I got up at 7.15, feeling quite tired, having only slept for 6 hours, and took everything to check out. The person the night before had advised me that there was free breakfast at 7.30 so I decided to take advantage of that, since I had to be at the other hostel for the tour for 8.20am and it seemed quite convenient.
I had planned to leave at 7.45 but ended up leaving at 7.50, though this didn't make much difference as the tram service was very regular, and I made it to the other hostel on time easily.
When I got to the hostel, the receptionist advised me that the tour driver had turned up already to advise me that the tour had been cancelled, as I was the only person who had booked on to it, so they hadn't managed to make the required minimum number to make it viable. I was given a number to call them on, but that didn't work.
I checked in anyway, surprised to find that I was able to check in at 8am - and was assigned room 13.
Having had the tour cancelled on me, and the fact that the 14th was a free day, I decided I would try and arrange for the tour to be the 14th instead, and go to the beach today. With that, I went to the room, and got changed in to beach gear instead of bush and jungle gear!
On my way out to the beach, I noticed that the pool at hostel has a pool roomba thing, which I felt the need to look up - though never did maybe hoever is reading this can, and post it on Facebook?!
I made it to the beach and having put factor 50 on all over, proceeded to spend the morning lazing on the beach, listening to the surf.
I can easily see why this place is called Surfers Paradise. The surf was amazing, the water aquamarine green colour, and the beach had wonderful soft sand, and of course, the skies were blue and the sun very hot and strong.
I decided to try sorting out the replacement tour with the company and eventually found their email address, so emailed them in the hopes of a speedy reply, which i got. Their compromise was for me to o on an upgraded version of the tour and only pay half the difference in cost - so I went for that, as it meant I still got the wine tasting and the walks in the hinterland.
At around 1pm I went to the Sandbar for a delicious burger and a schooner of Twisted Palm beer, made by the locally based Burleigh Brewing company. It came to about $27, but I think the sun had gotten to my head and I wasn't caring any more!
While I was enjoyingthe beer, I checked the map and found a place a bit further south called Mermaid Beach. As Sandy, a friend from CT in the USA, is very much a mermaid person, I decided to go there and take some photos, and of course, ended up lazing on the beach there too!
I got back to the hostel around 5pm, and headed to Coles to get in the food for the next few days. I managed to find some Kangaroo burgers, which were actually the best priced options there, and since I had had so much luck with the potato and carrot option in New Zealand decided to use those as my vegetables here too. I also managed to get some sandwich making stuff.
The kitchen was very busy when I got back, so I wasn't able to sit down and eat the meal I had made until about 8.30, by which time I noticed that I had managed to get sunburn around the front of my shoulders - since I wasn't too bad everywhere else, it must have been a problem with the application of the sun cream!
I was still pretty tired from the early morning, and possibly from the heat, so called it an early night to allow myself to be up on time for the rearranged hinterland tour for tomorrow