Alice Spring to Cairns; what a ride!

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Hoy Hoy everyone!
Wow! The last three days were pretty intense...Lots of bus...two days of 12 hours and 1 days of 8 hours...I couldn't wait to arrive in Cairns!

Cyclone Larry affected a bit the weather along the road...Cloudy and rainy. THe thing is, when it rains in the desert, the highway (by highway, i'm talking about gravel and sand routes with only one lane) gets flooded and it creates mud....Lots of mud. I would've never been able to drive in these conditions. It was so windy outside that the red sand blocked the drivers view (jsut like a snow storm but with sand) Every time we got out of the coach of a toilet break, I came back in the bus and wiped my face with baby wipes to find the tissue super orange after...Irk!
So during the first of driving, the road was so muddy that it was impossible to actually drive straight. The bus was doing S curves in the mud, exaclty like when there is too much snow on a road and you can't keep the car steady! We saw a few cars stuck and a bick road train. We couldn't stop to help them out because if we had, we would've stayed stuck too!! So when the bus driver was seeing kangaroos or cattles in the middle of the road, he had no choice to honk to chase them away; stopping was not an option! :p

I ended up for the first night on a cattle farm at a place called Wirrilyeria (or something like that). The couple had cooked us an excellent dinner on the fire and were waiting for us to get there before feeding their two baby kangaroos (see pictures on Phil's website!). So we each got our turn at feeding the babies!! So fun! They also had a lamb and three dogs in their courtyard. After an ok night of sleep, we went back in the bus to head to Hugheden. The thing is, all the roads we were suppose to take or the places we were supposed to go to in the tour, we couldn't go because the rain had flooded the access to them. We just ended up in Hughenden earlier, had a few beer, nice buffet dinner and back to bed.

The last dat was the longest ever! We didn't really stop anywhere exciting except at the smallest pub in Australia (53cm x 103 cm) for lunch. No rainforest walking like it was supposed to first because the rainforest after the cyclone was a bit of a mess, second 'cause it was dangerous because of snakes and third because we had to do an extra 600kms since all the roads south of Cairns were closed to traffic. The only way into Cairns we from the north. So we took 6 different highways and finally got into Cairns last night around 6h30-7pm!

Currently staying at Calypsso hostel which is really nice. On of the guy in our room sleep walks and talks :p funny! Tomorrow, thinking of heading north towards Cape Tribulation and the nice beaches and rainforests. It is pretty cloudy and it rained a bit this morning but hey, after all, we are in the Tropics, so rain is almost always expected!



After Cyclone Larry
Cairns hasn't been really touched. A few trees here and there are down but that's it! I've seen much worst when I went to Halifax a few years ago after the Hurricane... Really here's totally fine and we're heading north for a few days (maybe a week) so that will give plenty of time for the roads to be cleared going south!

Cairns is a really nice city, small, not too big, which is good...Not much during the day to do expect shopping or going to the Great Barrier Reef (which I'll do soon enough!)

That's pretty much it for now!

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