My first hitch hiking trip

Chapter one

 

Sticking my thumb out outskirt of Wallaga Lake NSW

I’m all ready.. I’m all set.. Let’s do this!  It was Saturday and I’ve got my bag all packed and ready to go.  Emmanuel (hubby aka partner in crime) and I took off early in the morning and stood beside Forest Road, Nowra sticking one of our thumbs out.  "Wow, this is it.." I thought to myself, "My first real hitch hiking trip" grinning as I thought to myself.  I was actually really nervous but tried hard to act cool and not show how much of a newbie I was. We got the first ride from a father and son who were heading up town to buy a toilet.  They dropped us off in South Nowra, then we tried to hitch rides heading south.  As we were walking, a car pulled over 100 metres from us.  A woman waved at us, then we started running towards her.  Man o man, at that time I thought how glad I was to have such a light bag.  We were packed really efficiently. There were 2 chatty ladies in the car and they took us to Milton, then from there we managed to get about 6 rides up to Wallaga Lake NSW.  

It was getting abit late, the sun was more than half way to the horizon.  As, I was sticking my thumb out, a bus approached slowly from the steep road and stopped near us.  Trying to get out of the way, we walked away from the bus and a man came out and asked where we were going.  The bus was going down to Eden and he deliberately stopped the bus to give us a ride.  John was his name, what a legend.  As we do when we get in people's ride, we spoke to almost everybody on the bus.  We had interesting conversations with a few people.  After the second last stop which was Merimbula, we moved to the front of the bus and spoke with John.  After a few chats, he offered us to give us a ride to a really nice beach close to his house.  

 

Sitting beside Emmanuel in the bus

So, after hopping off the bus in Eden, he gave us time to shop for dinner and picked us up at the shopping centre 15 minutes later.   He took us around for a little tour and drove to the spot he told us about.  It was a nice beach, facing a harbour and we found a perfect spot between the beach and billabong.  We had a little camp fire and cooked our dinner on sticks.  It tasted fantastic, the smokey taste of the campfire gave it an extra taste to the bacon.  That night, I thought to myself "this is life.. So simple, yet so fullfilling.. What else do you need more when you're that happy.." It was such a romantic night.  While snuggling, we looked each other in the eye and Emmanuel said "We're in the garden of Eden". Then suddenly we heard people whispering.  We looked around and didn't see anyone out there.  Then a few minutes later we realised that it was the sound of frogs form the Billabong.  All night long they made the weirdest noises I've ever heard.  Well, John did warn us about that.

Map of Callala Bay to Eden NSW Australia

 tuturutututuuuuuut turutuuuutut dum durum dum duuuummm.. (Nia's theme song to end of story)

Good night ladies and gentleman, until the next blog..