Had trouble getting to sleep - the pillow was *very* thick so I can never really relax. And of course I'd wake up hot. Not that it was the hotel's fault for that - the airconditioning worked beautifully and the room was lovely and cold (19C). A storm went through The Shire at one point which distracted me with the lightning. Early in the morning I fully closed the blinds which were actually pretty good blockout blinds. I must have slept deeply enough at some point so that this morning I woke up with quite a sore neck. Hurray.
Went back across the road to The Scottish Restaurant and picked up breakfast for us which we ate in the room.
Checked out and wandered across to the airport, T3 this time. Walked all the way past the regional airlines to Qantas, where they said, oh you need to go back to Skytrans, so walked all the way back.
There was no queue, just one person in front of us. But as she left she said to us .. it's cancelled.
And my heart sank.
So we talked to the staff. They said they'd just cancelled due to "weather", and they weren't running a recovery flight, and we'd have to find our own accommodation because "weather", and all the flights for the next day were fully booked so earliest option *might* be TUESDAY, and they'd probably email us in an hour or two.
Hurray.
So we went across the terminal to sit and wait. Of course then I descended into misery thinking of all the money that's suddenly been wasted. Even if we got to fly out on Tuesday that's two days out of our six just GONE. We would have had five full days on the island, but now we'd only get three. We couldn't cancel ourselves because we'd lose everything. Sure the airline could get us there two days late (pfft maybe) but the flights are literally the most expensive part of the trip. By far. The cost per day is mostly influenced by the flights. Spending $4500 for four days is a LOT more expensive than $4500 for six days. We're literally not going to have enough time on the island to see everything. To come back again would mean spending all of that flight money AGAIN.
I called the Blue Lagoon to let them know what was happening and ask what our options were. They were like, you lose, too bad so sad bye bye. So if we don't make it out there at all we lose like $2300. If we're just late by two day we lose those two days. If we try and claim on travel insurance there's the excess which would take a chunk of it anyway.
EVENTUALLY (we didn't get an email like the airport staff said we would) Skytrans SMSed us to say "your flight has been cancelled". And that's it. No other options or what to do. So then had to call them. And spend like half an hour on hold. While we were waiting another group of four came past and asked us if we were also on the cancelled flight. So were they. They'd gone through Oxley Travel, who'd cancelled the whole thing for them and was going to organise a refund through travel insurance. I asked them where they were staying and until how long. Maybe we could take their accommodation if we could wrangle another couple of days to make the trip worthwhile. They only had an extra day, but maybe if we even actually make it out to the island we can ask about it.
So FINALLY I got through to Skytrans and said WTF and they said, ok we've rebooked you on Tuesday's afternoon flight. Assuming they even go on Tuesday. There's meant to be storms.
Another sad thing is we're going to miss the boat trip round the island and out to Balls Pyramid. Because that was meant to be on Tuesday. And we tried for Friday but there was only one free space. So Stu is reserved for that, and I'm on a waitlist.
So bottom line is, if we don't go we'll lose everything, if we do go we'll still lose a lot. Yes, we have travel insurance, but if we choose to cancel it's on us. Literally noone will take responsibility. The airlines are like "weather, too bad", Blue Lagoon is like "too bad", and no matter what happens we're already out of pocket hundreds.
Anyhoo.
So we thought well, let's hire a car and go birdwatching. So went over to the other terminal to Europcar to hire a car. No issues, other than the fact that I explicitly asked for a car that we could hide all our bags in a boot... they gave us a "mid sized suv"... fine... it had a boot... WITH NO EFFING PARCEL SHELF!!! Like I literally asked for something that we could hide our luggage, but we didn't get it. So it meant we couldn't really go anywhere and leave the car unattended. Because, Sydney. Not to mention it was hot and we weren't dressed for any sort of walking in heat. Ok it wasn't HOT but we both had black jeans on and it was certainly hot in the direct sunlight.
We thought we'd try Kurnell. I haven't been to Kurnell since .. I don't even know when, probably since I was a teenager. Maybe 1988.
We tried Bonna Point first but the vibe was all off. It was crowded and hot and it didn't look very birdy. So we gave up on that.
Then tried to park near the Captain Cook obelisk. Did that and I went and had a look.
Then thought we'd go out to Cape Solander. $8.
Again I was stressed about leaving all our crap in the car. Not just because of the theft risk, but because I had a suitcase full of chocolate and chocately nut bars that I thought would melt.
But.
There be whales!!
Also ospreys and white-bellied sea eagles. Well one of each.
It was like 16:00 by this point and we'd only eaten some snacks so we went back to Taren Point Subway. Which was full of bogans and it was noisy and they coudn't be arsed cleaning tables or emptying the bins. Disgusting.
Then we dropped into Dan's and Woollies for wine and ice cream respectively and then to Mum's (we couldn't stay at Mum's last night because she was away). It was nice to be able to just dump our crap. Stu hung out on the balcony for a while and I drank wine and downloaded photos and ranted about how awful travel is and how I literally never want to travel again.
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