Oct 29th 2010: Brisbane to Cairns

It's official... Allie has landed! I have been awaiting her arrival for... well pretty much even before I left for Australia! After 9 months of separation, it's nice to finally be reunited with such a close friend!

I spent a night at Base Central hostel in Brisbane the night before her arrival so that I could greet her when her plane touched down at 7am! The girls in my hostel room were super friendly and invited me to go to the hostel bar "Downunder" with them... I opted to go because hey! I was given a free drink voucher upon arrival, and who would be silly enough to turn that down?! Little did I know that my 1 free drink would turn into 3 free drinks and a shot! (The girls turned out to be friends with the bar manager and the DJ!) So my nice and early night turned into a 12:30am one, but it's all good I "pulled up ok" (as the Aussies say) the next morning.

I caught the SkyTrain ($13.50) from the city central into the international terminal where I was ATTACKED by Allie! I had just sat down expecting to have to wait for her to clear customs, but it turned out that she had already done so, and she thought it would be funny to scare the living bejezus out fo me! We had quite a bit of time to catch up on lost time during our 5 hour wait for our plane to Cairns. The flight didn't take off until 1:20pm, so we decided to grab some brekky and later on treated ourselves to Allie's first Aussie beer, a Pure Blonde (Oh how I know I'm going to miss them!) while we chatted with a paramedic from Canada.

The 2 hour flight went very smoothly. Al and I sat beside a lady who worked for Tourism Queensland, so we got the whole speel! When we arrived at Cairns airport and were waiting for our luggage to arrive we had a celebrity spotting--- the one and only David Suzuki (solar backpack and all!) How typical?! I would be the one to run into him when we are both pretty much as far as we can get from our native land! Credit goes out to Allie who spotted him first!

We arrived at Caravella's Backpacker Resort around 4pm and checked in. This hostel rocks! Allie and I paid $25 each and we got our own room in an apartment style res that we shared with a lovely couple from England. It was fully equipped with a kitchen, washroom, living room and wrap around balcony. This country sure knows how to cater to backpackers! We were even given a voucher for a free dinner in town at the "Woolshed" which we visited and had a chili/pasta meal after having a stroll through the town center. Our hostel was located along the Esplanade so it made for a nice stroll to the harbour and lagoon (man-made swimming area because crocs hang around in the natural waters this far north!)

We picked up an underwater digital camera rental for our reef expedition and then headed home for the evening. Allie did so well for having just landed and going non-stop, no way jetlag was going to get in her way! By the time I was out of the shower and in our room, she was KO'd! I followed her lead as we had an early 7am start the next morning.