March 27 - Australia: Sydney, New South Wales 

We woke up this morning to go for runs, but I woke up to a serious head-rush.  My lower back has been hurting pretty badly since we went surfing, but it comes and goes.  Last night, it was pretty painful so Jon gave me some pain medicine we bought in Kathmandu sans prescription.  This medication was supposed to have some sort of opiate in it.  The directions said that I should take two pills at first, so I did.  Who knew that - twelve hours later - they would still be going strong?  It was crazy - everything was spinning!

So Jon went out for his run and I went back to bed until he came back.  Then we got ready to head out to Bondi Beach.

Bondi Beach

Bondi Beach is east of Sydney and is considered a "Sydney Suburb".  It's not far at all, but we figured we should take advantage of our last day with the truck and head out there.  Today was pretty cloudy and windy, and almost cold, but it was time to heat the beach.  

We walked around the stores on Bondi Beach for a while - still looking for Jon's Hawaiian Shirt.  We didn't have much luck, but we did find a bookstore who would buy the small library we've been traveling around with.  We spent some time sitting at a little pizza joint sipping "lemonades" (Australian for Sprite) and watching the people walk by.  Then we decided it was time to go to the beach.

Bondi Beach has some great surfing waves, and there were about thirty surfers of various skills in the water.  We laid on our towels and watched them for a while, before turning over to read our books.  After about an hour, we started to get really chilly so we packed up stuff and went back to the truck.

Bondi Beach

Before we left Bondi Beach, we stopped by the Post Office and asked them to weigh our bag of scuba gear.  Air New Zealand allows two bags per person, at 32 kilograms per bag.  We wanted to know if our very heavy scuba bag would make the cut.  The nice man we spoke to dragged it into the back room and - five minutes later - dragged it back out and told us it was 24 kilos!  Wow.  I'd thought it was heaps heavier.

Sunset over Sydney Harbour

Back in the room, we settled in to check our email and watch some TV.  Since it had been cloudy and rainy all day, we figured we were done for the evening.  But then Jon glanced out the windows and said, "Hey!  It's cleared up!  Let's get some pictures!".  So we speed-walked over to the Harbour, along the running path, to get sunset pictures before it was too late.

The sunset very peaceful and the pictures were gorgeous.

Sunset at Sydney Harbour

After Sunset