Today was our last day in the Barn and Daintree forest. We had to leave around 11 to make it down to Cairns for our flight to Brisbane. We did the usual: coffee, breakfast, swim.
As I was swimming around I said to Susanne “wow, we never saw the monitor lizard again after the first day.” No sooner had those words left my mouth did I see the dude climbing back up the same tree. I guess he wanted to say “adios” to us.
We hung out in the pool until about 9:30 and then decided to go pack up our mountains of stuff minus the Nespresso machine that ended up in the trash can. Damn. I definitely regret bringing that thing.
It was quite hot and humid and we really started sweating while we were packing up. I opened the door to take the bags up to the car and there was another gigantic monitor lizard on the sidewalk. He had quite a start and scrambled up the palm tree. He was probably 4′ long. It was pretty cool.
We finished packing and headed back out to the pool for a final swim and to cool off. I will say that I am going to miss that pool.
We piled into the car and drove the narrow windy road to the ferry and had an uneventful drive down to Cairns. We found a restaurant on the waterfront to have lunch. Although in the sun it was hot and humid (about 90), in the shade with the breeze from the ocean it was super pleasant. We had a leisurely lunch and then headed out to the airport. We filled up the car with gas, dropped it off, checked in and found a place to hang. As always, we were there very early.
We had packed the chess board and we were bummed. I have been really enjoying teaching/playing chess with Susanne. She is starting to get a good grasp of the game and someday, probably not to far in the future, she will kick my butt.
We got to Brisbane about 6:45 pm. I had booked a Novotel hotel close to the airport to make our lives easier. It said it had a shuttle. We walked around trying to figure out where the shuttle bus was; it was not clear at all. We finally found it and waited. I called the hotel and they said it would be there shortly. It came and we got in. Then he informed us it was $5 each and that we had to make a bunch of stops. WTF. It took us over 45 minutes to get to the hotel. We should have Ubered–would’ve been the same price and 30 minutes faster. Sigh.
They checked us in and gave us, unquestionably, the crappiest room in the hotel: right in front of the elevator, which dings every time it opens. Oh, and there’s a speaker there, too, blaring music. Ugh. I went down and complained and they were rude. Errrrggg. We did get a better room, finally. We headed to dinner. We waited a long time to get even a glass of wine. The table was sticky and gross. We asked them to wipe it down for us, but it somehow remained sticky and gross. Ugh. Both Susanne and I were crabby; Susanne was getting a cold. Dinner was decent. We headed up to bed. The bed was crappy. Ugh. But at least the AC worked.
Well, we had made it almost the whole trip without any negatives. I guess it was fitting to get a crappy hotel on the last day. Guess it is time to go home.
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