Cairns,
Australia
Monday, July 14, 2008
After buying a flight from Sydney to Cairns (it was cheaper than the bus and took 38 hours less!) we realised it was leaving from the international terminal and although it was an internal flight, we still needed our passports, which at the time were at the chinese embassy, so we changed flights to a later one from the Domestic terminal, but as the first flight had been at 6am, and the new one was at 3pm... we had a fair bit of time to kill in the airport. We ended up sleeping for most of it, we have become pretty competent at sleeping almost anywhere. We arrived in Cairns at about 8pm, and an all you can eat bbq was just kicking off in the hostel we booked into, so we got stuck in. It's a really cool hostel, just a block away from the esplanade which runs along the Cairns water front. The hostel is a little more alternative, not just full of english gap yearers which are fun for a bit, but Aus is so full of them, its nice to meet some other people too, there are loads of germans staying in our hostel and one german guy we have met has a car so we are going off to Cape Trib tomorrow with him. We have had a couple of fun nights out and chilled out in the parks in the sunshine by the esplanade. There is no beach in Cairns but they have built an artificial lagoon in front of the esplanade in the middle of a grassy area with some sand around the edge, its packed full of people, but a cool place to chill out with guitars and books. Instead of beach there is just mud flats on the seafront, covered in all sorts of birds including lots of massive pelicans, and a few wading fisherman. Last night we wandered down to the esplanade with a couple of guitars and some goon (its cheap wine in a box that everyone drinks here) bumped into some guys sitting on the roadside grass and we joined them for the evening. Most people travel with campers or cars here so there are lots of people just messing about on the road sides. We were sitting under a tree full of about 30 cockatoos, pretty funky looking birds. The weather here is so hot, and it is winter! Its nice to have some sunshine after so long in the cold. Especially now we know everyone is enjoying the english summer! We shaved our hair off the other day when we were bored, looks pretty ridiculous but nice and cool.
The town is so touristy it is ridiculous, the shops are all travel agents each trying to better the others on prices and offers. It's fun, but having only been to Sydney prior to here in Aus, we are quite looking forward to seeing some of the natural beauty of which there is so much! It's a bit strange but it seems like having spent so long in South America, we now need a little bit more from a place than just loads of backpackers and nice bars, it all just seems too much like home when you are in a town like this. It's kind of like we need something a bit more to remind us that we are travelling in this amazing and completely foreign country, which in South America you get everywhere just because the culture and language and setting and everything is so different, even in big cities.
Hope everyone is enjoying their summers in the UK and elsewhere on holidays!
xxx
