Debbie Downer

We're having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. I think we'll move to Australia... Or not :)


I hate to be Debbie Downer on this post but we're a little disappointed with the way this part of our trip is going. When we decided to come to Australia our vision was to rent a camper van, drive up the coast and stop to snorkel, surf, and sign up for the occasional scuba diving trip. We're near the Great Barrier Reef, we thought it'd be easy.

We arrived in Townsville on the 3rd and had to be in Cairns by the 5th to pick up our camper van. It's only a 2 hour drive. While we were there we had a great time with some locals and it happened to be the day of the Melbourne Cup so everyone closed down their shops to watch the race. We ended up finding an information center and found out a bunch of live aboard boats were having last minute scuba diving trips to the outer barrier reef so we signed up for a 3 day 2 night trip. It would end up shortening our driving and exploring time but decided it would be ok, and it is.

We took 2 days to get up to Cairns and on our way up we stopped at a couple of places people told us to check out. Nothing special but kind of neat. We slept in the car the first night and stopped at a Mango Grove the next morning for breakfast, lunch, and mango icecream (sooooooo goooood). I got crepes with mango jelly for breakfast (yummmmmmmm). As we continued our drive we found out we couldn't just get out of the car and swim at any beach because the northern part of Australia has Stingers. They are a lot like Jellyfish but smaller and have a worse sting. It's really hard to see them because they are really small and their tentacles are really long. The only way to be 95% sure you won't get stung is to swim in an enclosed area that has "stinger nets"... or where a really good looking stinger suit.

We finally got to Cairns and slept in the car again. We were excited to get our camper van the next day and decided to sleep in the car one more night to save some cash. We saw a ton of Kangaroos as we were trying to find a place to park, it was awesome!

The next morning we found a place called the lagoon which was a public pool that was basically on the beach and it had public showers. We hadn't showered in 2 or 3 days so that was really nice... This is where our trip really starts to go down hill...

We went to drop off our rental car before picking up our Camper van since our car was due before we could pick up our van. We drove to the airport and realized the camper van company was not located on the airport property even though they told us it was on or near... I guess "near" means a $15 cab ride. $15 is a lot of money when you're traveling for 7 weeks and the US dollar is plummeting.

When we called the company to see if they had a shuttle bus to bring us to their place, they were extremely rude. This company is called Backpackers Camper Vans... They also do Britz and Maui camper vans. We finally arrived at our rental place and they were rude to us upon arrival. They seemed annoyed we were there and started adding on charges after charges making the quoted price go from $55/day up to $80/day. When we decided to not take the insurance, they didn't just preauthorize my card for a damage bond (which is what every other rental company has done this trip), they charged my card $2900! With the 3% exchange fee that's an extra $87 fee that I have to pay for something I didn't even buy or damage... The woman was not helpful at all and it ended up taking us 2 or 3 hours to figure the whole thing out.

I couldn't call my credit card company so I ran about a mile down the road to get a calling card to call my mom so she could call my credit card company. It was kind of funny, she had me on one ear and the credit card company on the other trying to translate the problem haha. At this point we don't even want the stupid camper van anymore but we can't cancel it or we'll still get charged for the whole time we reserved it.

We finally got it figured out. So now, we're pissed off driving a run down van that smells bad, is dirty, and we have to eat and sleep in. We decide to go grocery shopping and get on the road. We end up driving for only about 45 minutes because by this time it's dark out and we need to find a place to sleep as well as make dinner. It was pretty funny making our dinner and we were laughing the whole time because it was absolutely ridiculous. We have some pictures.

The next morning we started our drive up to Port Douglas and Cape Tribulation. We found a gorge in Mossiman which was awesome. It was raining the whole time but we were in a rain forest so it kind of came with the territory. Things were starting to look better. We were starting to get bummed out though because we had been in Australia for 8 days and the only time we had been in the ocean was learning to scuba dive. We continued up to Cape Trib and when we got there it was beautiful. We found a place to park which was right next to the beach... Perfect!... we got out to go run in the water. I was prepared to wear my stinger suit (yes, I bought one)... We stop at a sign that says "these waters are filled with Crocs, do not swim!" AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH... That entire area was filled with Crocs and stingers. It was a beautiful area that we couldn't really appreciate because we couldn't pay the 100's of dollars to go on the tours and we weren't allowed to go on unpaved roads with our van to get to the places these tours go. We found a different site to sleep and stayed there.

The next morning we tried going to a couple of places and walks to check out the place but by this time we were over it. We felt like we were homeless and we just wanted a place to swim. We drove back to Port Douglas and found a camping ground that had a pool. It was finally a place we could swim even though it wasn't the ocean.


At this point we're just really disappointed because we had very simple expectations and none of them are being met (swimming in the ocean, snorkeling, scuba diving, surfing). We're tired, spending money we don't want to be spending, and trying to pass time until our diving trip in 3 days....... We're in Australia and we're trying to PASS time!! ahhhhhhh... Hopefully the next post will be more upbeat but I guess we're entitled to 1 meltdown over a 7 week period.