Cairns: Paradise Found

As you know, this weekend I traveled to Cairns. Friday I got a call from my friend Theresa telling me a cyclone was moving in and that the dive we were suppose to do was cancelled. With rain and disaster in the forecast I boarded the plan a little bummed. But little did I realize it was going to the best weekend yet!

I got to Cairns within an hour after boarding the plane. My wonderful friends waited for me at the airport-Noor, Rhona and Miranda as well as drove me there to begin with. The person I sat next to on the plane kept looking over at me, I could tell he really wanted to talk. When he finally did--he didn't shut up, which was fine, it was entertaining for sure. He was from Townsville, but had decided a few days before that he wanted to up and move to Cairns. But he was a real partier -or so he said-and that was really most of what he talked about. His uncle and he had gotten in a fight with some people and got kicked out of Uni Club (the club on campus) earlier in the week. (hysterical right?) So refreshments came around--on Qantas airlines you get free alcohol so obviously this kid took a beer. It was so funny because as soon as we got off the plane this kid was wabbling around, clearly unable to handle alcohol...and yet he had just went on and on about how much of a partier he was. I think this is what people call a light weight? Really funny!

Anyway enough about that. I had to wait about an hour and a half until the shuttle I had booked brought me to where my friend Theresa was staying. I did a good bit of people watching, I love that sport! When I finally got to Theresa's place she was walking down the street toward me. We shared a wonderful hug and brought my stuff to her room. Then we went to a party that she had previously been at and I met a bunch of her friends.

We slept in Saturday, and by sleeping in I mean 10AM. Since we couldn't dive we decided to go on this thing called the skyrail, which basically brings you over the rainforest. It was awesome-check out the pictures. It had two stops along the way to its final destination which was this little touristy town in the middle of the rainforest. The first stop we got off at was a walk through the rainforest. It was sprinkling a bit and they had umbrella's we could use. The second stop was at some waterfalls. They were quite powerful, I guess because it is the rainy season. The view from the skyrail was magnificent-you could see mountains behind mountains, you could see the ocean, you could see cockatoos (spelling?), you could see everything. Truly beautiful. It was in all about a 45 minute ride on the skyrail-not including the stops to the final spot. Kuranda, the little town in the rainforest, was surrounding by a murky pond, where we believe zillions and I mean zillions of freshies (freshwater crocs) were hiding out.

Kuranda was home to many little touristy shops and markets; it was nice and relaxing. We just walked around and window shopped for a while, bought a few things. Then we came across a Venomous (spelling?) Animal Zoo. It looked a little sketchy, but Theresa's male friend who was with us wanted to go pretty bad-so we did. And it was worth it. First we had to go down this creepy ramp into the bottom of the building where all these glass tanks held different poisonous snakes. (pictures and descriptions on snapfish) There was this really odd woman (who Theresa hated haha) giving a tour to some aboriginal children. She sounded like she had no idea what she was talking about. It made me really question the 15 dollars I had just spent to see these snakes. For all I knew they weren't venomous at all. But whatever, they were pretty cool. When we had enough at the bottom we went back to the top where some other tour guide was going to explain some other creatures to us. This was cool because we got to hold some of them--crazy right? Who wants to hold Australia's venomous creatures? I sure do! But the ones we held weren't actually venomous-they just had defenses that made them look threatening. The skink was my favorite, he had a blue tongue. We also got to hold a water snake that insisted on getting uncomfortably close to you, even for me. By the time we were done it was cycloning out and we had to run back to catch the last trip on the skyrail. It was quite relaxing to ride back and look at the rainforest in the protection of our little sky lift.

Saturday dinner we made a run for some thai/vegetarian/indian food (as the restaurant was called)-it was pretty good, better than cafeteria food at least. But that night we went out on the town. It was wicked fun. We (all Theresa's friends and I) got all dressed up--dresses and nice slacks and shirts --and went downtown. Cairns is one of the biggest backpacker places in the North, despite the smallness of everything else about Cairns, the city was booming with clubs and night life, more so than Townsville has ever looked. Theresa decided we had to go to one of their normal hangout places, Giligan's -a bar/club across the way from one of the biggest hostels in Cairns. It was SO cool. They had a bar with a pool right behind it and a few different rooms with different music themes. On the bottom floor they had a dance floor with these little table/cages you could dance in. Theresa and her friend kept trying to get me to go in, but I was too ashamed of my dancing to get up there. I think this was a good choice hehe. But the music was great, and the lighting was terrific. I loved it. The upper floor was okay, lots of funny people dancing, and the oddest part was that there was a queen size bed along side the wall. I don't want to know what that was for!

