Loving Cairns

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We headed up to Cairns to start the East Coast part of our trip back down to Sydney on the 23rd and walking out of the airport we were hit by glorious humid heat. 'Great, this is what i have been waiting for' i say to Gaz as we wait for our free airport transfer to our hostel in Cairns. It had been pretty poor weather down south and even though it is the rainy season at the mo and i have been sweating since i stepped off the plane i love it. The atmosphere is so much more relaxed in this part of Australia and i had a good feeling that i was going to enjoy my last few weeeks in Oz before heading back to Thailand.

Cairns Is a great city and much cheaper than in the south of Australia. We celebrated our first night on the East Coast by jumping in the Hostel swiming pool to cool off before heading out to a bar called Rhino bar where we could buy 5 drinks for $12. Bargain!!! The morning after i decided to get on with my bargain bunji jump (half price when a bought it through a backpacker auction) so rang up and booked onto the bus to pick me up at 1pm. Gaz came with me for a bit of moral support and we headed out to the front of the hostel to wait for the bus. 1:30 and it still hadn't arrived so gave them a call and the women who had taken my booking was new and forgot to book me on the bus so to compensate they gave me a free bunji jump which i let Gaz have so we could both jump. 3 hours later we pulled up at the Cairns Bunji jump, it was much more daunting than the Kawarau bridge bunji as u had to walk up hundreds of steps onto a large platform. Me and Gaz went first to get it over and done with as i was so so scared as planning to do it on my own this time. Shitting myself i made it to the top and after a bit of persuasion from the bunji guys i hurled myself off 50m into a pool of water, awesome. I think im getting a bit addicted to this bunji stuff, such a wicked adrenalin rush.

To refresh ourselves we then headed to the lagoon pool at the promenade in Cairns. You can't swim in the water through the months Dec to March as the sea is swarmed with killer jellyfish so they have built a huge salt water swimming pool. We headed down there and attached our bag, clothes and shoes to a tree using our wire padlock. Not too sure what happened but we couldn't get the padlock off when we got out, luckily we managed to get our bag with our clothes in it but our shoes were stuck there and we had to go and find the nearest shop barefoot to buy some more shoes. You may have thought people would stare at someone with no shoes on in the street but everywhere i go i see Ozzys walking around barefoot, even in Sydney CBD.

Cairns is one of the best places to go scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef from, so the day before we left Cairns i decided to take the opportunity to spend the day at the reef doing an introductory dive and some snorkeling. It was a great day and i saw loads of cool things. A giant turtle swam right by me as well as spotting a stingray, loads of nemos and fish that had leopard print that i think were called sweetlips, very cool. I met up with Gaz after my day at the reef and we had a few drinks before catching an early night for our early start travelling down to Mission Beach.

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Photos

Fish
Not sure what its called, looks very nice though!

At the end of the rainbow
A rainbow in Cairns

Cairns Bungy
The AJ Hackett Cairns Bungy site