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Published: November 30th 2008
I arrived in Cairns on Thursday morning. To give you an idea of the weather please imagine being in a really hot and humid green house, I didn't realise how tropical it would be! At first I spent some time hopping from air conditioned place to air conditioned place!
The thing I found most exciting about Cairns were the bats, although perhaps not everyone's favourite. I was walking into the main part of town from my hostel when I heard what I thought were noisy birds. On closer inspection it turned out that several enormous trees were full of hundreds of bats who were all quite happily hanging upside down in the sunshine!
In the evening it started bucketing it down with rain, I thought Australia was in a drought but apparently not in the north, turns out I'm in the "Wet Tropics..." It rained all night then stopped in the morning. I met my Oz Experience bus at 7am and after a little faffing we toddled off to a crocodile farm. As we got there I heard a great rumble of thunder and it then started to rain again and didn't really stop all day! Everyone was quite
happy walking around in the rain though as it was quite refreshing and to be honest, it is impossible to be dry in this climate anyway.
I got to hold a baby crocodile, a blue tongue lizard (really gross) a dragon lizard thing and have a cockatoo on my shoulder. We then (as I blog there is a tiny lizard on the wall!) went to talk to the wallabees, emus and dingos! We also saw some enormous crocodiles, quite scary!
It continued rain as we drove to Mission Beach, we passed fields and fields of bananas on the way, the bananas grow into bags attached to the tree, presumably to protect them.
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(I was unable to upload any pictures so I didn't post the above right away)
The rain was so violent at Mission Beach it prevented most activities from going on! It cleared yesterday (for a bit) and I spent lots of time playing in the pool. In the afternoon we went to Magnetic Island, ("Dry Tropics") where I am now this morning, I will stop moving about so much soon, it's getting very tiring! I have seen lots of parrots, white cockatoos, lizards,
flys that bite you painfully... Maggie Island is like the steamy room at a spa as on top of the humidity it smells of eucalyptus!
I have an afternoon of travelling ahead of me to Airlie Beach where I meet my Whitsunday sailing trip on Monday, here's to not getting sea sick!
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Hannah and Niall
non-member comment
jealous!
Oh Lizzy, we are so jealous I cannot tell you! It sounds and looks like you're having a brilliant time. I hope the hostels are getting nicer and you've met some nice people. Looking forward to reading the next installment! Have fun. Love Hannah and Niall x