Thursday is our last full day, and it’s gloriously sunny out, but not terribly hot – about 85 F, which is great beach weather. Given that, we decided to do the one thing we hadn’t gotten to do yet, which is actually go to the beach and sit on the sand.
Bondi Beach (pronounced bon-DI, like “Lady Di” at the end) is rated by the Travel Channel as one of the top ten beaches in the world. Now we know why. It’s got a beautiful sandy layout between the sea wall and the water. The sand itself is incredibly fine – something between cake flour and sugar – and amazingly sticky.
There have been shark sitings in the area. There’s a “shark net” at Manly Beach, another famous beach here, but yesterday’s paper showed a guy standing and holding it up with holes in the net, saying they catch about a dozen sharks a week at the beach!!
This left us debating a quandary – would the sharks go for those little skinny guys, who might be faster but are probably easier to wrestle down, or would they think we big, slow moving things would be an easier target? We hoped they’d opt for the fact that big slow things tend to be kinda chewy and tough, while those little wiry ones got more flavor in ‘em.
Once we stuck our feet in the water it all proved irrelevant unless there’s a breed of flat shark that can live in 6 inches of water. First, it was COLD. About like the water is outside of Provincetown, MA. That was enough to keep those of us with neither a surfboard nor a burning desire to get sand in our jiggly bits on the shore. The other thing was the signs about the dangerous rip currents, and the direction to swim in certain areas – locations we didn’t happen to be.
Instead, we slathered ourselves with SPF 50 and stayed on the beach, soaking up the nanojoules of sunlight in anticipation of return to February in North Carolina tomorrow. Well, actually day after tomorrow, but still tomorrow by the calendar, since we lose the day we gained on the way over.
Before we got so toasty that anything was going to peel again, we gathered our hotel towels and hit the sidewalk showers, where we learned that another element of the sand is apparently glue, because it wouldn’t turn lose. We decided just to go home gritty.
A walk up the street adjacent to the beach proved interesting. You couldn’t buy a T-shirt there with the name Bondi Beach on it anywhere unless you were, oh, the size of a very small munchkin. While V-tapers from shoulders to waist may be all the rage for young Australian surfers, those of us who are more pyramoidal in shape needed T-shirts with a bit more room. Ultimately, we decided that it was time to catch the bus back and we had enough T-shirts anyhow. If the Australian economy fails by $24.99, we’ll take full responsibility. Otherwise, it’s their problem.
