To Cairns

Today we go to Cairns! Checking out of Adelaide and getting to the flight was uneventful. The flight was with Jetstar, which seems to be the Southwest of Australia, except no free drink or snack. Hmmph!!

When we were flying, I got my first view of the Red Center. It seemed like every time I looked down, it was just endless red, sometimes with dried out creek beds.

Upon descending into Cairns, we saw how tropical it really is! We both thought it looked a bit like Hawaii. A beautiful bay surrounded by lush mountains. Nice.

We checked into our apartment-style hotel and fell in love J A washer & dryer! A couch! We really missed these things. We popped over to McD’s for a quick snack (I was obsessed w/ McD’s apple pies for this entire trip, I don’t know why), went to Woolworth’s to buy some food, then went back to our place to start some laundry. Our room had a great view of the water, mountains, city, and esplanade (a public pool area on the beach). At one point we heard some birds causing a ruckus outside, and thought of the ugly black birds that swarm in Dallas at dusk. But no, these were beautiful green, blue, & red birds. Lovely! Later on, I thought I saw some bigger birds swarming, but upon further inspection, I saw they were bats! Literally thousands of big bats were pouring out of the hills and out over the ocean waters, I guess to hunt. There were so many, they poured out for 10 minutes.

We went out for a quick dinner and discovered a gelato place (that we’d visit for the next 2 nights). We took the gelato to the esplanade/boardwalk and just strolled along. At some point some random guy came up to us and told us not to miss sunrises – it was beautiful. I kept waiting for him to try to sell us something or ask for money, but no, he was just a nice guy, just like so many people we’ve encountered here. While walking along, we saw some skipping/flying fish, a water snake, and more (smaller) bats.