After our stay in Brisbane, we were now faced with two new days of travel that would lead us to Sydney. As I mentioned earlier, the only way to visit all the cities we wanted was to travel by road in long journeys, and for that reason we had to divide them carefully so that they would not become exhausting.
The tactic consisted of spending a day or two on the road to the next important town on the itinerary, but with a pleasant route full of little surprises that gave it an incentive, so that, when it reached its destination, it could rest for another two or three days and Avoid car embarrassment.
In this case, we start from Brisbane with the first lights of the morning, and it would be very nice to say that it was to contemplate the sunrise, although the real reason was to avoid the crowds of traffic of any working day.
Well, it turned out that at the time of departure, most of the people were already working, which made the play fatal but we came out to ask for it, as we left the city on the main road with a fluid future. vehicles.
The first part of the day was certainly monotonous, although as the road approached the sea, our spirits rose, which perhaps contributed to the breakfast we got between the chest and the back.
We arrived in the town of Byron Bay, a small tourist town located in the state of New South Wales, and considered one of the most privileged areas of the east coast of Australia for surfing.
Otherwise the day went by without major shocks, except the one produced by a giant shrimp that surprised us when crossing the small nucleus of Ballina. Suddenly, the giant monster emerged on the side of the road with two bulging black eyes and produced a sudden stop in our car and in my heart.
As revenge, we penetrated the fast food bar located under his knuckles and gave a good account of what were surely individuals of his offspring, so that at ten in the morning we had delighted with an appetizing menu of prawns, squid and chips in an authentic orgy of food with clear American influences.
Fed up with the frying, we continued until we found a congenial dessert in our stomachs, and here at Coffs Harbor we discovered the "Banana Gigante", a banana of considerable dimensions, through which you reach a coffee shop where they prepare the bananas in all the unimaginable ways.
I really could not imagine it, since we listened with great interest to the explanations of the waitress, without understanding anything, and then put a friendly face and point to the nearest table indicating that they served us what a fat lady ate with great enthusiasm; - with chocolate, syrup, vanilla, ketchup, mustard or pebbles from the field? - If he did not say that, it was something similar, but we opted to take it with chocolate, and after a few brief moments of intrigue a magnificent banana milkshake appeared before our eyes, inside which we could see a huge banana covered in chocolate.
There were no more incidents until the arrival at Port Macquarie, one of the tourist places par excellence due to its great weather, and that received us with a "great" rain.
My biggest interest in the place was to visit the Koalas Hospital, where people take these cute animals when they find them abandoned or injured. The place was closed, but we had occasion to walk between the different hospital cages and discovered that the koalas have the insane habit of jumping on the road from the eucalyptus where they live, always to be able, that a powerful vehicle comes close to high speed. This entails an alarming number of casualties and a high percentage of orphans, so many of the koalas that we could contemplate had been welcomed at an early age and had to learn to defend themselves before returning to Nature.
Another of the pleasant surprises that the city gave us was the beach of Las Conchas, Shelly Beach. It is a beautiful beach whose sand, as its name already indicates, is covered with millions of small snails discarded on the shore by the waves.
The contemplation of such a landscape was worthwhile, but what was really fascinating was that when the sand ended, without solution of continuity, stood an insurmountable wall of trees and shrubs that formed a natural park located within the city itself. Looking to the right you could see a calm and bewitching ocean, looking to the left, less than 30 meters away, the view ran into a humid and dark jungle as if it were the heart of the Amazon. All this perfectly delimited by a belt of elegant casitas, whose tenants would not dare to enter their peculiar surrounding garden, unless they were well equipped with compass, food and water for several days.
The magic of Port Macquarie tried to hold us back, but the trip had to continue and, with great sorrow, we left the idyllic place while the red dawn that was coming from the sea waved us goodbye.