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It was 4:30am and we were sitting in the baggage reclaim area of Cairns domestic airport having been the first arrivals of the day. The good news was we had our rucksacks. The bad news was that the reception at the hostel we booked didn't open until 06:30am so there was no point rushing there.
To kill time, we took showers at the airport. There was a solitary shower in each of the mens and womens toilets. Unfortunately for Mark, he forgot to check if he had a towel until he started showering. He didn't. It was packed in Lisa's rucksack. Thankfully no one else was in the men's toilet to see Mark run across the room with just flip-flops on to retrieve a handful of paper towels from the dispenser. It was great to have a shower as we were still covered in sand from our sandboarding session in Lancelin near Perth (we did this just a few hours before boarding our flight).
After the shower, Mark did a trek to the international terminal to grab brekkie (nothing was open at the domestic terminal) and we then made our way to the taxi rank.
When we got to the hostel our room wasn't ready so we slept on a couple of sofas for about three hours. It was in the lounge that we met a lovely couple from Ireland, Declan and Leonora.
Over the next few days we explored the town, chilled at the man-made esplanade/lido/pool area (as Cairns doesn't have a beach), looked around the shops, and sampled the nightlife.
After one particular lively night out with our new Irish friends Mark's newly found ability to lose things kicked in again. On this evening, we left a bar/ club at about 01:30 and embarked on the usual 20 minute walk back to the hostel. After having a fair few drinks and a bit of a walk, Lisa wasn't too pleased to find that Mark had lost the room key especially as the reception was closed. Fortunately, another guest was passing by the reception at the time and cooly announced that he knew the code for the safe with all the keys in. Next thing he'd opened the safe, got the spare set out and opened our room!!! We didn't ask any questions. Once in, Mark set off back to town to find our key. After 1 1/4 hours he was back with the key. It had been handed in at the bar. Those astute among you will calculate that the journey should have taken 40 minutes but it turned out that Mark got chatting to a couple of people from Botswana and had a couple more beers after finding the key.....I guess to celebrate.
Our stay in Cairns was also noteable as we went into the travel agent and booked some excursions; two were in and around Cairns. We did a day trip on a boat around the Great Barrier Reef where we snorkelled and saw a turtle. Given it was the start of the jellyfish season, we took the precaution of hiring stinger proof wetsuits, which weren't particularly flattering to wear. Mark had bought a waterproof camera case for his new digital compact so took a good few snaps of coral, fish and a turtle. We travelled on the Passions of Paradise catamaran which was excellent.
Our other trip was to a place called Cape Tribulation. Our day started with a river cruise where we saw 3 crocodiles; two at between 4-5 metres and one that was just 2 feet long. Next was a stop at a nice beach then a walk through a rainforest with mangrove swamp areas. We also got to stop at a place called Mossman Gorge where we could have a swim. Hardly anyone did as the water was too cold. We had a stop at a nice town Port Douglas and then a place called Palm Cove. Another good trip.
Cairns turned out to be better than expected, especially as the last person we spoke to about the place said it was "a dump". It was probably better as the weather was glorious.
On our last night, we were walking around town when we caught sight of hundreds of fruit bats in the trees. In all there were actually thousands of them, as we were later informed. We proceeded to the park laying on our backs chatting until it was dusk. Next thing, all the bats had taken to the air and were flying across the sky. Apparently, at dusk they fly to trees a few kilometres away where they have dinner. Thankfully they hadn't eaten yet otherwise sitting under the flight path could have gotten a little messy.
That evening we collected our bags and grabbed a taxi to the coach stop. It was soon after that we were fast asleep on our first Greyhound coach (we had bought a hop-on, hop-off ticket from Cairns to Sydney). We were pleasantly surprised by how comfortable the seats were. We don't remember much about the journey to our next stop (Townsville; for the ferry connection to Magnetic Island) as we were both fast asleep for most of it.
More to come in the Townsville/ Magnetic Island blog.
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