Sun, sand, and a timely escape: Surfers Day 2

Today, everyone, I totally outdid myself in terms of completely uncool waking times. I awoke at 4:45am, which sounds terrible until you realize that it is 7:45am New Zealand time, which is not quite as lame. I was surprised to see that at 4:45, the sun is up here. Gretchen was still sleeping, but I decided to head down to the beach to try to catch the end of the sunrise. There were a crapload of people out there, considering it was 5am. The tide started coming in while I was there, which was exciting because the seagulls started finding food and fighting over it. "Mine! Mine! Mine!" I saw lots of little jellyfish washed up on the sand, which reminded me that I have entered the most dangerous country in the world. I decided not to go in the water today.

I walked back to the room around 6:00, and Gretchen was up, so we headed out for breakfast. We went to McDonald's for breakfast, but it was different than in the US. They have McCafe, which is a real coffee bar right there, and lots more healthy options. After we had a good cheap breakfast, we walked back to the beach and got up close and personal with a pelican. We walked around for some more time, noticing the fun things to do in Surfers. Among them is a shooting range, which is clearly targeted toward the Asian tourists since they can't have guns there (I learned this when I saw the same phenomenon in Hawaii last year), and a bowling alley. There is also something called "bathtub racing," which appears to be racing in bathtub-shaped go-karts. I am not sure whether there is something in Australian culture that makes racing bathtubs particularly interesting, but in any case, it was random and amusing.

The sand was soft, the waves were gorgeous, and the sun was perfect.

We headed to the beach at 10:15, where we rented chairs and an umbrella since it was our first day in the sun and Queensland is the skin cancer capital of the world, so we needed to control our exposure. The sand was soft, the waves were gorgeous, and the sun was perfect. I got a good base tan toward my goal of being tanner than Anish Gupta. I feel like I really have a chance to win the tan-off this time, if I plan everything just right. We lazed around on the beach for a few hours, reading and listening to music, standard stuff. A few of the girls were going topless, but don't worry, Mom, we kept our tops on. Around 1:45, a little sprinkle of rain started, and we'd had a lot of sun anyway, so we decided to head back to the hotel. Gretchen took a nap, and I had a quick shower and went back out to explore. I got some more books (I have already read the 3 I brought and the new one I bought in Christchurch) and some nail polish remover -- my pedicure was in a sad state. I came back up to the room, met up with Gretchen, quickly redid my toes, and we were off.

We went shopping in Surfers and got some hats for ourselves that are awesome. We noticed that there was a lot of ado over something called "Schoolies," which we quickly inferred is the Australian version of Senior Week and means that tomorrow 50,000 18-year-olds will descend on Surfers. We were really glad that we had planned to leave early tomorrow morning. Gretchen got some delicious gelato, I got actual American coffee, and we watched the world go by for a while. I must say, I have heard a lot about how good-looking Australians are, but so far, everyone, I am not seeing it. Perhaps it is because Surfers is so touristy. I will keep an eye out in Sydney. I also noticed during this break that I still had sand in my elbow even after a shower and several hours off the beach. Wow!

We were not hungry, but we did head out for drinks around 7pm. We went to an ultra-cool bar called Central, located right past the strip clubs on the street of ill repute, that was too expensive and upscale for the Schoolies to frequent. At Central, we tried wines from Tasmania (I know!) and took in the sights. Surfers is such an interesting place -- there's a lot of tacky, seedy stuff, which you would expect in a touristy beach town, but there were also boutiques for Louis Vuitton, Chanel, MAC, bebe, Armani, and all the rest that you see in Waikiki. In short, there is something for everyone. Lots of fun! We turned in early, because we need to get up at 4:00am to catch our 7:00am flight to Cairns. I know, it sounds terrible, but we are still sort of on NZ time so we are really waking up at 8:00. No problem!

Some thoughts about Australia: I love it here, and the people are super friendly, but the slang is a little hard to take. I feel like a tourist, having to ask them to repeat themselves. "Brekky" is breakfast, which is easy enough to figure out, but they actually make you say this word out loud in public instead of assigning it a value meal number. The humanity! There is also some sort of slang for ice cream that I honestly could not make out even after the girl said it 3 times. Crazy! Overall, I like Australia a lot. They have 16 channels here, which is a vast improvement over the 5 available in New Zealand. Of course, 3 of the 16 channels are devoted to cricket, so that's sort of a toss-away. Anyway -- on to Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef!