Frogs With Megaphones & Luxurious Rooms
Bribie Island -> Bundaberg, 9th February 2002
We woke up late today, having spent the previous night playing
Perfect Dark and Mario Kart until the small hours. Stinge and Em had
kept going until about 5:30am! We'd originally aimed to be out by
10:30am. But, by the time we woke up and tidied the place up, we'd
set a new target of 12:30pm. By the time the last rubbish bag had
been disposed of, the last glass washed and we were all sat in the
van, it was 1pm.
On our way North, we stopped at Caboolture to buy a shirt for Josh,
his T-Shirts were too painful to put on over his burnt & blistered
back. He needed a shirt to slip on carefully.
Although we'd miss the nice beach, we were quite happy to be on our
way. Bribie Island has a HUGE mosquito population. Even with the
mozzie net doors and mozzie coils burning, we still woke every
morning, covered in bites! We'd spend the day scratching our arms,
legs, hands, necks, butts, ankles and feet. (Scratching our own
ones, that is!) Things were so annoying, that we'd started to spray
ourselves with the powerful DEET spray. Which worked a treat.
There were also the amazing frogs. Outside the house was a small
frog pond with tiny, tiny frogs in it. We're talking about half the
size of a match box, about 2cm long. Tiny. But at night time, they
could make some noise. They croaked REALLY loudly. I'm sure someone
gave them megaphones. How can something so small, make such loud
noises? Jet engines pale in comparison to their voice boxes!
Anyhow, by the time we reaches Bundaburg, it was late and all the
shops were closed. It's quite a large town, but we soon found the
hotel we booked. The Hotel Grande. Beds were $16 a night. We went in
and the guy asked if we wanted to check the rooms. Ok, we might as
well.
We wandered up the stairs to a huge landing, and opened the door to
room 19. We looked inside carefully. It was the stereotypical,
seedy, dingy, cheap hotel from the movies. It was really nasty. When
we saw the big wet stain on the bed sheet, we decided to look
elsewhere. Luckily, we hadn't given them any deposit or credit card
number to hold the room.
We walked down the road searching for another place. We saw a motel
with a big sign saying: "MATILDA'S: A nice place to stay." Josh
looked at the sign and said: "This looks like a nice place. Lets
check it out". We had a look at the rooms. They were infinitely
better than the last place. And they had a pool. But the price was
$120. No reductions.
We kept looking, the next place: MOTEL - VILLA MIRASOL looked really
nice. It was, according to the sign, the 'newest motel in Bundaburg'.
We thought we'd have a look, even though it was clearly too
expensive.
We chatted to the lady, she said the rate was $100 for all 5 of us
together. Not too bad. We hesitated and uummed & ahhed. She let us
have a look at the room, and it was fantastic. Top quality, full air
conditioning, TV and fridge. Fantastic. We chatted a bit more. Josh
said Matilda's was offering us a room for $80, but we weren't happy
because there was no air-conditioning. Eventually, she settled at
$90. $90! That worked out at $18 each, $1.50 (50p)more than the s**tsville
hotel we looked at first! Without hesitation we took it.
The Motel Villa Mirasol is fantastic with really friendly, happy
staff. We highly recommend it!
We grabbed some pizza for dinner and watched the winter Olympics
opening ceremony in Salt Lake City. I also got my diary up to date.
(Sorry Em, Nat and Stinge for keeping the lights on so late!)
After re-applying Josh's bandages and cream, I went to bed. We all
slept really well in the fantastic, air-conditioned room. No
sweating tonight, we have some luxury!
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