Airlie to Cairns

Friday night (5th) we returned to Airlie Beach and the group from the sailing trip met up for drinks on the Skipper at Koalas. Afterwards, Meagan and I hung out with the Dutch guys for some dancing and goofing around at local beer garden. It was so awesome because we ran into a bunch of people from the Surf Trip and from Fraser Island. It's a small world, especially when you're a traveller.

Saturday (6th) we checked out of Backers by the Bay and entertained ourselves in Airlie Beach for hours thanks to Peterpan's wonderful internet facilities (where I am currently spending the day waiting to leave Cairns... notice a pattern?)

The bus ride was eventful despite the fact that it was a 10 hour ride from Airlie to Cairns. We hopped on at 8:30pm and by 10:30 pm we were rudely awakened from a bus-sleep by a shattering window! Apparently a kid on the side of the road had thrown a rock at the window and the tempered glass just exploded! Yeah, so needless to say, we were in for a long bus ride with multiple stops to "temporarily fix" the window with plastic bags and later cardboard, then finally a replacement bus at 2am.

After arriving in Cairns at 7:30am (7th) with no scheduled accomodation, Meagan and I decided to stay at a hostel named Parkview because the guy was at the bus stop recruiting people. Bad decision! The guy was creepy and the place was even worse! We were put in a nasty room with two other girls from the Czech Republic and the floors were dirty, the beds creaky, and the bathrooms nasty. There was no light in the hallways and the place was just otherwise dodgy!! Needless to say, we took showers and left the place ASAP to find a new hostel to stay in. We stopped in the first hostel we found The Cairns All Girls Hostel which had a sign posted "Cleanest Hostel in Cairns, Come in and Inspect!" Guess what we did.

Apparently Parkview is one of the dirtiest accomodations in Cairns and everyone knows it! The lady at the Girls Hostel told us to hurry and get our bags before we got bed bugs in them! Yikes, we definitely sacrificed the accomodation money on that one in order to avoid bites!

We spent the day walking around Cairns checking out the Esplanade's shops, eateries, and lagoon. We had a nice Aussie style breakfast of eggs on toast at a little cafe on the water and took hilarious pictures of the beachfront property.



Lagoon on the Esplanade







Cairns has a muddy swamp instead of a sandy beach... a little history: The Cairns Post newspaper reveal that the esplanade was once a sandy beach, but it is believed that the dredging of the Grafton Channel for shipping resulted in mud completely covering the sandy beach because the sediment gathered during the dredging process was dumped offshore and promptly swept back in to silt the inlet and cover the esplanade beach with mud. So basically when the tide is low, it's about 2 km of brown mud instead of a white sandy beach! haha How unattractive! They do have a nice man-made lagoon next to the mud for swimming since the fatal box jelly-fish prevents swimming in the ocean during the summer months.