Pizzey Park

Last weekend, we were invited to a full day of birthday celebrations of a friend that I met through beach volleyball. I think all of our friends so far are through beach volley. It’s such a friendly community and very easy to meet new people.

Saturday was such a beautiful day, around 25C, no clouds, slight breeze. Just perfect conditions! First, a bunch of us met up down in Coolangatta to hang out by the beach and of course play beach volleyball. I only used sunscreen twice in the morning, and actually got a little bit red on my shoulders, but that was gone by Sunday. The sun is very strong. The UV index has been around 3-4 these past three months, but now it has increased to 7. I have started to wear a hat! I usually hate hats. But I will definitely be a full-blown straw hat person by the time summer arrives. Of course, we also went into the water which was incredible! The ocean was so calm today and the boogie board was of no use. Although people wanted to swim out to the whales with it, but never did.

The morning was perfect in itself. Sun, warmth, ocean, beach volley. But what made it truly magical was the extreme amount of whales swimming so close to shore. I started seeing them as soon as we arrived at 8:30am and they just didn’t go away. At one point, there were a couple who were so active that one of the guys brought out his drone and filmed them from above. And that was just so cool! I have posted the video he sent us on my Instagram highlights (down under) and also added a few screenshots from it at the bottom of this post.

We had lunch at 4 Pines and then drove to Pickleball up in Miami. I’ve never played pickleball and the reason it became popular during covid was that there were specific rules about very specific sports you couldn’t play. And pickleball wasn’t a part of them, even if the court is smaller than tennis and you are two people playing together. Funny how rule works. Anyway, it is like tennis, but you play with rackets that look like they came from the beach game and you also hit a floorball, plastic one with holes in it. My still twisted ankle (after 2,5 months!) didn’t like it. But it was kinda fun. Very specific rules, but I think I got a hang of it eventually.

Last stop of the day, was a BBQ at Daisy and Arthur’s (one of two birthday boys). Our very first Australian BBQ. Super nice!

Really fun day with fun people 😊☀️