Cairns!

Karina and I are learning a very important lesson: don't share drinks with sick people! Karina is finally feeling better and of course now I'm sick. The flight from Cairns was miserable...my ears have never hurt so much :-(

We're here in Cairns now which is in the northeastern part of the country. I'd say it's about where Maine is. It truly is a tropical town with palm trees everywhere and crazy birds and lots of humidity. Everything is so green and there are large mountains in the background. Very pretty. It's warm but it's like 75% humidity (well maybe not that much) so its sooo muggy! Definitely not straightening our hair this week.

Cairns is kind of like a beach bum town...not a crazy city like we were picturing. It's on the ocean but there's no beach -- just a man made lagoon in the center of town that we have yet to visit. There are a bunch of shops and restaurants (expensive!) and a mall with designer shops. There's an outdoor movie theater in the middle of town and tons of touristy shops and souvenir places. We're staying at a hostel called Calypso...it's pretty quiet because people are out doing day trips to the reef or white water rafting or rainforest. It's kind of outside the "downtown" area so we have to take a shuttle to get to the main promenade where everything we want to see is. Unfortunately our lives now revolve around the shuttle schedule. It's usually convenient and the shuttle drop off spot has free wifi from a travel agency so it works out! There are a lot of characters working there including the dutch guy doofy, or doofus as we call him. And the manager is Buddha! There is also an orange cat wandering around at times that likes to sit next to Karina at dinner. We are here in the off-season. The whole town in general is fairly quiet...I guess it's their rainy season though so people head south to the cities instead of hanging out in the rain.

Our first day we spent getting to know the area, doing laundry and grocery shopping. There was a pool tournament at night at the hostel...first person to miss three shots had to go in the pool...I didn't win but at least I didn't have to get wet!

Activities for the week include: sailing, scuba diving, snorkeling, Great Barrier Reef, Cape Tribulation, a night hike in the Daintree Rainforest and white water rafting the Tully River!