Today was one of those days where I had nothing planned, mainly due to the fact I was in a new town and I like to explore them first. Despite this I was still up early and hence took the opportunity to try and catch up on my blog which I keep getting behind on with all these tours without WiFi and in some cases electricity! After what was a relatively relaxing morning in the end I headed out into Cairns, heading straight down to the Esplanade getting my first insight into Cairns.
I studied Cairns and the surrounding areas in geography last year and it was exactly how I pictured it, a town which has expanded in recent years due to tourism. There is literally rainforest either side and then a town in the middle. Much of the infrastructure on the seafront was really modern, although the thing Cairns lacks is a beach due to the crocodile risk. The seafront is more of a salt marsh, although the boating industry is still massive being the countries main gateway to the barrier reef!
After the 15 minute or so walk from my hostel, I headed into the town centre where the shops were all dotted down various streets in a crossroad formation. It was here I found the local Woolworths and got my breakfast, tiger rolls and I also tried a mars choc loaded bar for the first time. I won't go into detail about Australian chocolate but they have it better over here!
It was then off to the travel agency to try and sort out my New Zealand part of the trip, although I was pretty annoyed when travel bugs who I have used all the way up the coast refused to help me because I booked my bus pass back home. I instead went to happy travels next door who helped me confirm everything and I also managed to book my first hostel in New Zealand there too. From there I headed onto their computers at first to look up New Zealand, and then to download some geocaches. I'll talk about how my Kiwi Experience bus pass works when I know more because I am still trying to work it all out!
With my GPS loaded with some caches I continued exploring the area, with my searches taking me to the big out of town shopping mall, railway station and the reef fleet terminal. This is where all the major boats leave from to explore the reef, a trip I am doing on Thursday. I then went back along the seafront passing the manmade lagoon before going back inland through the park and along the small creek flowing through the city, heading back to the hostel after finding nine caches.
Back at the hostel I sorted out my pile of postcards and a few other things ready to send home because today is arguably my only opportunity before leaving Cairns as I have a pretty full on five days after today! After eventually finding the post office, I headed off back along the seafront, this time further along to the botanical gardens which included a tropical palm forest walk and a rainforest swamp walk. The area was full of mosquitos however!
After a good look at all the plants and wildlife on show, I headed back into town, although when passing the mangroves this bird kept swooping down on me! I also got a glimpse of the airport which looked quite small, with pretty precarious take offs. All the planes were taking off west and then doing sharp u turns to turn around! From here instead of going back to the hostel I went straight to dominoes pizza, getting glimpses of the impressive 'bat' formation as the sunset. They are not actually bats but some bigger variant. There were literally hundreds!
When finally getting my bangers and beef pizza I headed down to the seafront in the now darkness and quickly devoured the pizza. It was then straight back to the hostel where I was so tired by this point. Despite this I relaxed in the common room for a while. After my uncomfortable night the night before I opted to change sleeping directions tonight which was kind of successful, although the biggest problem was the squeaking bunk.
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