ever experience. Despite that, I was literally on an adrenaline high because IT WAS SO FUN JUMPING. I watched everyone else go, and because the water was really cold, we decided to lay out for a bit and toast up before we went up again.

We hung out on the chill-est beach ever and watched people jump and we saw some really bold people do some tricks off the cliff. We brought a football, so clearly we stuck out like a sore thumb when we started throwing it around and everyone else is playing with rugby balls. We didn’t really care, we just kept going and hanging out. We walked more towards the ocean side of the beach (as the cliff was near the river side) and we walked along these rocks, and again, another physical activity challenge of the day as it was high tide and most of the rocks were underwater, so our walking rocks were limited. But we still made it out pretty far to these amazing views.

We headed back to the river side to make a final jump before we left for the day, as the sun was setting. So we took our final jumps, this time I opted for the easier option of walking to the top of the cliff via a longer path rather than the spidey climb. It was just as fun, and we went in groups this time and you literally cant help but laughing and smiling so wide as soon as you come up above the water, it just feels so good and who knows why.

We packed up camp and headed home around sundown and caught some amazing sunset views over the national park on the way home. Ten minutes into the ride, the car took a turn for the worse as everyone in the car, besides me, decided to buy a nice cup of 7-11 coffee. So if you know me at all, you know that in the past my dad’s one cup of coffee + the car DO NOT MIX as vomiting on the side of the road was a usual result of those two, so now we got FOUR CUPS OF 7-11 COFFEE + 45 MINUTES OF JERKY CAR RIDE, I thought I wasn’t going to make it. I physically had to cover my nostrils, stare out the window, and not participate in conversation, since I already wasn’t feel too hot.

Luckily I survived the car ride without vomiting, and Monica and I were so exhausted we passed out shortly after arriving home.

4.9 BBQ in the park

I started my day with a nice workout and then I was a little beached out after three full days, so I decided to go with Monica to a BBQ her church was throwing! It was in a park along Bronte beach and was super chill. We got some free food and hung out, overall a very chill way to end a chill ~authentic~ (we think) australian weekend :)