I am not sure if anyone has ever heard of Cairns. I was thinking that Cairns is in New Zealand, because Chris Cairns was from New Zealand! So, you know where I am coming from :D. Krithi’s Thomas Cook exposure made her to put Cairns to the most would-like-to-visit place for her in Australia. She was talking about the Great Barrier Reef when we were coming to Australia itself.Thus we made Cairns plan for last December, and made the bookings in November first week. The bookings were made in a hurry when we have diagnosed Krithi’s pregnancy. This time my lack of knowledge in biology did the damage. I was thinking it will be tough after 6 months and I was planning to finish off all travelling by first 6 months. As you know, in actual, the first 3 months is the sensitive period. I was in a hurry to finish off her priority places before it becomes impossible for her to travel.
Stupid me! We realised the mistake after 2 weeks, and the travel agents showed their colours when they declared no reimbursements if you cancel. They gave an option to postpone the trip charging some 100$ for that! Money never goes with me L !
Talking about Cairns, the coral reefs are the only visible natural reefs from space. The sites define Great Barrier ref as the World's greatest reef system, stretching more than 2000km along Queensland's north-east coast. As the World's largest and most complex reef system, it has thousands of individual coral reefs and hundreds of continental islands, reef islands and cays, small bare sand cays, and permanent vegetated cays.
So we were sitting tight for the first trimester to be over, and then tried the test our capacity to travel by trying the New Year fireworks. Then we went on to reschedule the trip to February first week, with a small change. We booked a furnished apartment instead of a normal hotel room. The rent was more, but we had reduced the days to be 3 days instead of 4 days, so the impact was little less.
Day1: Our first domestic flight in Australia. It was an amazing experience of technology to do e-check-in at the scan screen at the airport. It displays the available seats from which you can choose too. Cairns. I am first time trying this cheap type of flights which has converted air hostess to sales girls. We all had a list of available food and drinks with their price, and these girls were moving selling them. Cairns, though, in our same time zone won’t go for the daylight savings and so is an hour behind Sydney. So, we took off at 10, had three hours flight and landed in Cairns at 12.
We had no processing time for anything while going in or coming out. Took a taxi to the hotel, it was a narrow road from the airport leading to the city centre. It took hardly 15 minutes to reach the hotel. The tropical climate was visible with the greenery, and the types of vegetation- with the narrow roads, it gave me a Goan feeling.We checked-in by 12:30. The apartment was spacious, and I became very nostalgic when I opened one of the windows in the kitchen, and a coconut tree leaf peeped in as if it was waiting for me to open! We had a home-made lunch with a tropical view of palm trees and hills. We had no plans than just staying back and slowly explore the tours for tomorrow. The hotel itself has got all those leaflets and we chose one of them which came with a free underwater camera. I realised that there is a bit of cheating here also. They have the tour price highlighted on the leaflet and when you try to book it, comes the hidden prices – pickup-from-hotel fee ( I have never ever heard of it ), reef tax( I have no clue why they keep it separate and cheat) etc. ! Actually, I realised later that we were better. There was this hot air balloon flight, which charged some A$275 or so, an
d in small font was written ‘ excluding the compulsory insurance fee A$25 ! The cruise had a whole day itinerary including the trip to the reef, snorkelling, and trips in a semi-submersible boat and a glass-bottom boat (all are same, just making money putting in all these jargons).We went for a walk towards the city centre. It was a deserted peaceful place with lot of houses and broad roads. They got hills all around and sea on one side co-existing with some mountains in the middle (forming small small islands). There was a long walk on the sea side- called the Esplanade (this just means a pathway in Dictionary) walk. We could see the day trip cruises bringing back tourists after their day out snorkelling and diving. It was not forming a beach, so they made a park and pathway to w
alk. The cruise was expecting us to get the swimming costumes, and we went in to an evening market (which opens at 5pm and closes by 9pm! I have never expected I will find such a thing in the whole of Australia). After our shopping, we walked to the artificial lagoon made near to the city centre end of the Esplanade. Sat sometime there, and it got dark by 7:30 itself as there is no daylight saving in Cairns (it is 8:30 in Sydney then).We walked back home, doing some window shopping at the Opal shops and other souvenir shops. It all looked costly than our Souvenir shops in Sydney!
That ended our first day in Cairns. We were excited about tomorrow, seeing and doing something we are going to do for the first time.
