Cairns

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June 21, 2013 by moloneycian

The temperature change is small but immediately noticeable.  While Darwin was like being in a sweltering hot sauna, Cairns was just like a nice summers day. I’m meeting up with Sam, who I had met in Nha Trang (Vietnam) a few months back. Within a half hour of meeting him he had me licking the arse of ants here. It’s a little known fact that the red ants with the green behind will taste like citrus if you lick the aforementioned green bit. And damn it’s an intense (almost stings) citrus flavour! These things are also bloody everywhere. I swear you can’t sit down to read a book in peace until after about 7 seconds in, you’ll feel something crawling up your leg or arm.

Citrus flavoured arse!

We’re staying in Nomads Hostel & Serpent Bar. This place is outside the city by a 20 minute walk but the hostel offers a free hourly shuttle. It’s got a good vibe and is relatively cheap ($17) and also offers decent meal deals and free breakfast (well.. toast). It’s quite a social place, having some event or competition on every night which earns it a 3/5! They also feature the biggest cat I’ve seen in my life, a solid half meter long and the width to boot!

The city itself is really nice, bigger than Darwin but still with a clean Americany vibe to it. It’s park and man made lagoon on the waterfront is a perfect place to chill out for the day, although the water was much to cold for me having come from South East Asia! I also paid a visit to the Cairns Regional Gallery gallery which had displayed some interesting (not to mention creepy) sculptures made primarily out of animal bone (unfortunately I forget the name of the artist). The staff here were notably nice, and just seemed happy that someone was coming through the small gallery.

Cairns Lagoon.

As for nightlife, there are a handful of places to go. We took a fancy to the Wool Shed; it was the last stop for many of the hostels games, and it was close to the dropout point for the free bus. We did a lot of pre-drinking with a group of game obsessed English people that Sam had befriended. This was in their hostel of Gilligans; the hostel looked truly amazing, but the staff were like wardens in a prison because people would be searched on entry in case they try to smuggle alcohol in. The staff would go to the extent of doing random room searches, and posting people on different floors to catch anyone who had thought they were on the home stretch after getting past reception!

Reaction after seeing the price of drink..

I also paid a visit to the Great Barrier Reef for a day snorkelling trip with Tusa. I choose to snorkel rather then dive because the reef itself is really shallow, coming to the actual surface in many places. It’s also ridiculously expensive, paying $160 for the day out, and that was with me using my haggling stills to wrangle it down a bit. It was worth it to see the reef though, I’ve not seen coral as alive as this before; the amount of colour and life that you can see is stunning. Along with the trip you get free lunch but anything else you pay for with your firstborn (I paid twenty fucking dollars for a picture). One thing to note again was the freezing water!

Cowabunga!

Again, not a whole lot of pictures. Here’s the link to pictures of Darwin and Cairns.

Next up, I’m off to Sydney to look for a job and meet up with a bestie Irish lad of mine called Shane.