Uncle Traveling Matt: The Beach House

July 12, 2006

The Beach House

Well my plan was 4 relaxing days in the sun at the Beach House, which as the name suggests surrounded by rain forest and right on the beach. There was slight spanner to my plan tho, in that the weather decided to give us the real rain forest experience, and apart from Tuesday morning when it was over cast, it rained and rained and rained and rained and rained—getting heavier with each passing day!

However, being a very positive person, I made the best of it and met some really cool people along the way. When I first arrived on Monday, these American girls gave me all these vouchers for free cooked breakfasts which helped with the food costs. I was staying in the Dorms and in each room you share with up to 4 other people. Since most people came here on one night overnight trips there was new people to talk to each day.

I meet several groups of Irish and Scottish girls, a couple of guys from Germany, a few Brits and of course a handful of Aussies. There were also these French guys that had one of the big silver Turkish water pipes with the hose—like the one the cat had in Alice in Wonderland! Ironically I didn't meet a single New Zealander during my entire time in Australia!

On the Tuesday night, this British couple with a car drove us down to PK's for the "Full Moon" party to check out the night life there—since that was the cheaper hostel and apparently party central. To be honest it was pretty disappointing, however the beer was cheap (VB isn't too bad) and we found out that drivers licenses and visa cards have all these graphics on them that only show up under UV [black] light!—the DJ booth was made from the front of an old car with black lights for headlights.

The British couple escaped Cape Tribulation and Mount Sorrow early the next morning, which was lucky as the rivers were rising. On the Wednesday I did one of the walks up to Emmagen Creek swimming hole (about an 1 hour walk each way) with this Italian girl, Sarah, who was staying in our dorm. It rained the entire way but the swimming as good and it was nice to get out of the Beach House for a while. However the big mistake was now my warmest clothes were wet, which meant due to the weather, I had no dry clothes and wet shoes for the next three days—not exactly fun!

Sarah's bus fortunately got through the river fords ok on the later that afternoon [Wednesday], I was scheduled to leave midday Thursday. By this time the novelty of the rain had well and truly worn off!

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Posted by Matt at July 12, 2006 4:11 PM