So I had a run of good luck and won a place on the inaugural flight from Auckland, New Zealand to Cairns, Queensland, Australia and a return flight five days later with Pacific Blue Airlines. A great stroke of luck really, given that I had accepted that I wasn’t going to do any international travelling this year.
I’d never been to Cairns before so I was looking forward to it – though there was no tanning time to be had – Tropical North Queensland certainly lived up to its name – tropical it was!
Day One
The flight hit the ground at 1840, by which time it was already dark in Cairns but I got a feeling for the place on the way to the hotel. It felt like a small town which a huge tourist vibe, very laidback and of course, very “tropical”. Temperatures had hit 35deg C on the day I landed and the warmth never left. My taxi driver couldn’t find my hotel, so it’s lucky I had done my research on Google Maps. After finding the place and settling in, I went to explore the streets and stumbled upon the Cairns night markets, which were not far from my hotel. A smaller version of Melbourne’s Victoria markets, there were lots of trinkets and tourist-y goods to be had. Further into the market was a food court and as I was extremely hungry by this point, I made a beeline for one of the (many) chinese food buffets. Mistake! Worst Chinese food I have ever had. Not sure what I was expecting though – I guess I thought since there was so much competition the food from each place would need to be pretty top quality. How wrong I was. So, after finishing dinner I headed to the supermarket a couple of doors down from my hotel and purchased some groceries that would feed me for the next few days. After that I hit the hay, feeling the three hours you lose when you cross the ditch.
Day Two
Suffering from a post-flight migraine, I didn’t get out of bed until after 1100. And that was only to take a quick walk around town to fetch some sunscreen and some painkillers. Back to bed until 1300 when I felt right as rain so I hit the pavement again to suss out the lagoon, promenade and fleet terminal.
The beaches in Cairns are not swimmable (in fact, I think there are signs prohibiting beach access) and so if you want to swim, you go to the lagoon. I’m not normally a fan of public, contained swimming pools but the lagoon was awesome. Big enough for everyone to have a little space (and probably large enough to dilute the pee down to a bare minimum!) and a pretty cool “hang out” spot. So I enjoyed part of my only partially sunny day here. meandering down the promenade, I came across an exercise station. Odd, out in public next to the main walkway, with signs showing examples of the kinds of exercises you could do on it. Great idea, I thought, but would anyone use it? What surprised me more than seeing the exercise station itself, was seeing a guy (who had *ahem* obviously exercised a lot), using the thing! I was amazed.
I did a couple of laps around different blocks of Cairns to figure out where everything was – that was nice and easy.. it’s a pretty compact little place. I made my way to the fleet terminal and booked a tour of Green Island and a trip on the SkyRail for the next day. Happy with that, I headed back to the hotel to catch up on future episodes of Home and Away that we won’t see in New Zealand for a few weeks at best! Bear in mind that I was doing this trip “on the cheap”, so dining out every night wasn’t an option. Though they did have a lot of excellent deals for tourists. Ten dollar steak dinner including a jug of beer anyone?
Day Three
Day three officially started at 0825 when the transfer bus for the tour picked me up outside my hotel. Excellent service, seeing as the fleet terminal was only two minutes walk away. On board already were an American couple. Admittedly, it was nice to see some “European” faces and be able to talk to someone who spoke the same language as me – the hotel and area I was staying in was very Asian/Chinese influenced.
The one thing I will always remember about Cairns is that all the tour operators and all the staff in the stores were very friendly. They genuinely seemed to love their jobs, as opposed to the personality-free zones you seem to come across in your own town. They were chatty and happy which I guess comes with living somewhere where the main revenue is from tourists – that’s what/who they’re there for after all!
The first part of my day was going out to Green Island on one of Big Cat’s boats, followed by a glass-bottom boat tour of the Great Barrier reef. Talking to one of the tour guides prior to boarding she advised that the water was pretty rough. Not being one for getting car/motion/any other kind of sick I didn’t really think much of it. The boat trip was fun, even though it was raining. However, I did feel a little green (excuse the pun!) on our arrival at Green Island. It was a lovely day though and Green Island was amazing.
