Rain Rain Go Away

I am currently in the beachside town of Coff's Harbour enjoying my second day of nonstop rain. Perfect weather for blog updating but not so good for anything else.
So the day after I arrived in Sydney I met up with my friend Guy. He had just arrived back to Australia after a year and a half of working and travelling all over the place. We walked around the city and then got picked up by his uncle and drove two hours north to Newcastle where I would be spending Christmas with Guy's family. Everyone was incredibly nice and so it was a great place to spend Christmas away from home. We went to the beach and for boat rides and while it was strange to celebrate Christmas in the summer it was not at all unpleasant. By the time Christmas rolled around the house was full of people and dogs sleeping in beds, on the floor, and in tents in the shed and backyard. There was lots of champagne drinking and chocolate eating, particularly out of one of the cousin's chocolate fountains. On one of the boating trips I even got to swim with a shark. We had been swimming in the estuary and had all just gotten back into the boat to nap (minus 14-year-old Oscar who was floating on an inner tube) when the shark was spotted gliding past our boat. Oscar was quickly pulled in and we followed after the shop for a while taking pictures. That night we poured over marine life books trying to determine what kind of shark we had seen and decided that it was a bull shark, one of the more dangerous varieties.
A few days after Christmas I left all the nice people in Newcastle to head back to Sydney for New Year's with Guy and his aunt Jenny, who has a house close to Bondi Beach. That afternoon I met up with Sarah (or Tiger, who I had stayed with in Perth and was now traveling after finishing up her semester.) We went to Bondi and I was amazed with how different it looked from when I was there in September. In the winter there had been hardly anyone at the beach but now it was packed with sunbathers and looked like it does in all the pictures. We then did the cliffwalk back to Jenny's house and went out to dinner with her. Early the next morning Sarah and I went on a bus tour to the Blue Mountains. Our first stop was at yet another wildlife park. Both of us had been to about 5 since we had been in Australia but we did manage to enjoy watching the echidnas eat out of bottles sticking out of termite mounds. We then went on a small hike to see a waterfall and when we got back on the bus to drive to lunch discovered that its brakes were not working. An hour later some vans picked us up and brought us to our lunch spot. No worries. We used the time to call some hostels and soon realized there was no chance we would be able to get a bed. After lunch we went and looked at the famous Three Sisters (rock formations) and then went to Scenic World, home of the world's steepest, and most terrifying, railway. I am not sure how hundreds of people have not fallen out of this train and slid down the mountain. When we returned to our new rental bus we discovered that it was stuck on the curb due to complex suspension issues that I don't really understand. Close to an hour later the situation was resolved and we were back on the bus speeding to make it to the Olympic Park and to get on our harbour cruise. Instead of a leisurely stroll around the park we had a quick drive through and then ran onto the boat. Despite all the hassles of the day the cruise was very relaxing and scenic.
The next day I decided to finish the Bondi-Coogee beachwalk. It was about a half an hour from Jenny's place to Coogee but it was excruciatingly hot. Coogee beach was just as crowded as Bondi but was full of cute cafes and shops. I went to see the movie Atonement to escape from the heat and the dragged myself back along the cliffwalk to Jenny's house where everyone went to bed early to be nice and rested for New Year's eve the next day.
I am about to run out of internet time so I better go get some more credit. New Year's Eve and trip to Coff's Harbour coming soon!