Friday, December 29, 2017

Friday 29th December – A stressful planning day



We had set aside today for planning as we had somehow forgotten that, after December 2017, inevitably, January 2018 would follow!  And yet, we were still to organise how we would be travelling the east coast of Australia for our last three weeks here.  There was no way we would be able to benefit from a relocation deal this time… we were going to be taking our time to sample as much as possible.  However, there was a ‘gap’ between Sydney and Brisbane where there wasn’t a lot we wanted to see.  I looked at the possibility of getting a train from Sydney to Brisbane and then booking travel passes on Greyhound to reach Byron Bay, just to the South of the City, before turning back north and bussing it alllll the way up to Cairns. I kind of felt that we should experience some time on a Greyhound and traveling on the cheap as backpackers as part of the whole experience.  Simon was more resistant to this option but agreed that it may make financial sense, our last two months having broken the budget.  However, when Si went to book somewhere to stay in Byron there was nothing available for the dates we wanted…. unless you wanted to pay hundreds for a beachfront luxury apartment…. Er, no!  We started worrying about availability and all of the planning that we’d need to do every time we wanted to book on and off the bus and have somewhere to stay each time. We have just been used to driving ourselves where we want, when we want and having a roof over our head in the form of a camper as a back-up if nothing else was available!  The next three weeks on a bus was going to be very expensive nightmare if we either couldn’t find places to stay or they were too expensive.  Maybe that isn’t the cheaper option after all?  There was only one thing for it…. 
 I began putting together an intricate database to compare the costings of each of the different travel options we had!  This was stressful.  I had already started booking Greyhound bus tickets and now we were going to change everything! Could we cancel our greyhound tickets or were we committed to them now?  

I had to get out for a breath of fresh air as our plans were all over the place.  My database creation only went to confirm that, after taking everything like transport, food and accommodation costs into consideration, there really only appeared to be a few hundred dollars difference between all of the available options.  It really just came down to what we preferred to do and that, you may not be surprised to hear, is to travel in our own living space on wheels!  Simon got on the phone to motorhome republic (our camper brokers) and Greyhound.  Could we still get a camper this late in the day and from Brisbane?  He spoke to Greyhound about cancelling our bus tickets and how much we’d be charged in fees but we didn’t want to pull the trigger on this until we knew we had another option confirmed.  After hours of searching, phone calls and heated discussions whilst the credit card balance climbed ever higher, we are still in limbo - we haven’t got a camper confirmed yet but we also have two greyhound tickets to Cairns that will cost us $230 in fees to cancel!

Still, beats working for a living, eh?!

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