More Surfers Paradise

Saturday afternoon we drove out the 'The Spit' which is at the end of a peninsula on the Gold Coast. It has a network of dune trails that you can walk, but we got there a bit too late to do that. So we just walked down a built-up rock jetty sticking out into the Pacific. It was about 4:30 or so and there were surfers just getting into the water. And some of them didn't have wetsuits on. Crazy, I tell ya.


Josh made me nervous by squatting and not sitting on the rocks.

Then we realized that there was a much cooler jetty to the south of us that was blocking our view of the city and so we headed over there. This is the start of the dune trails. It was really pretty.

And Josh made a new friend.

It turns out that the jetty that we wanted to be on was a sand-pumping jetty - so it's basically a long bridge out into the water with pipes attached to it that pump sand out of the ocean and back onto the beach for their dune regeneration program. It actually cost money to walk out onto it, but Josh and I didn't mind paying the fee.

We were able to get some really good pictures of Surfers Paradise out in the distance. And the crazy surfers in the foreground.

Here's a little more zoomed in shot of the city. The tallest circular building is the one that was right across from our hotel.

The jetty is also a big place for fishermen (as evident from the picture below). When we were on there around 5, there were about 65 people out fishing and more coming. We talked to the guy that runs the kiosk where you pay your fee (and can buy goodies) and he said that at night there are up to 300 people (!) out fishing. He noted that the Vietnamese are very family oriented and so if the mom and dad come out to fish, then the kids are out there and the grandparents and any siblings. They bring their one-man tent and a little cookstove and cook whatever they catch right then and there.

Josh asked how big the catch was and the guy said that they were usually between 20 and 36 kilos (44 to 80 lbs). Unfortunately, we didn't see anyone reel anything in.

We watched the sun start to set from the jetty and then headed back to our car - before it got too dark that I couldn't see that spider from earlier.