Apologies for the gap between entries, y’all, but writing about the closing out of this trip has proved troublesome. There’s still plenty more to say, even though the trip was well and truly coming to a close while I’m writing about Cairns.
These entries will be a bit smaller than usual, but covering the daily adventures that took place while we were staying in Cairns.
Arriving late into Cairns, we were met in the airport carpark by our airport shuttle service. The driver’s name was Steve.
Steve had another passenger and they’d been sitting in the bus for about an hour. She was eerily quiet and didn’t want to engage in any conversations with us. Anyhow, Steve went on to tell us about the variety of jobs he’d had and women he’d mistreated over the years.
Why, you ask?
I honestly don’t know. Steve was funny like that. He was curious about the nature of the relationship between the Crazy Canadian and I, she being Chinese-Canadian, me being Australian. He launched into a story about how he’d started dating his current girlfriend while he was still seeing his previous girlfriend who, unbeknownst to Steve at the time, was best friends with his current girlfriend. (Now former best friend, not that I really needed to point that out.)
Later, the Crazy Canadian and I were of the opinion that Steve was putting the moves on the other bus passenger.
Once we got past the topic of Steve’s salacious and tawdry love life, we asked him for recommendations for activities.
Kuranda, the Daintrees, Great Barrier Reef were our intended destinations.
After an uncomfortable night sleeping in 30-odd degree weather on account of our ‘broken’ air-conditioning unit, we awoke early to figure out our travel plans for the next few days. Unfortunately, it was too late to do either the Daintree tour or the Great Barrier Reef by the time we got up.
We were awake at 7:30am. It seemed pretty unfair that being up that early ruled us out of two events, but if there’s one thing I can say about Cairns now is that if you plan on doing any of the major activities, it will take up an entire day.
On to the adventures. All the adventures! Right here, right now! Well, of day one, anyhow…
Kuranda
There are two ways to get to Kuranda – a scenic railway and a skyrail. We took the skyrail into Kuranda and the scenic railway out.
The skyrail itself is pretty neat. Covering a distance of 7.8kms over a rainforest canopy, it’s hard not to be sitting in your little pod slack-jawed and dribbling positive nonsense from your piehole the entire time.
There are two mini nature walks well worth taking on the way to Kuranda, they don’t last any more than 10 mins per stop but you get some really nice views of objects that I am yet to reveal to you via photographic means. And don’t do that thing where you scroll down to see what I’m talking about, because that would just be cruel and make me feel like crying. Patience, dear reader… Patience.
The best part about Kuranda? A nice, quiet sleepy town with a neat alternative market scene. I used hand moisturiser for the first time in my life. My hands had never felt so smooth. This freaked me out.
The worst part about Kuranda? The heat. The day we were there was 37 degrees with 95% humidity. I think I became some sort of sweat monster at one point.
We made our way back to the train station via the rainforest/riverside walk, which takes about an hour but is quite lovely and scenic.
To assuage our heat-encumbered bodies before taking the scenic railway back, the Crazy Canadian and I had fruit salad topped with a vanilla ice-cream and mango yoghurt swirl. If there was ever a time to suggest that a particular object ‘hit the spot’, that moment was surely it.
Kuranda’s scenic railway is amazing. The ride takes a touch over an hour to get back to Cairns, but you wouldn’t notice. If anything, you want the ride to continue as it’s such a unique ride. It stops at one point so you can take photos like this!
And a picture of the choo-choo train, for all you enthusiasts out there.
The rest of the day was spent escaping the heat for as long as we could in Cairns Central shopping mall, then ducking into stores pretending to care about shopping while we were walking back to our hostel via the city centre.
Remember what I said earlier about the ‘broken’ air-conditioner? Yeah, turns out it wasn’t broken, just really fucking complicated to get working. First, you had to flick a switch three times to ‘reset’ the air conditioner. Then you had to turn it off at the power, turn it back on again. At this point, I’m pretty sure I had to do a shoulder shimmy followed by a pivot into a spin, slap my butt three times and say “Let it rain, bitches!” and then the air conditioning worked, meaning a much more pleasant sleep in sweltering heat.
Next time – Daintree Rainforest adventures!
that sounds – and looks – fab…except for that heat thing.
so, did you buy the moisturiser?
I did not. My hands shall stay lemon myrtle and tea tree oil free.
I was concerned I would no longer be able to hold things.