When Sundown Pales the Sky
Trip Start
Aug 23, 2007
1
15
60
Trip End
Jul 17, 2008
Cairns,
Australia
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
As I travelled with Caroline on the Oz bus for the last time, she received a call from Richard. Mobile phones....hmmmmm? Interesting concept...perhaps I should consider. She acted as interpreter as we text messaged plans for this evening. Caroline was invited to hang out with Andy, Richard and me at the Novotel Oasis...a long way from a hostel.
We arrived at this beautiful hotel late in the afternoon. A drink was quickly placed in my hand and I had my first shower in a beautiful bathroom where I didn't have to where flip flops. Heaven!!! They even had optional toilet paper...one quilted, one not! Can you imagine? Once our plans were put together, I was taken to a beautiful restaurant and spoiled with a wonderful supper and Australian wine. We headed out to a bar and met up with the rest of the Oz Experience crew...all young....all annoying now that the tour was over. So, we left.
Next morning I relaxed in a wonderful bubble bath and wondered how I would ever go back to hostel life and what I was thinking in the first place. And we were off...Our first stop was Port Douglas a gorgeous little tourist town that didn't seem to have much else going on exept the tourist industry. Fabulous restuarants, resorts, cafes, shopping, beach. We found another great hotel and decided to head back down to one of the beaches we had passed on the ocean road we drove on up from Carins...James Cook Highway, after Cpt. Cook.
Once again the beach was delicious and private exept for the few characters that seemed to have moved there. Andy and Rich chatted up two of these characters that resembled Cheech and Chong. Definitely lost in the 60's...motorcycle mustaches and an aura you can't mistake. We stayed there until the sun was low on the horizon and our skin was screaming for mercy.
After supper at another wonderful restaurant (with a floor to ceiling tropical fishtank in the bathroom, Laurie!!) Rich and I made our way to the beach and enjoyed the company of the wind and the ocean waves and a long walk home.
Early start to the next day, wonderful breakfast, a little shopping in the market (beautiful pearls and moments) and off to Cape Tribulation a national park north of Carins that is famous for its rainforest. We found a gorgeous beach surrounded by rainforest and then headed down to the Daintree Rainforest Canopy Walk. This was a well designed area that combined boardwalks and information stations throughout the rainforest and a staircase was raised in the centre to overlook the beauty. The sounds of a rainforest are like nothing I have ever heard, so loud, so unusual, I could have spent hours there and we imagined what it would be like to spend the night. I was struck by the tiniest trunks of trees struggling to reach the sunlight next to monstrous trunks that had been there for hundreds of years and by the growth of a variety of plants that weren't in soil, but rather grew in the trunks of the larger trees. Survival of the fittest at its best.
We headed back and arrived into Cairns 'when sundown pales the sky.' Rich and I had a beautiful supper that night of a seafood mixture: prawns, calamari, mussels, fish and something called a bug...ugly, but delicious. And a lovely Australian Sauvignon Blanc....mmmm. Back to the pub and one dance standing on a bench with Andy and home.
The next day the clouds rolled over to darken the sky in more ways than one. The mates were headed home to their lives in London and I was alone. I couldn't bear to leave the comforts of the hotel, so I booked myself in for another night. Slowly pulled myself together and caught a cab the next day to the airport. A plane ticket in my hand and a lump in my throat, I left the beautiful Sunshine Coast...never enough time. No worries, mates, a.
Comments
ah ouin...!
En y pensant, je te vois à Londres, je crois qu'il y a de bonnes écoles intermédiares dans le pays de la queen, tu seras parfaite, mais faudra que tu caches ton penchant écossais...bisous du nord belle voyageuse.
Hari Om.