"Living the 5 star luxury life..."
Trip Start
Oct 04, 2004
1
86
102
Trip End
Ongoing
Where I stayed
Hamilton Island,
Australia
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
For a bargain $100 (40 pounds) the trip would include a scenic flight over other islands, use of all of its 5 star hotel' facilities, lunch and use of any water based sports equipment (boats etc). It sounded great so we booked up straight away! It wasn't until I woke up at 7am, that i realised that was the time we were supposed to be flying out!
After a quick desperate call to the office, we found out that they were making the plane wait for us, so in literally 5 minutes, we had packed up our things and jumping into an awaiting taxi
01. Our 'private' seaplane
.Arriving at the airport, a mix of being drunk, hungover and tired, we were quickly checked in and led to our plane by our pilot. It was only at this time that we realised that we had our own private plane! I can understand now why they could hold up the plane! Plus not only did we have a private plane, but it was also a seaplane, something i hadn't travelled in yet. I took great pleasure telling Dan, who instead of coming with us, had booked a hire car and returned to Bowen for his last day of work (he had to do this to complete his 3 months - I just bribed my foreman to say I was working instead!)
We were in the air for just 15 minutes, but were treated to some great views of the tropical islands below. Sadly the 'seaplane' landed on land and not water like we expected, but the flight alone was worth the $100 fee alone! As soon as we got off the plane, the 5 star treatment started. Escorted to our mini bus we were transferred to our luxury hotel. We realised the hotel was posh when we saw breakfast costs $30, but the way we were both feeling, we gave it a miss and just collapsed on the only 2 sun loungers with any shade!
After 3 hours of just sleeping we awoke and decided we should try and do something whilst we were here
02. View from the plane
! The great thing about Hamilton is the mode of transport on the island are Golf Buggy's, so after paying a small fortune, we hired one for 3 hours! Still blatantly over the limit from the last night, we took off at a cautious pace! Its a good job there aren't random breath tests on the island, although it would have been funny to be arrested 'drunk in charge of a golf buggy'!I think we over estimated the size of the island because after 30 minutes we had covered the whole island! But what a laugh, I can see why golfers use these buggy's, it make the boring game of golf, fun! They actually go quite fast, although we quickly learnt they don't go round corners very well at speed!
We returned back to the hotel and collapsed back on the sun loungers, only getting up for our free lunch and to return the golf buggy. We actually both felt worse now than we did in the morning, so spent the rest of day lying in a comatose state on the sun loungers. It was one of those days that you pledge your never going to drink again!
It didn't help either when i returned the buggy, only to be told that we have to pay $80 because there was a scratch on the bumper. The lady was adamant that we must of hit something, but even though we knew we didn't, we were in no mood to argue, so that's another thing added to the credit card then!
It was a shame we both felt like this as we really didn't utilise the facilities on offer, we felt that bad that we didn't even have the energy to go into the pool, let alone use any of the boats! But at least we experienced 5 star luxury, if only for 10 hours! It wouldn't be long before we were crammed into a greyhound bus with other backpackers on our way to Fraser Island...
