Their on their own Fiji time!

The morning started a lot earlier than I would have liked but I told Riley to just come in and say “We’re going to Cairns to see the Great Barrier Reef” if I looked like I wasn’t going to get out of bed. Luckily, he didn’t have to since I was wide awake by the time the alarm clock went off. This could have been because I woke up several times throughout the night to check the time and make sure I hadn’t overslept and missed the plane. With our bags packed and ready to go we were able to get out the door even earlier than expected and make it to Central Station by 5:15; this is quite the accomplishment for me! We were going to catch a train to Mascot, costing $1.80 instead of catching the airport train, costing $12, and walk 1.5 km to the airport. I mean, why haven’t other people thought of this? The walk was a lot easier than we both expected and we only got confused as we were entering the airport because there were barely any signs directing us where to go. We ended up just asking a worker and luckily we were in the right vicinity. We went upstairs to the departures check-in desks and were encountered by the longest line belonging to our airline, Tiger Airways, of course. We were about an hour early so we didn’t know what was going to happen since our flight check-in closed 45 minutes before departure. We were at the front of line just in time though and made it through check-in and security easily. As we went downstairs to our gate I was starting to wonder how we were going to get on our plane since we were on the ground level and not on the second floor like usual gates that have a tunnel leading to the plane. It didn’t take me long to figure out we’d be taking a bus to the airplane but what surprised me was the fact that we were actually going to board the plane ourselves, as in we were going to walk across the tarmac and climb the stairs that roll away. I guess that’s what we get for choosing the cheap flight, but we don’t mind one bit! We were also going to have our first experience with sitting next to a baby and just hoped he’d stay calm and not cry. Luck was on our side because both the baby and adult were out within minutes allowing Riley and I to shortly follow. Sleeping on the airplane is never easy for me but I was able to get about an hour’s rest in there. We’ll fast forward the rest of the long three hour flight to the landing. As we peeked out the window, since I was lucky enough to land my first window seat, we noticed that it looked a lot like Fiji with the beach and big mountains right behind it. Plus it was a little cloudy with the clouds literally coming over the top of the mountains which brought back memories of landing in Nadi. As we stepped off the airplane we were hit with a wall of 80 degree weather which felt like home to us, North Carolina. This is the weather we had been waiting for! Cairns airport was rather small and with no check in bag to collect we made our way to the exit to call our hostel to come pick us up. We didn’t make the first shuttle bus since other people had arrived at the dock by then, even though we had been the first ones, so I was a little agitated. Then when we finally got to the hostel the owner decided to take her own sweet time checking us in. There were five of us sitting in front of waiting to check-in but she decided to stop what she was doing and help everyone that walked up to her instead of helping us out first. We literally had to wait about 40 minutes until we were all done paying, got our sheets and our keys! Then a guy had to give us a tour of the place, but had forgotten to give us our keys so we had to go back to the front desk. I was beyond irritated at this point since we only had two days in Cairns to explore and see everything and he was taking away precious time.. Once we were finally in our rooms we didn’t waste any time just dropping our bags and heading out the door. We were planning on going to the Botanical Gardens, the Centenary Lakes, and some WWII tanks. I had picked up a map from the hostel lounge during the 40 minute wait so we knew exactly where we were heading. Along the way we passed a lot of restaurants we tried to spot a good one to stop at for dinner that night. We finally reached the Botanical Gardens sign, but we had a few stops before that to check out the Tanks and another Nature Center. I was under the impression that the tanks were going to be replicas of the Army Tanks used during WWII but turns out its giant oil tanks with art galleries inside about WWII. It obviously wasn’t what we were expecting, but it was still cool to see. We ventured on to see the Botanical Gardens which isn’t as big as the one in Sydney but still beautiful with a lot of bamboo.

Bamboo upon bamboo upon bamboo...

He's just playing his bamboo guitar!

Just a bamboo tree.

Big excitement for a slightly disappointing let down. 

Can anyone find me

From the gardens we took a boardwalk into the rainforest that was going to lead us to the Centenary Lakes. The boardwalk was definitely my favorite part since the scenery was so beautiful and made me feel like we were in another place altogether.

Where it leads no one knows.

The lakes were quite a sight with giant palm trees off to the side. We headed back into the city to try and find the beachfront. I think we were both expecting to see a long, stretching beach like in North Carolina since it was Cairns after all, but we walked onto another typical Australian beach. There was barely any sand between the path and water line and rocks lined the outer edges of the bay. So really it was just a sound that they call a beach. We were sitting along the Promenade, a boardwalk that ran all the way from the city to the Pier and a focal point of the beach town. There were great birds to watch and small ripples of wavescoming unto the sand so we were both content until we started getting really hungry!

Saw this nasty thing!

Then we were off to finally find a good restaurant for us, but our search got pretty frustrating whenever we noticed that none of the places looked open. It was only a little after 4 o’clock and all the restaurants weren’t going to open until later in the day, which we obviously couldn’t wait for. We had gotten up so early to catch the plane and hadn’t had much to eat throughout the day, so we were pretty desperate to eat. We ended up following the signs to the mall and getting Hungry Jack’s which is an Australian restaurant, just not the classical fish and chips type of place that we were looking for. It was still delicious, especially since it seems like forever since we’ve had fast food! With Coles right there we stopped in to get a few more food items to last us our few days in Cairns before heading back to the hostel. Asylum is known for having crazy parties but lucky for us we were staying in-between the party dates and the place was awesomely quiet. We were able to just relax and pack our bag for our cruise to the Great Barrier Reef the next day. It didn’t take us long and we were able to turn out the lights by 10 o’clock, but with the Great Barrier Reef on the list of things to do tomorrow we were more than ready to get some good rest so we could really enjoy it!