Cairns Mega-Update 1 of 3

Cairns, a town of 120,000 that seems much smaller, has a cute dinky little airport with palm trees everywhere and mountainous hills surrounding it. Despite finally getting a sunny day in Sydney that morning, it was still a good twenty degrees warmer when we got off the plane, a thousand miles closer to the equator. (We realized that our closest friend in the world is Hillary up in South Korea. Hi Hillary!)

A cab dropped us off at Floriana Guest House, which (it should be noted for the record) was a Featured Recommendation in the Lonely Planet guide to Australia. The house itself, right across from the beach, was built in the 1930s and has been divided into 10 self-contained guest rooms. It was rather grubby, with a dinky plastic shower, and the sheets didn’t match the pillowcases, but we could deal.

We also had to tackle the issue with our abruptly-cancelled dive trip. We’d gotten word while in Sydney that, for reasons unspecified, our booked-and-paid-for trip to the reef was called off. So the gentleman at Floriana helped us out with some suggestions and got us booked on a sailboat with maximum 20 people. The OTHER catch (this will come back to bite us shortly) is that they were only available on Wednesday the 12th. So we called and rescheduled our train and cable-car excursion to the rainforest for Tuesday the 11th, then booked the reef. [thunder claps, a creepy sense of foreboding fills the blog]

That done, we plopped our bags down then decide to hit the beach. Yay beach! Swimsuits get thrown on. Towels get grabbed. We run out the door and across the Esplanade. And…

Mud and nastiness. The ocean visible in the distance. Between it and us, zillions of mud crabs popping in and out of the puddles.

Dimly, I realize that I never exactly heard anything about the great beaches at Cairns. This could be why.

So we’re stuck holding our towels and chalking up yet another thing on the trip that hasn’t exactly gone to plan. Dejected, we trudged back to Floriana, returned to street clothes, and started walking south along the Esplanade towards town.

Things got more pleasant there. The water actually came up to the beach (useful, since that’s where all the boats were); and the area had been redeveloped into a big urban park with a lagoon for the kids to splash in, barbecue pits everywhere, and a lively atmosphere. For the umpteenth time we marveled at what nice, happy people Australians seem to be.

For dinner we sat at a nice restaurant overlooking the wharf where all the tour boats were docked. Then we wandered back to the hotel, calling out to the pelicans in the water.