Tamarama

We move on from Hotel Life at Green Square to AirBnB Life and are looking forward to having a little bit more space again. While hotels are great, they just have a different vibe. We were quite happy with Veriu as it gave us easy access to public transport (metro/trains/ferrys) being fairly central located. Now that we have seen a lot of Sydney we are ready for life by the sea - enjoying sunbathing and swimming at the beach. Bondi was the perfect location for this next episode. The view from the beach walk over the bay was gorgeous and we really enjoyed the cold(!) waters of the Pacific Ocean (actually it is the Tasman Sea but as that’s obviously connected to the pacific we won’t bother calling it like that).

We were both surprised by the sheer force of the waves crashing onshore - releasing vast amounts of energy. In contrast to Europe’s / Thailand’s or Bali’s beaches here in Eastern Australia there are Lifeguards everywhere. Swimming is mostly only allowed (strongly recommend actually) between red-yellow flags where there are Lifeguards on duty who constantly monitor the people who are swimming. And they are absolutely needed. Not because people are bad swimmers but because the crashing waves and strong rip currents can really get you into life threatening situations.

In the Bondi Beach bay currents are very strong and swimming against them is simply impossible. For example: If you get dragged away from shore by one you need to relax and focus on staying afloat. The rip current will eventually deteriorate giving you a chance to make it back to shore on your own OR some Lifeguard angel will come and get you. We have seen some action on the beaches and without them there would a lot more people drowning than you might think. Thanks to the Lifeguards and their professional gear (Helicopters, boats, Jetskis etc.) this is prevented in most cases. 🙏🏻

Semmy and I are good swimmers and enjoyed the sea a lot. We’re also no big risk takers and do respect mother nature so we didn’t swim out too far. Safety first 👍

Our time at Bondi was really nice even though we had 2-3 rainy/cloudy days. These were actually a blessing in hindsight as it gave us time to look into our route plans and do some necessary research - especially regarding camper van rental options in Australia and New Zealand which turned out to be much harder than expected.

Our initial plan was to rent a motorhome to head from Sydney to Sunshine Coast as part of a one way trip and fly to New Zealand afterwards to rent another one there for at least 4 weeks - ideally even longer.

It didn’t take long for us to get reality checked the hard way. In OZ there were simply no suitable motorhomes available for a one way trip as most private owners (understandably) want their vehicle brought back to the same location. Rental companies with drop off at different locations had all their vehicles rented out which left us with either super shitty OR super fancy (and huge!) ones - all incredibly overpriced. For New Zealand it was practically the same. But as we definitely wanted to go camping there, we decided to save our money for later and rent an SUV for our road trip in Australia and sleep in affordable hotels.

We definitely had some ups and downs during the booking phase but in the end it turned out well. 😌Read more