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Published: April 5th 2007
Finally in Cairns
Josephine Fleetwood New words to our vocabulary:
Saltie: Salt water crocodile
Cut lunch: Sandwiches
We've finally arrived in Trinity Beach which is located about 25 km north of Cairns. All four of our flights were uneventful, the way we like our flights to be. Our first flight was from Victoria to Vancouver with a 3 hour layover. Then we had a 2 1/2 hour flight to San Francisco for a 4 1/2 hour layover. We were both looking forward to our layover in SFO because it gave us the opportunity to have dinner with my Aunt Elaine and Jesus who drove up from Santa Cruz. The time spent on our layover went very quickly; it was a great visit! I have pictures but the internet cafe that we are at doesn't have the USB port to enable us to upload them. Hopefully in the future we will be able to upload our pictures.
Next was the 14hr 50 min flight to Sydney with a 5 hr layover before catching our 3 1/2 hour flight to Cairns. We arrived 4:30 in the afternoon in Cairns were we had a car reserved. We were very glad to have this reservation; we
paid $38 a day were as unreserved would have been $85 per day. Again we are putting in this information for travellers planning their trip to Australia. It only took us a 15 min. drive to our accommodations at Amaroo Resort at Trinity Beach. Boy we sure lucked out Amaroo is a very clean, beach front hotel with kitchenette, pool, hottub, BBQ, laundry etc...
The next morning we went to the beach for a swim but the life guards were not there yet. It seems that the only safe place to swim here is within the netted life guarded areas. Among the posted dangers here are sharks, crocs (salties), three types of deadly jellyfish, and the undertow! We asked a couple of municipal workers whether they had seen any crocs in the area. They replied that a 3 meter croc (~10 feet) was caught in the net yesterday at the next beach over. I said the the nets must work well, but they said that the croc was on the inside of the net trying to get OUT!!! We went to the pool instead.
Well I don't believe it, we've finally found a place where booze costs
Baby Tiger Shark
A fisherman from Romania caught and released this fish off of the Palm Cove Jetty.more than in Canada. I nearly joined AA when we saw the price of alcohol. A 4 pack of coolers cost $15 and they were only puny 330ml bottles. Cheap beer is $40 for a 24 pack. A mickey of gin is $33. No wonder the rules about drinking in public are so laxed; nobody can afford to get pissed-up here! Bring your own booze to restaurants is very common but be aware that a corking fee of a few dollars is charged. The cost of groceries here is almost double that of Canada, and restaurant meals are about 50% higher too! A small bottle of dish soap, 500ml, costs about $5. Andreas says the only thing cheap here is him.
I suspect these prices only have a sticker shock for us North Americans and that if you are travelling from the UK or Europe it would seem normal.
Again, sorry there are no pictures. We'll try again at the next internet cafe.
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John & Wenche
non-member comment
Glad to hear you survived all those flights
Madison told us about your trip to Australia. All those flights sounded like a nightmare of waiting waiting waiting - more than double the time it takes for flights to Scandinavia. So happy to hear you are OK and ready to go for a swim in dangerous waters. Look out for "lounge lizards" on the beach though - there must be lots of surfer dudes around. About those prizes - yup, that sounds normal for Scandinavia. G'day mates from John and Wenche P.S. how does it feel going about upside down?