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Published: August 4th 2010
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Following our day out on the Great Barrier Reef, we headed back towards Cairns again only this time we had 8 days at the Marlin Cove Resort at Trinity Beach. We followed three massive coaches from the Quicksilver company all the way down the highway - boy that is one big operation!
Marlin Cove turned out to be a fantastic resort and we'd been lucky enough to score a primo room overlooking the lagoon pool complete with white sandy beaches. Although not as close to the beach as our previous places, the lovely apartment and outlook more than made up for it.
After a day lazing around taking it easy, enjoying the pool and playing a few games of tennis we were back into being tourists and went on a trip up to Kuranda on the famous historic railway. We caught the train from the beautiful Freshwater Station and traveled slowly up the mountain over bridges and through tunnels, stopping to look at the Baron Falls before arriving at the little tourist village of Kuranda.
Kuranda has its fair share of souvenir shops to poke around in (the kids really liked the little sweet shop which was making
personalized "rock" on the other side of the plexiglass), cafes and art galleries as well as attractions like the butterfly sanctuary & Koala Gardens (been there, done that). One unobtrusive little place took our eye when we spotted some people holding an enormous snake around their necks - the Australian venomous creature zoo. Excellent! and really good value. These young enthusiastic guys gave us an up-close and personal tour of their snakes, lizards, spiders, scorpions and turtles (yes, turtles are dangerous if they are carnivores).
Our journey back to Cairns was on the Skyrail across the top rainforest for approx 45 minutes. We saw very few birds from our vantage point, but I did spot a croc sunbathing on a log in the river - ewwww! All of us had a very enjoyable day out.
Another day we went into Cairns again with our togs and a picnic and spent the afternoon enjoying the very large, free lagoon swimming pool on the esplanade, followed by another trip to the mall for Ash to spend some more of her money. She's really getting the hang of this. Jordi isn't so keen to part with her $$$, but when she
finds something she wants there's no stopping her.
With only a few days left, we decided to drive down south of Cairns to check out the Mission Beach area. Unfortunately the weather wasn't playing fair and it was overcast and very windy again (as it has been for most of the past 2 weeks) so I'm sure we didn't get the best impression. Overall tho' it was a lovely spot with Dunk Island just off the coast and all the rainforest beside the road. The scenery there and back comprised mostly of sugar cane and banana plantations. It's unbelievable how much sugar cane there is around here!
Our last days were pretty relaxing. The kids went to the movies whilst Steve & I had a bit of timeout. We checked out a few other accommodation options and decided that we'd done pretty well and were fortunate that some of our first choices were booked out (they looked way nicer on the internet). Next time tho', we'd stay a few days down in Cairns since we seemed to be driving down there every other day.
In summary, although this holiday was a bit of a last minute decision
and second visit for us, we all reckon it was just perfect and very, very enjoyable.
Thank you Cairns - maybe we'll be back again another year :-)
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