Oasis Resort Cairns

Australia is Awesome man!!!!! After three flights we finally arrived in Cairns.  As soon as we arrived (Monday to us, Sunday to you) we had cocktails by the hotel pool!  Very nice.  Once unpacked we made our way down to the beach to ...

... why babies cry so much on takeoff and landing! Checked into our room at Novotel and then went for a wander around the Cairns foreshore.  It's festival time in Cairns so heaps going on.  Street stalls, music, performers.  A really great, ...

... 1900 erfüllt hat, das aber diversen Überschwemmungen zum Opfer gefallen ist. Dennoch sehr interessant. Weiter durch Innisfail nach Cairns. Nach kurzer Irrfahrt durch die Stadt haben wir dann schließlich auch das Hotel gefunden. Nach kurzer Ruhepause ...

... a meal that night at a very nice Thai restaurant and Sam even let me get an ice-cream after!  After getting the bus back to Cairns on Saturday we headed straight to the Lagoon to cool down - it was very busy as it was the weekend but it didn't feel ...

The Cairns Colonial Club (pronounced 'cans' as in "two Cairns of beer please") reminded me of the Hotel Oasis in Cairo, it had a tropical feel with plenty of Palm trees and gardens, and a bar by the pool. The room was big, but run down. It looked like ...

I ended up taking two flights today. The first was QF1871 which arrived in Cairns slightly early keeping up the Qantas 100% on time record - just wait until the BA flight home from LA. The second was far more interesting. I was walking through the city ...

... . My favourite fish was the fox faced rabbit fish which is bright yellow with a black and white striped face. Overall my 3 days in Cairns have been great, even down to the fact that I obviously look less like food to insects here than I did in Darwin. ...

... surprised that there were not huge crowds here.  Thought it may be packed as it's the most hyped and closest island to Cairns, being only a 45min ferry trip away. Went for a walk around the island first.  It's quite tiny - only 1.6km around so ...

... since we landed in Australia!  Landed on Sunday morning in Brisbane and had a 5 hour layover before we took off to Cairns (pronounced CANS).    Made the best of the 5 hour layover and had a nice lunch with this couple from Canada. ...

... over the street around 10am to pick up our Avis hire car.  Had a yummy cooked breakfast at a cafe overlooking the Cairns foreshore and then headed south on our day trip to Babinda. Stopped briefly at the Babinda tourist office for some ...

... that the line - including 15 tunnels - was hacked out by hand over 100 years ago! Had dinner at a nice Italian restaurant in Cairns then walked around the foreshore some more and took some shots of the Lagoon at Dusk.  Tonight we noticed for the ...

Having heard the news from New Zealand last night I'm glad I took my scenic flight yesterday as I would probably have declined the opportunity today. Also, probably a good job I'm not flying into Christchurch as well any more given the earthquake. ...

Here is the summary of our "magical" tour yesterday. We were greeted by Gus the Magical bus and Cousin Brad at 7:50 yesterday morning.  Cousin Brad, as he referred to himself the whole time, was an overly exuberant Rastafarian-bacpacker-wannabe. ...

Thanks for the tip with the toilet paper, Dad!  You definitely can't flush with your elbow because the two-button flush is sort of split in half and there is no way that your elbow could be accurate enough to flush one or the other.  Mom, I've ...

Toilets.  They are weird here and I am really beginning to strongly dislike them.  The toilets here are the same as the ones the often have in Europe, with the two button flush, which really means that you can never flush them with your foot ...

So I have a gigantic bag (29 kg) that now houses a pile of clean clothes, a pile of dirty clothes, and a pile of kind of dirty clothes.  I am having trouble keeping track of which is which, but am thankful that we will probably be able to wash stuff ...

Waiting for our bus to take us to the Great Barrier Reef, which I will now refer to as the GBR.   Ok, we have made it back safely from the GBR, no sharks whatsoever.  The day began with a drive of about an hour or so up the coast to Port ...