Feb
16
2008

Last Day In Paradise

(Add / View Comments) (0)Saturday, February 16, 2008 - 03:55:04 pm
(Posted Under: Travel, Queensland Trip)
This morning I got up early again, with my last opportunity to catch a sunrise over the beach. Given how much I drank last night (to finish off the Coronas we'd brought on arrival) and how late I went to bed, my ability to wake up ridiculously early has been quite amazing. It's been true of the entire week, and today was no different, waking up at 5. It was the earliest I'd been up and down at the beach, and was still dark, or at least darker than the other mornings.

Photobox ImageMuch like the other mornings, masses of dark clouds hung over the ocean. Probably little chance for seeing the sun come up, but still, was pretty cool being out there. Despite there being no opportunity to see the sun rise, it did break through the bottom of the clouds, which made for some good photos. Ironically it was the one morning where it could have been good to have my tripod, and the one morning I hadn't taken it down. I took a cool shot with the camera on the sitting on the beach, which I think came out really impressively. The angle looks really cool, and is something I could have certainly played around with more, and wish I had.

On getting back I went back to sleep for about an hour and a half, before getting up, packing up and what not. Our plan for the day had been to take our bags to the airport and check them, and come back to Surfer's, rather than dragging them around with us the whole day. Just walking down to the bus stop made it seem like such a great idea, what with them swaying every which way rolling over the paved sidewalk. It didn't take too long for a bus to come, but the ride to Coolangatta airport was a lot longer than we'd anticipated. We'd expected about 20 minutes (based on distance), but it took a full hour. Kinda nightmare bus ride (just because of jolting every time it stopped, which was - well - all the time). However, we made it to the airport, dropped off our bags, grabbed Katie a biscuit and made it to the bus back to Surfer's without too much of a wait. While it seemed shorter, the bus ride back too about the same amount of time. But was a lot less painful. And not having our suitcases to carry around definitely made the two hour excursion worthwhile.

On getting back to Surfer's Paradise, we headed straight for Cavill, on a mission - food. We were both pretty starved, and had been all morning. Of course, with a detour to Appel Park for a smoke. Sitting on the bench over looking the river, it would have been easy to lay back, and go back to sleep. But there's no rest for the wicked. We went over to the mall on Cavill Avenue, looking around, probably for too long, for somewhere to eat, before settling on the Hog's Breath. Hot food and cold coke - oh, it was great. After eating, and sitting around for a bit, we headed back out, and finished the remaining of souviner shopping that needed to be done. On completing that, which by the time we had, I was getting closer to be getting home, we wandered down to the beach. We decided earlier on that rather than catching the bus back to Wharf Street, we'd walk it along the beach. It was 4pm, and our ride to the airport wasn't going to be around until 5:40pm, so we had time. A good thing about having done the same walk two nights earlier was that we knew how long it would take, and even with the laptop weighing us down, we still had plenty of time.

I was really looking forward to the walk, but almost immediately when we set foot on the stand, it started to rain. The wind down the beach was also rather strong, but the clouds look like they'd blow over (and if not, we'd get past them on the walk in no time), so we decided to brave the whether, which was a great call, because the rain was gone within five minutes or less. Interestingly also, as we got down to the shore, to walk on the more compact sand, there was this freaky change in temperature, it being a lot warmer. At the end of the day, the only somewhat uncomfortable thing, which I didn't mind that much, was the strong, deafening northerly wind blowing into us as we headed south down the beach.

Photobox ImageAll in all, the walk back down along the beach was really good, and a great way to spend the last few hours of our holiday. Along the way Katie found some shells with holes in, ready for making a necklace. We also stumbled across a tiny crab, which made for another great photo. Not to mention the weird coral-ly things we came across. The first we'd just thought was coral, but the subsequent ones we found had some sort of critters inside, with arms or legs moving into the coral when you touched them.

Our timing on getting back to Wharf Road was amazing. After sitting down, having a smoke, taking some photos and getting the sand out of our shoes, it was 5:30pm, time to walk down to meet the shuttle to the airport. It really could not have been timed any better.

The ride down to the airport (for the second time today) was direct, after picking up some people at other hotels in Surfer's, and also was on a more comfortable coach. We'd been interested on seeing how long it would take, compared to the public bus service. It aligned perfectly with our earlier estimation of 20 minutes. It took between 20 and 25 minutes to get down there. Much less painful than this morning.

With a fair bit of time to kill, we looked around the airport (which was fairly small, though big compared to Marochy), and then went through to get on the plane. Katie again was excited to get to go on the tarmac to board the plane.

Although throughout the week, neither of us had been looking forward to going home, but now we were both ready!

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