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Week 6... (Wow its been that long!)
Australia baby
Hi all, its Monday and today we pick up our camper van to start our outback adventure down under. We have managed to blag free internet so are making the most of it because everything here is soooo expensive and so internet pennies are not so abundant as they were in South America. So this week we have hauled ourselves over from Chile to Cairns in Oz. It wasn't a short trip so we have spent a lot of the week getting ourselves over the jet lag and acclimatizing to the new 30 degree weather and sunshine...its a hard life!!!
After last weeks blog we collected our ever so heavy bags and caught the bus to the airport. Enroute we saw the market we had been searching for, typical. Once at the airport we had a monster beef roll (after we managed to work out what it was on the menu) and a giant ceaser salad which was yummy, oh and a final cup of tea. We brought books which cost the earth but with the three flights ahead of us, it had to be done. I will mention a this point that my bag seemed to have bricks in it, i couldnt even stand up straight and looked a right loone dragging myself through the airport, it was only when checking it in that it turned out that my bag weighed 19kg, nearly half my body weight! And Toms weighed 17kg. He felt a bit bad! The plane was lovely luxury LAN airways. We again had our own tv screen, however this time it included games. I played solitaire for many hours and Tom watched a multitude of films...all accompanied by the now common free beer and wine...yum! We tried to sleep but the plane seemed to have the lurgy. A woman a few rows back had a choking fit just before we took off, it was the kind where you cant catch your breath and you gag, it sounded horrible. When she was asked if she was fit to fly she told the air stewardess that she was just choking...what a fib. It turned out that she smoked 30 cigarettes a day, had got altitude sickness and also emphysema, she was a poorly woman. She continued to choke her way through the whole 14 hours journey. At some time in the morning after a few hours sleep, we woke to find most of the plane awake and air stewards handing out face masks to everyone. Great! It was like something out of a film of an escaped virus. We are now starting to feel the effects as we both have muggy ears and sore throats. So we flew, slept, watched films, ate, slept, ate again....Monday came and went, still flying.....
Tuesday
At 3am we landed in Auckland for re fueling. We had to get off the plane and get back on at 5am for the next bit of the flight to Sydney. Once in the air we had our second breakfast of the day, which we werent complaining about. We tried to sleep a bit more, then 4 hours later we arrived in Sydney. We had to fill out our immigration cards before customs. We may as well have had 4 inch letters on our saying stop us. 1) Are you bringing food in – Check. 2 – Have you been in South America – Check. 3) Have you walked in jungle, national parks and lakes – Check. We got sniffed by the drug dogs. We then got shifted into the checking aisle where we had to unpack our bags to have our walking boots checked for bugs. Once satisfied, we squeezed our once well packed bags shut and headed for our final flight of the day. It was quite funny here though as everyones souvenirs from around the world were getting pulling and bashed checking for any little critters, it was fasinating. Our final flight was delayed a bit due to some poorly pasengers now not travelling. We think it was some of the lurgys from our plane. Once in the air though, we had Beef Madras for lunch, yummy, that cheered us up! This flight was only 3 hours so not too bad and the scenery over Australia was beautiful. We arrived in Cairns and went to the tourist board which is great here as they have free phones to the locals hotels and hostels. We found a hostel which was reasonable (although still extortionate in comparison to our budget) , gave you breakfast, free tea and coffee (bonus), free dinner each night and collected you from the airport. Booked. We waited outside in the sunshine willing ourselves to battle the impending jet lag and not fall asleep standing up, and along came.....the party bus. You heard him coming before you saw him due to the massive Sub that he had booming and yes it was our hostel bus...called the Asylum. The guy who got out was wearing a t shirt advising us that he was an inmate. Great. We managed to get there in one piece and check into an interesting room. We showered, in water which was consistantly hot, wow, to wake up and headed down to the Esplanade which is the water front here and went exploring. We managed, just about, to keep our eyes open till dinner time and queued up for our free dinner. It felt like a soup kitchen queue but we were thankful for the chilli and rice which was lovely. We then headed home before being bombarded with bats. The bats here are HUGE. We have never seen any so big and so many of them, everywhere. The wing span must be about 75cm and the bodies are like Bobby. We managed to avoid getting picked up by one. Home, Bed.
