Cairns - a nice place (if a bit weird...)

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4am and I landed in Cairns. What the hell am I meant to do at 4am? I kind of hoped that there'd be long seats at the airport where I could sleep. Sadly not. Arrivals is the size of Bristol Airport's arrivals hall in the 1980s - one man and a dog pretty much. I moved to Departures but similary, no room to crash. Upright sleep it is then...

...or not. It's too bloody noisy even at that time of day! And hot - stickily humid. I took the opportunity to book my hostel for the next couple of nights and check the internet. For 3 hours. The longest 3 hours ever. The tropical rainstorm came down, the first departures for the day turned up, and the sun rose over the mountains. And I learned what had been happening in I'm a Celebrity, courtesy of the Daily Mail gossip column...

I caught the shuttle bus to my accommodation and was greeted warmly and shown to my dorm, a 5 bed mixed dorm affair, complete with sleeping German boy in the corner (Vincent - works here apparently, doesn't like being woken up at 8am however...). The hostel is nice - one of the best ones so far - so all good on that front. After quickly sorting out my things, I headed into town - I could have slept for a month but I'm not planning on being in Cairns long enough to waste any time on that!

It's a 10 minute walk into town (I learned this on the shuttle bus as my South African driver gave me a quick guided tour on the way in). Easy enough to navigate down to the Esplanade, to walk along the boardwalk towards the Lagoon. I'm told crocs inhabit the waters here so they had to build a public outdoor pool - the lagoon - to stop people being munched. In honesty, Cairns is on mudflats so it would be like swimming in Burnham sea if the tide was in, just minus the crocs. I saw a similar number of traffic cones, beer bottles and debris as Burnham to back up my argument! There are lots of pieces of history on the esplanade - from cannons and guns to the history of the people and settlements. There is a pretty high Aboriginal population here and the least number of English tourists/settlers than I've seen in any city in Australia.

The city is a big town on a grid system - a few historic buildings and that's about it. I wandered around to see the number of pubs, tattoo shops and tourist outlets before I'd had enough and went to the Lagoon. On a cloudy day in Cairns, it's not the prettiest place but wonderful if you've never seen anything like it before. It's a big outdoor pool complete with lifeguards, sandy beach, live music and barbecues. And they have something very similar in Brisbane. Which I've seen before. So all in all, the wonderful factor was lost on me...

That said I had a nice couple of hours there and it was really busy. And then the highlight of the day...

In readiness for much more swimming on the east coast, it was time for the top up bikini wax (Dad, I'd stop reading now if I were you). I went to this recommended place where the only wax provided is a Brazilian. Good news I thought. Now girls, as you will appreciate, at home, a Brazilian involves the creation of the landing strip. This is what I was expecting. Did I get a shock when the warm wax was poured literally from on high, and the strips were being ripped from every angle covering every last millimetre below. It turns out Brazilians here are the equivalent of UK Hollywoods....

I walk, John Wayne style, back to the dorm to find I've got 3 new German girl roomies, making understanding the conversations going on around me all the more difficult. My German these days is limited to asking the best way to the station and asking for cheesecake, neither of which is appropriate right now. I bailed out on them going to the balcony upstairs (the hang out area) and instead tucked myself up in bed, truly living up to my reputation as an old fogey backpacker. Then again, I've been awake for the best part of two days...I think I've done well to last this long!

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