CAIT AROUND THE WORLD

April 10, 2023 — I woke up and started my day with some Froot Loops, then had some chocolate with a glass of milk in honour of Easter. It was Easter Sunday at home, with the family gathered at my grandmother’s for dinner, and I tried to phone and video chat but I wasn’t able to connect. Dratted terrible service.

I read my book by the ocean — at this point I was finishing the second book of the Chesapeake Bay saga by Nora Roberts and starting the third. I read most of the day, trying to recover from the day before. When lunchtime rolled around, I tried very hard to cook lunch and had absolutely no luck with the appliances, even though I tried two separate times and there were people next to me cooking without issue both times. I went down the beach and had a good little cry about it, then went into town to get some food and then headed back to the hostel. I ate and read.

I’d had to check out of my room this morning because of how I booked the hostel: I booked three nights for the special deal that would give me vouchers toward breakfast, dinner, and a free drink, and then because I wanted to stay an extra night, I booked one more night separately. I wound up in the same room as before, but I checked out and stored my bags to give them a chance to straighten up the room and so that I could have clean sheets!

I got back into the room a little while after lunch. I’d gone for a swim and then changed after cooling off a bit. I also got to enjoy some better functioning air conditioning for a while because I’d mentioned it at reception again that the settings didn’t seem to be right; it kept switching itself off and not turning itself back on when it needed to.

I’d heard from one of the girls staying in my room before that the sunset at Cockle Bay was awesome, so I walked over to see it. I think I might have been a little late, but also that the clouds might have blocked it too much that night, because the sunset wasn’t very good. It was still pretty, though, and I got a nice walk out of the deal. To get to Cockle Bay, you had to walk through Picnic Bay, and I couldn’t believe how much it made me think of home. It’s really funny how certain places will do that to me. There wasn’t even anything particular about the place that was similar to home, it just made me think of it.

When I finally made it back to the hostel, I had a cool shower and fully accidentally broke my watch’s screen. I had my towel hung up and forgot to take my watch off at first, then laid it over the top of my hanging towel when I remembered. I pulled that towel down to dry off when I finished my shower and crash, down came my watch. I’m writing about it quite a bit after the fact and I still can’t believe I did that. I had a moment of absolute panic that it was broken completely, but thankfully it’s just a really bad screen crack. No more water near the watch for a while, and I’ve been being extra careful with it. I’m hoping I can get it fixed in Singapore or London because unfortunately Cairns (my next destination) doesn’t have an Apple Store. Sighing heavily, I brushed my teeth and went to bed. As nice as this place is, I was pretty glad that this was my last night. It was a rough day.

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