Port Macquarie: Part 2

To see part 1 of my Port Macquarie post, please click here. Some of the photos in this post (like the one above) were taken by Michaela or Michaela's camera. I've indicated, with a little 'x' below the picture, which ones these are. 

Day 3

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Day 3 started off with an early morning beach walk. We got out of bed and made the short trek to the beach which was about 10 minutes away. Mik brought her camera and took some really lovely shots. As always, I used my Samsung SIII... 

I guess they didn't turn out too bad.

After the beach, we walked back and had a breakfast of blueberry pancakes. The apartment had shitty homeware which made the pancakes take on the appearance of roadkill but hey, they still tasted pretty great.

And because Jess, Michaela and I are totally cool and hip young adults, after breakfast we decided to go the zoo.

We pat dingos, fed kangaroos, stroked koalas (non-diseased ones I mean) and even got heckled by an angry penguin. It was great. 

Afterwards, we took a drive up to Lighthouse Beach which was essentially a lighthouse...on a beach. The view up there was amazing. If you follow me on instagram, you would've noticed that I instagrammed the shit out of that place. 

At Port Macquarie, they photobomb in style.

That night, we decided to catch a showing of The Fault In Our Stars at the local cinema. I'm not gonna bother with describing the film because a) you've probably seen it already and b) Jessica (fodmn) has already written such a fantastic post on it already. Instead I'll talk about the experience.

Our cinema had 42 seats. That's right. 42. It was tiny. We thought we were gonna have the room to ourselves but a couple of grown women and high school kids ended up watching it with us. And you know those advertisements you usually get before the film starts? We had them too. But these ads were terrible, cheesy, small town commercials advertising services such as real estate agents and lawyers. I tried really hard not to laugh at every single one of them. 

If you've seen TFIOS, you'll know how necessary it is to have chocolate afterwards. So off we went to Baskin Robbins.

We also went to a bar for a little bit and watched State of Origin. The Blues won that night and when we got back to the apartment, we could hear the neighbours cheering.

Day 4

Day 4 was definitely a highlight - mainly because I got to ride an actual horse (Easter Show ponies don't count, unfortunately). The ranch was about a 30 minute drive from the town center. When we got there, we had to park the car somewhere and get picked up by the owner. We piled into the back of his truck and made the bumpy trip up to the horses.

Afterwards, we filled in some forms and got matched with a horse depending on our levels of experience. My horse was named Rebel.

Ah yes. Rebel. He was a beautiful horse with a caramel brown coat and white patches on his legs and forehead. When the lady led him to me, she told me that he's the horse that appears on all the pamphlets and advertising materials for the ranch. She also said that he's only a rebel by name, not by nature. She lied.

The first thing Rebel did when I got on him was he bent down to graze and I almost did a somersault over his head. During the trail ride, he would get sidetracked by the foliage on either side of him and pause for a nibble whenever he got the chance.We held up the other riders hundreds of times. When we took a break during the ride, the owner tied him up to a tree. Five minutes later, he'd wandered off into the forest by himself and the poor man had to chase after him (he kept skipping away).

It's a miracle we even managed to get this photo. You can't tell just by looking but while this was being taken, my horse was stubbornly heading to the right and Jess' to the left.

After our Saddle Club re-enactment, we headed back to the apartment to scrub off Eau de Cheval. Oh and we also may or may not have had a Hunger Games movie marathon for a couple of hours. We then headed out for a night on the town and ate at The Grill. The food was epic. 

And even though we'd already had a couple of cocktails and a bottle of white wine, we were nowhere near wasted enough. Unfortunately, barely any bars were open that night so we ended up heading to the pub where we witnessed a couple of drunk local girls trying to pick up the security guard ("I have a spare room...would you like to come home with me?"). It was cringeworthy yet strangely entertaining - like a Kanye West music video. There was also a guitarist performing on stage and at one point he was belting out Wonderwall in this strong country twang. Maybe it was the alcohol but when he first started, I had a massive fit of giggles. As far as cliched scenarios go, that one took the cake. 

I'm pretty sure we also had a massive boy bitch sesh in the bar that night in which all three of us just got increasingly frustrated and annoyed at the male species for being so ambiguous and indirect and for like existing and stuff (lol). And I found out that Jess also does that texting thing that I do...

Day 5

I went for a walk by myself in the morning and found a secret trail leading up to a cliff.  

Our final day at Port Macquarie was a bit of a lazy day to be honest. We were planning to go on a river cruise to see dolphins but the company cancelled at the last minute so the three of us took our cheeses, chips and chocolate down to the pier and had a picnic whilst staring out at this:

It was such a great idea. For the longest time since forever, I felt comfortable to just slow down and soak it all in. I wasn't stressed, I wasn't worried and I wasn't thinking of things and people I didn't want to think about. Not once did I feel the urge to get up and keep on moving. I was happy just to stay where I was. And we ended up spotting a couple of dolphins anyway.

Afterwards, we decided to support the local economy by buying froyo from Starberry. We hopped into the car, drove to a lookout and ate it there while staring out at the beach. Back at the apartment, we popped open a bottle of champagne and drank it whilst swindling each other out of money at Monopoly. We cooked the chicken duets and garlic bread for dinner and then curled up on the couch with a Forrest Gump DVD. Then Jess and I watched I Wanna Marry Harry till 12 before deciding we couldn't take much more of the idiocy and cat fights (no matter how funny they were).

Day 6 - Home

We got up early, loaded all our junk into the car, did a sweep of the house and were heading back to Sydney by 9am. I marked tutoring homework in the backseat and that accelerated my depressing descent back to reality. Our only pit stop was at a pie place and I bought coffee to keep my eyes open. Mik was nice enough to drop us off at Parra and the whole trip from Port Macquarie to Sydney once again took under 5 hours. We must've arrived at about 1:30pm. At that point I was a walking, stressed-out cloud of doom and gloom. Immediately, I wanted to go back. 

I took the train home, Dad picked me up from the station and we arrived home shortly afterward. I was forced to prepare tutoring lessons for the rest of the afternoon before going out to dinner with the family (I had 7 hours of work the next day). I hung out with Nancy and Jess' group that night and even though it was fun, half my mind was still stuck on that pier in Port Macquarie so I'm afraid I was a bit of a killjoy that night haha. 

And yeah, that was my Port Macquarie trip. When people ask me how it went, I usually just say that it was great and the weather was nice because honestly, I don't know how to condense 5-6 days of adventure and chillaxing fun times into a short, unobnoxious-sounding response. But I've tried to describe it as best as I could here so at least you guys know.

Thanks for reading!

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