Townsville, Australia, Australia

Today was not a good day, mostly. I didn’t get a wink of sleep last night because it was about 32*C(90*F) in my room last night and even with the door open and the fan open, we couldn’t seem to get a breeze in there. I was pretty miserable when I packed up my things and checked out of the hostel, which is too bad because up until the A/C problem, I was enjoying my stay at Port O Call.

We hopped in the car and headed for a village called Kuranda. We stopped off in a little town called Palm Cove for a smoothie. It is a beautiful little place on the coast where minor celebrities holiday. I can see why, it was beautiful there. And while I was walking on the beach back to the car, I saw three stingrays in the water only about 3 feet off the shore. It was very cool watching them play in the shallows.

Kuranda was recommended as a place to stay the night since we were not able to stay in the hostel in Mission Beach that we had planned on staying in. It took about an hour to get to Kuranda and it really was a nice little village. They are well known for their markets and Barron Falls. We decided to take in the falls first, and they were breathtaking. There was a boardwalk through the rainforest to get to the lookouts and we encountered the biggest spider I have ever seen. I took a picture of my iphone next to the spider for some perspective. This spider is about the same size as my phone. Very creepy.

After viewing the falls we walked around the markets, Lisa going her way to shop and me going my way, to just wander. I wasn’t really looking at anything, just walking around. I was lucky enough to spot a jeweler who was selling silver spinner rings. I had lost my spinner ring at Nikki’s wedding in May, and even though that was 9 months ago, I still miss it. I found a ring that has a couple of geckos on it which I thought was a perfect way to remember my trips to the rainforest. I paid the man his very reasonable price of $10 and was thrilled with my find. I caught up with Lisa and we headed over to the Kuranda Resort and Spa to check into the dorm room we had reserved.

We showed up to find that this place looked like it hadn’t been open for about a year. Everything was dirty and half of the stuff wasn’t even open. They told me I was going to have to use the Ladies bathroom because the Men’s wasn’t open. The kitchen next to the dorms was disgusting. And the pool was full of leaves and god knows what else. We decided it wasn’t worth the $25 a night per person and told them we were going to head on down the road. We were planning on heading to Townsville tomorrow, so we thought we could head down there early and save us the driving tomorrow. It turns out it is a 5 hour drive from Kuranda to Townsville. There really wasn’t anywhere in between we could stop, so we just bit the bullet and drove the full distance.

We arrived in Townsville around 8pm to find that the hostel we were hoping to check in to, was now closed, so we stopped into an Ibis hotel to see if they had any twin rooms available. Apparently Townsville is a very business oriented town and they were completely booked full of businessmen. The receptionist was nice enough to call a couple of hostels until she found one that had availability. We weren’t going to be picky at this point so we headed over to Civic Guest House Inn to find our room. It is disgusting. I am sitting on the bed in my room right now, which luckily looks like the sheets may have been washed before I came in. But the little tv in the room doesn’t work at all, and the bathroom down the hall is sure to give me a disease before allowing me to clean myself at all. It definitely is the worst room I have ever stayed in, but for $57 a night when we couldn’t find anything else, it’ll do.

We grabbed a bite to eat at BistrOne, which was awful, and came back to this cesspool to try and get some sleep. I figure if we get an early night, we can get out of here as soon as possible tomorrow morning. Tomorrow has to be a better day that today…