Rainforest surrounded by beautiful beaches. What I didn’t realise though, is that there is a resort on Green Island – I probably would have stayed out there for a night if I had known. The resort has its own pool (though why you’d want to swim there when the beach is only 20 metres away is a little beyond me when it’s the same water) and people seemed to enjoy congregating here to lounge around like lizards in the tropical heat. I couldn’t resist temptation so I took a quick dip at one of the beaches that’s reserved for snorkellers. It was lovely, but soon after I was back at the larger boat waiting for my glass bottom boat tour, it started to rain. Around here, rain doesn’t mean it’s cold and you can get wet but then dry off in minutes if you stand somewhere where you won’t continue to get wet. On this day, however, it was a little cooler and I didn’t dry off as quickly as I’d hoped to. As I got on board the glass bottom boat (still wrapped in my towel) the wind picked up and the rain really started to bucket down. As the few of us that were on the boat huddled into the middle to avoid getting drenched by the rain spewing into either end of the boat, our driver did his best to give us what experience he could. The boat tour itself was mostly a failure as we didn’t see anything except one marlin and very short glimpses of the reef. In all honesty I would have expected a refund as the tour was also cut short by the driver who confessed it was unlikely that we were going to see anything anyway. Astoundingly, after we had all gotten off the boat, he took another load of people out in the same weather. As they said, they can’t control the weather and inclement weather is hardly their fault… it just seems a little off when you pay that much money to see something you don’t get to see.
It continued to rain the rest of the day, so once I’d gotten back to the terminal I made a mad dash to my hotel to change clothes – at least I would be dry for the next leg of my day – the SkyRail.
I was the only one on the transfer bus so I spent the trip talking to the driver and he shared some pearls of wisdom with me. The SkyRail was amazing and luckily I had a gondola to myself. Even though it was raining, the trip was incredible – travelling at heights of up to 450m above the rainforest below.
There’s two stops before you get to Kuranda: Red Peak and Barron Falls. I only got off at the Barron Falls stop as it was still pouring with rain but Barron Falls was well worth it. The transfer bus driver had mentioned to me that he had only seen the falls when there had been little rain, so I thought the opportunity to see it when it had been pouring was one that I couldn’t pass up.
I continued up to Kuranda but I didn’t explore the village much. To be honest I was a little ill-prepared – if I’d had a towel and an umbrella I would have ventured out a bit more than I did, but as it was I didn’t feel like living in saturated clothes for the next couple of hours. When you book the tour, you have the option of the Skyrail to take you up and the scenic train to take you back down but I chose to take the SkyRail in both directions. I don’t regret my decision but I probably would take the train if I were to go back again.
After catching the transfer bus back to my hotel, I had some dinner and settled in for the night.
Day Four
Day four was fairly uneventful but I spent it again wandering around Cairns and taking in some of the sights.
Day Five
I left the hotel at 10am and after visiting the mall, seeing a movie and killing some time reading a book, I thought I’d make my way to the airport as I was dry, it was raining and I really didn’t feel like getting wet again. The taxi fare was a reasonable $18.50 and the taxi driver was only the second “true blue Aussie” I’d spoken to the entire time. I spent a good few hours in (a very empty) Cairns airport until I could check in. No free wifi here (again) and I couldn’t buy any ‘net time as the one cafe that was open had run out of access cards. Disappointed with that, but it gave me time to write this entry.
The flights were excellent. Being a competition winner and having that wonderful “staff travel” flag on my ticket meant I had a row of seats to myself on both trips, which is ALWAYS a bonus. After an hour or so sleep on the return flight, I woke up just before landing in Auckland. The drop in temperature was immediately obvious and I enjoyed a refreshing stroll from the international terminal to the domestic one. A few more hours and I’d be home in Wellington and back to work – just like I’d never left.
Thanks Pacific Blue – it was a great unexpected holiday!