Wednesday
4am, Awake! Damm jet lag. Wide awake and nothing is making us nod off. We want breakfast and a cup of tea but nothing and no one is up, and neither should we be. We read and try to drop off again but it doesnt work. We are currently 14 hours ahead of Chile and the biggest jump we do on our trip, so its going to get easier! 7am, we go down for breakfast, Cornflakes. Lovely, we have missed cereal because it seemed a rarity in South America. This morning we walked a few km to the camper van office in the hope that we can collect our van earlier than Monday. No such luck, it is being driven here from Sydney and will be here Sunday. Oh well. We walk back, stopping only to price up prawns, which are more like langoustines they are so big and for a Subway. Tom introduces me to the delight of a meatball sub, going 'heavy' on the jalepenos. Y U mmy. We spend another day exploring the city until in the afternoon we are dragged into a tattoo place where we spend some time with an English guy trying to design a tattoo for Tom. Tom wanted three little birds, like the Bob Marley song. They guy was trying to get him to have three mahusive eagles on his arm. Almost tempted by this, i dragged Tom for a beer to contemplate. We drew on what we had in mind in biro and decided that smaller was what Tom wanted. Tonight we lasted an hour later. Had our free dinner...Spaghetti and Chilli to mix it up a bit and headed home for more sleep.
Thursday
We were planning on heading up to the beaches today. They are about 20 minutes north of Cairns and we have been told there is no where to stay there. We werent convinced so we packed our little bags and stored our big bags and were set to go and find out for ourselves. Before that though, the tattoo place had a space at 10am so we headed straight there. The weather today is rainy so shorts and rain jackets are a must. We spend more time deciding on the right tattoo and by 11.30am still werent sure about this guy and his ideas. We went from a second breakfast / brunch to decide. And oh what a brunch that was. Real bacon and real beans, with white buttered toast! Yum. We went back to the tattoo guy to see some designs he had agreed to draw for us, Tom wasnt feeling it so we left. Round the corner, there is a huge tattoo place. We went in there to get another opinion. The guy was great, said yep sure no worries, when do you want it? Tom said, now, he said lets go...and he did. It was so exciting and Tom now has the tattoo he has wanted for years. Im jealous and now trying to decide what I want. I was tempted but the minimum charge seems too much for the tiny one that I want. By now it was 3pm and we decided that walking around in the rain at the beaches wasnt the best end to the day so we went to the waterfront and booked into a hostel. To christen the new tattoo we made use of Happy Hour and got in the jugs of beer. 2 hours later we had the big tattoo unveiling when Tom was allowed to take the cover off. Very happy man. Dinner tonight was at a new pub. We had chicken curry and irish stew, gravy and mash was lovely, but it was tiny so we were still hungry. Determined to stick to our budget we brought a loaf of bread and some Marmite and feasted on Marmite on toast and Tea before bed, man we know how to live!!! Extra hour awake, doing well.
