Surfers paradise (12.10.12 - 14.10.12)

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Because we were due to be staying at Surfers Paradise over the weekend we really struggled to find a decent hostel in a decent location. In the end we settled for the YHA, normally I'd be happy to go with the YHA but it was way out of town, about a 40 minute walk. We rang to book and we were told that there wasn't due to be a shuttle until half four, we were arriving at half three, but if we rang they would come and pick us up.
In the end when we arrived we were told that there wouldn't be anyone coming into town until the next shuttle was due and in fact that shuttle was booked up and would be full. We were then told to take a bus and we would be reimbursed, slightly annoyed we set off with the directions we'd been given. To make things more difficult, roads around the centre of Surfers had been closed in preparation for a street race later in the week including the one that our bus normally went down. We eventually managed to find the bus, after half an hour of wandering round. We arrived to find a hostel that was evidently being run mostly by young backpackers, and run pretty badly too. Dishes were piled up in the sinks and the rest of the place was really pretty messy.

We dropped off our stuff and headed to the beach to have an hou
r before the sunset. We were again pretty disorientated about time, as moving to surfers meant yet another time zone. apparently not all states in Australia believe in daylight savings! On checking in we'd signed up for the bbq that the hostel was holding thinking that it would be a good way to meet people and to find out about surfers. It ended up being the opposite, as soon as they had cooked the staff all sat together and essentially got drunk and rowdy and paid little attention to anyone else.

The day after we decided to walk down into the city and have a wander around before heading to the beach for the afternoon. Surfers attracts all kinds of hen do's, stag do's and birthday weekends and seems a bit like the Blackpool of Oz. The beach here is a long, long sandy beach that seems to stretch for miles, but in the city it was crowded. It wasn't quite as bad as Bondi but it was busy. Its very strange that you walk about 500m down this huge long stretch of white sand and you pretty much have the beach to yourself! Whilst having lunch, we noticed a group of people in suits walking around, approaching people and asking questions. On his way to the bathroom, James was stopped and asked about his preference of folding/ scrunching toilet paper, turns out they were in a 9 steps to success self help programme...brilliant!



That night we made ourselves a spot of tea before walking back into the city for a few drinks. It seems that the bar of choice in Surfers is the Beergarden, so after popping in a couple of irish bars we headed on in. There was quite a good band on who were playing some rock covers, though bizarrely in the breaks the bar played some awful music. The Vengaboys were played, don't really need to say much more.



The morning after we checked out at ten and nipped over the road to the beach for an hour before climbing on the bus to Brisbane where we'd change and head north to Noosa.

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