I'll do a little intro to this blog entry as well considering the week of luck I've had. Don't get me wrong, amongst losing my passport, having an argument with a hostel owner, losing a chunk of my toe, slicing my thumb and re-stubbing my toe... I've had a pretty good week! All I can say is it's a good job I didn't decide to sky dive this week!

Oh, and before you (Dad) start to worry, my passport was in the safe at the hostel, I just happened to leave it there and have to go back for it. Which is where the argument with the hostel owner comes in. Besides from the owner, Surfside is a pretty decent hostel, the owner is just a dick. Thankfully, the other staff aren't too bad. I won't go into details, but I'm sure you can trust me on that one.

So, here we go, on with the diary!

17/07/12

After the hassle that was yesterday with the k*** of an owner at Surfside, things started to look up when we arrived at Dougies. This, of course, didn't go smoothly. We got here at 12:30am, which didn't coincide with the reception opening times, or even the bar opening times! It closed at 12? What kind of a bar closes at 12 on a Monday night?! We stood around with bags on our back, looking lost for about a minute before someone approached us. Job done. We checked in to a room which has 1 single and 1 set of bunk beds... 2 cupboards... 1 TV and 1 fridge! Luxury. Went out and grabbed a beer at the hostel bar (they said because we checked in late, we could have a beer) I went for a walk around the hostel and I can safely say, it's a really decent hostel.

After a long night's sleep, we got up and went for a walk, to the beach, shops, grabbed lunch and generally got an feel for the area. The weather is a massive contrast to Sydney; it's warm, really warm, but overcast, really overcast. Oh, and on the walk back to the hostel, I stubbed my toe. Tore a chunk of skin off the side. Had to do a bit of minor surgery on it, cutting off the chunky flappy skin. No real plan for tomorrow, just see what happens. This is living bitterman.

18/07/12

What. A. Day. As Chris Martin would put it: Para...para...paradise! The downside of the day was obviously moving out of our private room and into our 'Stylee tent' (we didn't have a choice of rooms when we booked, this was all they had). The tent is tall enough to stand up in, has mattresses, lights, plug sockets and a fan. I don't call this camping, it's quite nice. Quiet enough to hear the wildlife too! With that done, we hired bikes. I was quite glad, as limping around everywhere was getting annoying. The bikes were fairly decent, didn't hurt my foot, and cost $4 for the 4 hours we had them so it was a winner all round. Got to see a lot of Port Douglas, OH! And the weather! The weather was spectacular. I would've burnt to a crisp if I didn't have the cheeky factor 50 slapped on. Anyway! Blue sky, palm trees, casually cycling along, find a lake, cycle to the beach, cycle on the beach. Oh yeh, Port Douglas is quite weird when it comes to the sea. I don't know if it's just this time of the month, or if it's always like this, but during the day, it's low tide and at night, it comes right in to the bush. So, this arvo we were cycling on hard sand near the water and stopped to make a Tom Hanks, Castaway style beach shelter. I had quite low expectations, but it turned out to be pretty easy and by the end, it was a pretty awesome shelter. Chances are, I'll use the picture as the photo for this entry, so have a look now, make the picture bigger... ... ... ... How awesome is that!? If you look close enough, you can see I have a sock on my right hand. That was where I pretty much sliced my fingerprint off my thumb cutting down the palm leaves.

Children, stop reading now...

This evening I've decided 'Dougies' should be re-named to 'Druggies', bloody hell is there a lot of drugs talk. It hasn't changed my opinion of the place, after I cleaned up my thumb and re-dressed my toe, I spent the rest of the afternoon lying on a hammock, reading a book listening to music. It's such a chilled out place... with good reason! You can smell how chilled out it is a lot of the time, that's fine. Doesn't bother anybody, but when you're sat at a table and people are discussing 'how many pills they should take this evening' it's a bit different.

This evening we entered a doubles pool competition, they pair you with a random partner, I got paired with 'Big Ollie', he was pretty good, but our opponents were better. I went to the beach to take pictures when we got knocked out. Andy, if you're reading this, I completely feel your pain from when we were like 15/16 and I knelt on your toe when you had an ingrown toenail... On my way to the beach, I stubbed my gammy toe. Man, that hurt.

19/07/12

This morning showed me how much like camping this really is. 8am came round and the heat in the tent was almost unbearable. Grabbed a shower and had a very similar day to yesterday! We rented bikes, rode around, chilled on the beach, but we swam in the sea today. Which brings me to my red shoulders. Before anyone starts shouting about 'Steve the friendly crustacean' I'll have you know they're just a bit pink and are the only part of me with any sign of sunburn! With the luck I've had, I'm surprised I didn't get stung by a box jellyfish, or a stonefish! We saw a hill and decided to ride up it, which soon turned to pushing our bikes up it. It was like this / . Worth it when we got to the top though, the view was spectacular of the mountains and the 4 mile beach. When we got back, we booked out bus to Cairns for tomorrow, 8am. That's going to be pretty horrible, but I suppose it means that I won't have to fester in this ridiculously hot tent again!

Oh yeh, and there's a lizard that lives under our tent. That's pretty cool.