After hanging out there for quite a while, we met up with some more of her friends who had decided to have a quietter night out in a different pub. This was just like a regular bar, but they did have a dance floor. We then made our way as a huge group to this exclusive club at the casino in Cairns. There was a specific dress code too, how cool is that? I actually passed because I was wearing a dress and cute shoes, but one of the kids with us was in shorts--a big no no and couldn't get in. So this club was called the Velvet Underground and as you can tell it was underground. It had red rugs and was really classy. There were two floors--we went to the botom. But there was a special VIP level on this floor-basically it looked like what clubs look like in movies. SO Cool! Behind the DJ was this crazy mask, kind of India-ish/magician-ish looking and the music was ALL techno. My kind of heaven for sure. We danced around a lot and I drank lots of water haha. Then in the middle of the night they had a dance contest-with people who could actually dance. It was kind of like a private viewing of the show-so you think you can dance, with the exception of one girl who basically gave us a strip show (odd?). We had so much fun that we were out until 2:30AM --for me thats crazy.

The best part was we had to wake up at 6AM the next morning to go SCUBA diving, which I really can't complain about. But basically you can tell I was running off adrenaline all weekend. Sadly in the middle of the short sleeping night that we had--one of Theresa's friends came barging in -drunk and wild and woke up up. Ei, yi yi!

Sunday morning we woke, far too early, and got ready for diving. We went through a group called Deep Down Diving or something like that. They had about 80 people on board that day, but only 5 of us were actually already certified divers, crazy!! Many people were just there to snorkel, but a lot of people were getting certified for diving. It is quite possible that other than the instructors and ship crew that I may have had the most dives of anyone present--a scary thought.

Because I have a wonderful body, I of course got sea-sick. Yuck, I tried to fight it off but unfortunately breakfast didn't want to stay down. After that though the sea-sickness was manageable and as soon as I got in the water it went away. Theresa was a great dive buddy. She helped me set up my gear and situate myself despite my seasickness. I was much appreciative of this, really really really.

I was so excited to get into the water and once I got it the experience totally surpassed my expectations. And the scary thing is, it was pretty murky I guess because of the cyclone. Don't worry it was a wonderful and beautiful sunny day--no cyclone present when I actually dove. The first dive we saw a lot of parrotfish (that eat coral) and coral of course. Vibrant and distinctive colors in everything. It was super relaxing to be there but thrilling at the same time.

For our second dive we went to another reef. Here the first thing that greeted us was a wrasse, a large large fish with ginormous lips! He was my favorite fish of all. He let us touch him and he was the softest smoothest thing I've ever touched. If I could marry a fish it would be him. He was that cool. By the way--his name is Willy and his face is on a postcard. Again we saw tons of beautiful coral and reef fish and this time I even saw a sting ray. Both dives lasted about an hour and we probably were at a depth of 35 feet or less the whole time. The water was probably above 90 and I was only wearing a stinger suit--basically an underarmour jumper. After the dives I wanted more, so I went out for a snorkel. You'll love this--I heard someone yelling and poked my head up to hear someone saying all snorkelers back to the boat!! I looked to my right and saw two huge fins poking out of the water!! OH MY GOODNESS-yes it was exactly what I thought-a shark!! You better bet my flippers I was back to the boat without another look. It was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO cooool! I have no idea what kind of shark it was but it wasn't an ordinary reef shark because they wouldn't have called us back. I was so scared, but really really excited too. After a few minutes they told us we could get back in the water, all of us were reluctant, but I got back in and was probably only one of three people that did. I had to though, I wasn't going to let a shark get in the way of my first day on the GBR! And honestly I kind of wanted to see this big guy under water! No sign of him the rest of the day though, I guess I could deal with that!

On the way back Theresa and I relaxed on the top of the ship soaking in sun. It was wonderful. Needless to say I was absolutely exhausted by the time we got back to her place.

I took a bus back to Townsville Sundaynight/Monday morning. 12:25 leave time and 5:35 AM arrival --I really didn't sleep on the bus--it was uncomfortable and freezing. Then I had to wait an hour and a half at the bus terminal in Townsville before the Monday busses even started around Townsville. I couldn't keep my eyes open though so I laid down on a bench and tried to sleep. Covered in flies (yes I'm not sure why flies) I waited, but let me tell you--fly covered and sleep deprived I had just had the best weekend in my life.