Sunshine in Cairns!

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Last night we arrived in Cairns after a very scenic drive up the East Coast. We saw a lot of Kangeroos...although unfortunately a large majority of these were dead at the side of the road which was rather horrid. However, we saw lots of alive and well Roos as well and also a Porcipine which was fun! We arrived in Carins at about 8pm and as soon as we fell off the coach we were bundled into another van and taken to a nearby hostel.

This hostel was like 5* accommodation after the last one we had been in! Nice clean bunk beds, bright lights, a clean bathroom with a hot power shower! Bliss! We were so tired from the journey that we all had showers and collapsed onto our beds (actually i lie - Bean and I manged to muster the energy to take a short walk into town and find a slab of pizza and a tub of apple pie flavour ice cream and then we collapsed into bed).

Today we got up early to receive our 'breakfast included'. We walked sleepily upstairs to the open air dining area, to be slightly surprised that there were not hot plates of English Breakfasts being dished out, more just a simple kitchen in which you could make a cup of tea and a slice of toast. Each of us then pretended that this is exactly what we had expected and pottered around the kitchen with the other backapckers scrambling about to make various coffees and teas.

After a very enjoyable breakfast, we got ready and went out to explore the town of Cairns. For once it was sunny!! We could actually wear T Shirts! Woohoo! We visited the many souvenier shops and had a nice relaxing walk by the sea. I also bumped into a friend from uni on the street which was pretty amazing!

We found Carins to be much smaller than we had expected - there didn't really seem to be that much going on, but then again we didn't have enough time perhaps to explore all the different options.

We didn't have a late one as we had a flight the next morning so we just enjoyed a bit of book and bed then went to sleep.

Although we did enjoy Australia, we felt that the weather put a bit of a downer on things at times. We really enjoyed SE Asia as it was very different to the UK where as obviously Australia was more similar. On a future trip we would want to venture further into the outback for a more authentic Aussie experience!!

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