October 1-4
After an extensive clean-up sesh, we ditched the van and lugged our bags to the train station. We immediately went all the way back down to Surfer's Paradise and found this where the connecting bus dropped us off:
A shuttle bus from our hostel brought us from the bus stop near city center to our beachside hostel, where we moved into a room with two girls (who we weren't told we'd be living with). Long story short, one of the girls moved out after the first night. The other was a trooper and stuck it out, even coming out with us one of the ensuing nights. The next morning, we went out to the beach to find no surfers and hardly a paradise. The rain was pouring, the ocean was choppy, etc. etc. We abandoned our beach tendencies and wandered into town to find an interesting scene. I had been told Surfer's was a beachside city, and I'd seen it from a distance. What I did not know was that it would be lined with Guccis, Louis Vattons and Starbucks. This was hardly what I imagined a surfer would consider paradise. For those of you at home, this was Bridgeport Village on the beach. We also found the first Wendy's we'd seen in Australia, only it wasn't Wendy's (notice the rain coats):
After killing the morning, we found a large bar showing the (second) footy grand final on a bunch of flat screens and settled in. Collingwood smoked St. Kilda. I mean not even close. I bet on the line, with St. Kilda +35 points or something like that. Well, they didn't even cover the spread. I couldn't believe in a professional sport, the theoretically two best teams that tied their first championship game could be so unequal just a week later. I got screwed. That day as well as the next, which was as equally miserable, I found myslef either in a giant arcade called TimeZone, sitting at a random bar watching college football, or going out to one of the many student-filled clubs and meeting some awesome - and also rather interesting - people.
On the last day of our stay in Surfer's (and our adventure), the sun finally came out. Surfer's Paradise at least turned into somewhat of a paradise, even though there were still zero to few surfers on the waves. The beach was packed at intermittent swim zones where lifeguards barked orders through megaphones at the swimmers (us). Seeing as it was our last day of break and the first nice day in Surfer's, I figured I would get some sun before heading back to the rain in Melbourne. Dumb, I got burned. Not as bad as Hughesy and Gregg at the beginning in Cairns (I thought they had immediately contracted skin cancer), but still pretty bad.
The trip had come and gone in a blink of an eye, but it felt like it was time to head home to Melbourne. I was ready to stop living out of my backpack, but the trip had been absolutely amazing. It felt like we had really seen Australia, the kind on all of the adventure and tourist brochures (minus the yachts, cruises, and obviously the Outback). We got home by about midnight, and lucky for us we had to go surfing for a class (no joke) at 730 in the morning. After all, who needs sleep.
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