Back to the tropics

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From Berlin to London for 24 hours. A brief chance to catch up with friends old and new over a few beers and curry, then onwards, but not before we had time to be completely freaked out by the high prices of everything from fresh produce to transport. And that was just in comparison with Germany, not S America. Not sure how we're going to react to coming home later in the year.

Another 24 hours later we landed in Cairns, via a few hours in Singapore. Thanks to a tip-off from the previous evening, we managed to find the outdoor pool, taking full advantage of the opportunity get the circulation moving again before stage two. After 20+ hour bus journeys in Argentina, the flight was easy, aided by the movies on demand option on the London-Singapore flight. Full marks to Quantas for that, but a 'Could Try Harder' for still having planes with the one shared screen set-up on the onwards flight to their country!

The hostel we thought we'd booked hadn't received the confirmation email, but kindly picked us up anyway and switched some rooms around in order to accommodate us. Cairns is both smaller and far nicer than we'd expected, a small city, with more of a small town feel (and probably small town mindset to go with it). But it's a pleasant waterfront setting, with a man-made swimming lagoon, marina and so forth. The place is undoubtedly fully geared up to tourism, with tour agents and dive shops on every corner (no Starbucks yet, thankfully) but it's not the hell-hole of 18 year olds we'd anticipated, although they are there if you picked the wrong 'party' hostel type. The existence of bars like the Woolpack and PJ O'Briens with pole dancing special nights and numerous drink promos are testament enough to that.

After the hectic schedule in Germany, not to mention the large amount of Hefeweizen consumed there, we were happy to take it easy for the first few days, filling them with the occasional swim, wanders along the esplanade and quiet nights in cooking for ourselves again. Luke even continued his running schedule as we went on a health drive. One night out with a German guy from our hostel was enough to remind us how awful Aussie beer really is (no wonder they refer to it here as piss) and get us off the stuff again. However, it did give us the chance to experience the institution known as Johno's Blues Bar, with Johno's own band on stage that night. It brought it home fairly quickly that Cairns really is a small town with some strange old characters in it.

After several days of relaxation, we hired a car for a day trip to Port Douglas, a quiet and pretty resort town up the coast with a lovely 4 mile long beach. From there, we decided to travel back via part of the Atherton tableland, being tempted by the description of the town of Mareeba being the coffee producing capital of Australia (the farmers rethought their strategy after the bottom fell out of the tobacco market). Expecting to find a pretty farming town with nice coffee shops, we were sadly disappointed by the range of greasy spoons confronting us and the worst coffee I've had in weeks. Let's hope they sell off the good stuff to other places. The town also was enough to prove that you don't have to go too far inland to find hicksville.

Barron Falls near Kuranda proved to be much more worthwhile, although less spectacular at this time of year due to lower water levels. There's a great looking cablecar which takes you up 7km to the town and falls, but we'd opted for the Gran Prix style road route instead. For such a large and empty country, they build ridiculously narrow roads!

Diving course starts tomorrow - the real reason we're in Cairns in the first place...

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