Friday
Raining again but we were off to the beaches. We caught the local bus up to Palm Cove which is the second most northern beach and renowned for being lovely. The bus driver was a miserable sod, they all seem to be, its like its in the job description, weird. When we got here, they were right, there is no where to stay, unless you pay loads and loads. Palm Cove is lovely though. We had a wander along the beach and a milkshake in a diner (cafe really but i wanted to say diner!) before catching the bus back to Cairns and finding a hostel for the night. As the weather looked the same for tommorow, we planned to go to the zoo. Exciting. Free dinner again tonight, then Tom had the ice cream he had been looking forward to all week (Toms treat)
Saturday
We woke up to a bright blue sunny sky. No zoo for us. Today we were hitting the lagoon to get some sunshine. We first traipsed around the chemists to find a suitable tattoo cover then crashed out for 2 hours on the beach. 2 hours later, we were both feeling burned and as today was prawn and beer day (a $20 deal for a bucket of prawns and 2 beers, Carols treat), we took some shade and went and feasted. We made a blumin mess of the place, disecting the prawns but it was worth it. We spent the rest of the afternoon in the shade relaxing in the park. One thing they do well here is the outdoor BBQ's. In the middle of the waterfront park area are loads of BBQs and everyone just brings their lunch with them, brilliant. We managed to get stuck chilling out in the middle of a game of football with a group of guys who really had no control. We managed to avoid being belted by the ball but i think we were the only ones who did. We made a lucky escape and went home to get ready for our Saturday night out. As we had got bored of eating the free dinners all week (the selection is about 4 different dishes) we had agreed that the weekend we could splurge a bit, so tonight we were going for an Indian and then i was planning on dragging Tom to a free salsa lesson we had found. Getting ready, we saw the full impact of the 2 hours of sun...I look like a neapolitan ice cream with my tanned, pink and white bits!!! The malaria tablets we are taking give us hypersensitive skin. 2 hours and loads of suntan lotion and we really burnt, not good. After amusing Tom with my stripes we went for our Ruby Murry. It was lovely. And we even treated ourselves to a bottle of wine. Yum. We walked along the front to watch a fire show. We didnt make it to Salsa, just to sleep! Lite weights.
Sunday
Still sunny, lovely. We woke up early to get to the zoo for Kangaroo feeding time. However that didnt seem to go to plan. Possibly due to the drinks last night, we were a bit slower this morning. We had to move rooms at the hostel and decided that the shoebox with bunkbeds they had given us wouldnt really do. So we stored our bags and headed out for the day. We needed to go back to where our big bags were stored because we realised that the camera battery was dead, not what you want for a day out. Charger in hand, we ran to the bus stop. Whilst running, Tom asked, have we got the bank card, i replied, No. We were so un organised. Our bank card was about 2km away in the opposite direction of the bus. So we went back to the bag store and get Toms card...then went to the bus. We missed the bus, so we waited 30 minutes. When the bus arrived she said she would take us to the Zoo, but it would take 1 hour and 15 minutes, great! We got on anyway and enjoyed the ride. When we got to the zoo our card wouldnt work as they dont accept Maestro. She said not to worry, there was a supermarket 5 minutes away...5 minutes! We walked for 15 minutes, got some money, brought a picnic and headed back. We missed the Kangaroos feeding, and the Pelican feeding. Oh well. We learnt some lessons, like dont get drunk and not get yourself sorted, plebs! The zoo was brilliant. There were only about 50 people there so we went to all of the talks etc and got to touch snakes and feed kangaroos. We saw a kangaroo with a joey dumped head first in its pouch. I had a kangaroo take a liking to me and he nearly knocked me off the rock i was sitting on as it bounded over to me. We saw a crocodile feeding, he was a big buggar, a snake eat a rat, a sea eagle which was huge, loads of stuff. We had our picnic of ceaser salad and pate on bread. We made the most of our day and stayed till closing then got the bus home with the same driver as we had in the morning. We had our free dinner again and found a new hostel. As we were again still hungry, we went for a liquid meal. We walked out of our hostel and right into Andy, my friend Liss' friend. She is currently on a plane on her way out here to meet him and we had just e mailed him about some diving, real coincidence. So the three of us went for a few beers and at 11pm we went home, stopping at the sandwich shop for the weirdest sandwiches ever. Not realising what bread he was showing us, we ended up with fried egg and salad and a melted in the microwave and set again cheese and salad sandwich on...cinnamon and raisin bread. We should have taken a closer look at what he offered us but oddly enough it was very tasty. Stomachs lined, we hit the sack.
Monday
So today we woke, feeling poorly. Tom has sneezy fits, i have a sore throat and we both just feel rough. But positive thoughts, we are not getting ill. Today we get our camper. We are so excited. We have our freedom again, we can drive for a change and go where we want and eat what we want. Im secretly looking forward to going to the supermarket and buying food (think i should be a chef, im food obsessed!). We are now off to exchange some books as we have run out and then we have a 4km walk to the camper van place..then its the supermarket!
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