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I arrived from my trip on board the "Spoilsport" (Mike Ball Dive Expeditions) on Thursday (May 3rd). I stayed in Cairns for 5 days and all days were pretty much the same. Friday, Saturday and Sunday I went to walk around town for a bit, wrote e-mails and sent resumes to dive companies, spent a lot of time in internet and slept a lot as well. (So far my stay in Australia has been a lot of fun, but very intensive and these five days of barely doing anything was a welcome change). Cairns is a town that mostly lives on tourism with a wide variety of action sports (skydiving, rafting, diving, etc.) and with the Great Barrier Reef being the biggest attraction, but as a town, it doesn't offer much more than that.
As I was strating to be on a budget (using the last of my savings), I didn't go out much. Most days, I had dinner at a place called PJ O'Brien's, a bar that has a special deal for people staying at the hostel where I was staying ("Global backpackers"), which consisted of a 5 dollar meal (people can choose from about 10 plates) and a
half a pint of beer. It wasn't bad at all.
My first impression of Cairns was fairly good and I've got to say that I was considering of spending a few months here if I could get a job, which was what I was aiming for: getting a dive-related job in a chilled out town, recovering the money I spent in becoming an instructor and with it be able to travel the next year. Even though I was really looking forwards to working in the dive industry, I still saw it as "just a means to an end" (which is to continue travelling next year to the real destinations I want to go to).
Monday morning I went to a job interview at a dive center called Deep Blue Diver's Den. Here, I talked with Toby Schnell, one of the people in charge. He is in constant contact with Carl Fallon, the Course Director with whom I did the instructor course in Abyss Scuba Diving in Sydney. Carl had sent Toby my resume and when I got to Cairns, I got in touch with him and we set a meeting for Monday. The dive
center was located about 20 minutes walking from the hostel I was staying in. Anyway, after talking for a while, Toby told me to come in the next Monday and co-teach an open water course during that week, just for me to see what the job was like and to see if they liked me or not.
After the interview, I called a phone number that was in an hairdresser ad in the hostel for 10 dollar haircuts (can't get a better deal anywhere). The hairdresser came to the hostel and cut my hair in the laundry room. It was a Dutch girl (very cute) who was on holiday here and doing haircuts hair to earn a bit of money before getting a better paying job). The rest of the day, more internet, more sleeping and dinner at PJ O'Brien's.
On Tuesday I went to Port Douglas, invited by James, the French volunteer I met on Mike Ball Dive Expeditions. I stayed at the house he's been staying at for a few months; in which in it lives an Australian-Argentinian couple: Anthony and Melina. They met each other in Australia while she was travelling
and got married a few years later and now they both work in the dive industry. They were really good hosts and very chilled out. I slept on a matress in the living room during those days.
I stayed until Saturday in Port Douglas, Chilling by the swimming pool, going to the beach, leaving resumes in dive companies, meeting people, etc. One of the nights, Anthony and Melina invited a few friends from work over for dinner, another day I went out with James and his friends and Friday night we went to "The Iron Bar", to see a "cane toad race". In this "race", cane toads (a plague in Queensland) are uncovered from a bucket in the middle of a table and then "pushed" until they jump to the end of a table. The toad that gets to the edge first, wins. People can gamble on the toads, much like a horse race. This is totally oriented for tourists and seeing it once is enough.
Saturday afternoon, I went with James, Anthony and Andreas (a German guy) to a place called "Cape Tribulation"; a world heritage rainforest. James had worked here for three
Port Douglas
Anthony and Melina's housemonths and he wanted to say goodbye to some of his friends that were still there. We got to a campsite at around 8, had a barbeque (which I cooked) and beers and then went to a restaurant called "Whet", owned by a British guy named Matt and his wife Michelle. Here we met with James' friends; Ruairi (Irish) and J.P. (from Malta). After the restaurant we went to J.P. and Ruairi's house and stayed there until next morning; there were plenty of places to crash in the house for the night.
Next morning, we woke up, cooked the rest of the meat from last night and we got to meet a Welsh girl who lived there and a Dutch girl who lived in Cape Trib. then went to take a walk in the rainforest to see if we could see any cassowaries or other wild animals there (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassowary). We went to the beach through a boardwalk and then to a spot which was supposedly good for fishing. We took fishing rods, but didn't catch anything. We also didn't get to see any crocs in the area. The weekend was a lot of fun and after Cape
Trib, we drove back to Port Douglas, left Anthony and Andreas there and then James took me back to Cairns, because he was also picking up his girlfriend who was arriving from Samoa that night.
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Andres
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saludos desde Lonquen
hola daniel. todos te mandan muchos saludos. Los niños esta semana de vacaciones de otoño asi es que disfrutandolos en la casa. La buela odette operada de las caderas durmiendo en la pieza de Pablo y recuperandose muy bien. ojalá encuentres la pega que andas buscando luego. vamos a hacer fuerza desde acá un abrazo andres