October 23

**the most beautiful sunrise I've ever seen. At the most Easternly point in Australia**
Yesterday, Lindsay & I met up with one of our friends that we met last week. He's from Ottawa and actually, after talking with him for a bit, Lindsay realized that they were both on the same flight from Vancouver to Honalulu on their way over here!! crazy small world! We went to the beach and had a BLAST in the ocean. The waves were so strong, I swallowed so much water, haha. We met up with him and a bunch of his friends later that night to go out to the bar. It was a great night & at about 2am, eleven of us put on our running shoes and started on a long hike up to the lighthouse. We walked along the beach for a while. It's such a different feeling at night with no lights around anywhere. The stars were gorgeous, the sound of the waves so calming. Lindsay & I have done the walk up to the lighthouse before... in the daylight. It's a secluded path along the shore & up SO many steps. There aren't any lights showing us where to go, so we had about three small flashlights with us. I think the whole walk took about an hour and a half, but I'm not exactly sure, we didn't bring watches. We were pretty lucky not to run into any scary wilderness beasts, but looking back on it there were probably hundereds of creepy crawlers, we just kept our eyes on what we could see of the path. After the long climb, we made our way to a sidewalk area where we would be able to see the sunrise... in a few hours. It was SO cold up there. Windy! Eventually, we all huddled down on the cement pad. Everyone was snug up tight to stay warm. One big Spoon. I have no idea how long we all laid there, but I'm positive I didn't sleep at all. When it started to get light, a few of us got up, but when we realized we still had a while to go, we laid back down to keep warm. Eventually, the sun did come up & it was phenomenal! SO worth it! I took tones of amazing pictures. The new sun glistening off of the water, the fresh morning air, the complete peacefull feeling. Gorgeous. We stood just staring forever. It finally started to get warmer. We eventually took the long walk back to town (which seemed 6 times as far in the daylight) & back to our bikes to get home at about 6:30am. Poor Lindsay had to work today at 9:30. She's hating it right now, but she wouldn't trade that night for the world!