Spring Break 2k7....Aussie Style

So mid-semester break was split up into 3 sections for me: cairns, cape tribulation, back to cairns. This quick entry will encompass section 1. And by quick I mean that you may not want to read all of this. It could turn out to be quite long, but this blog is also a journal for me, and I want to remember all of it. so there. :P

Debbie and I left for Cairns at 5:15 from Brisbane (Jess caught an earlier flight), which we were barely on time for. The trains were running late; silly public transportation…anyways, after agreeing to swap seats with this woman, who wanted to sit next to her boyfriend, I got to share the ride with a cute little 10-year-old, Curt, from outside Brisbane. He was flying for the first time by himself to see his older brother and cousins who live in Cairns. Lets just say sitting next to little Curt made the 2 1/2 hour plane ride very enjoyable. It made for a good start to the break.

Arriving in Cairns around 7:45, I said farewell to my plane buddy, caught up with Debbie, and we caught the shuttle to our hostel, Cairns Beach House. Now, let me preface the hostel with this: our travel agent, whose name is “Bucko,” told us that this was the place to be. Number one hostel in Cairns. Gilligans, where we wanted to stay, was 5th in line. Ahem, excuse me, BUCKO! Debbie and I get our keys to the room, the tile floors are wet, there is a whole in the cement wall, there are bugs all over the place, and then the shower would stop while you were still soapy. Let’s just say we were less than okay with this. Keeping the fact in mind that we were not going to be in the hostel 24/7 or for the whole week, we put up with it, then wrote Bucko an email the next morning. Debbie and I hit the sack pretty early in our cosy little hostel in order to rest up for white water rafting the next morning at 6AM!

6AM came all too quickly, but Debbie and I stumbled out of bed and down to the parking lot to drive down to the Tully river. Debbie had never been rafting before, so I was really excited to be doing this with her and see her reaction to it all. Since the river is low, the rapids ranged from 1-4. During the wet season, it’s supposedly crazy. I’d like to see that…but crazy or not, this was a great day full of rapids, waterfalls, rock jumping, swimming, and beautiful scenery. All around us mountains of 150 million year old rainforest gazed down on our little boat. Our guide pointed out the lava rock formations, the trees with berries that get parrots drunk, and informed us of each crazy rapid name.

We returned to the hostel that night, showered, went out for dinner, and hit the hay early from exaustion. The next day Debbie and I ventured down to the lagoon that Cairns had to offer for a little sun bathing and shopping. Oh, before that, I spent a few hours at a café down the road from the hostel and bought a coffee. Let me tell you about Australian iced coffee. It is not just coffee with ice. No no. It is coffee with cream and ice cream and whipped cream. Yes, lots of cream. I was not expecting this when I ordered my iced coffee, but I was plesantly surprised with the Geroge Clooney look alike waitor presented me with this milkshake of a coffee. It made my morning quite enjoyable. Anyways, after a few hours of the lagoon, we met up with the other girls from our program to go sign up for a pub crawl that night around Cairns. The pub crawl that night was so much fun! Dinner at Rhino Bar, 6 different bars, and pizza at the last bar. Each had its own feel, and you could always catch a different footy game that was on (rugby world cup coming up!) The next morning we were finally leaving the less than satisfactory accomodations so pushed upon us. We were headed to stay on Cape Tribulation for two nights in the middle of the rainforest!

This is the end of track one. Cape Tribulation coming shortly.