Saturday - Cairns

Cairns is known for being a party happening town, and I can definitely concur that it lives up to that! Last night was a big night with some random people I met at dinner, as the hostel im staying at offers a free meal it makes it nice and easy to find people to talk to. A heavy night meant that it was a lovely long lay in this morning, finally getting out the hostel at 11am, I had to empty all my stuff out the van and take it to a car wash. With the hot sun shining down, and everyone walking around in swimming costumes I had vision of hot chics cleaning cars to sounds of the beachboys, but in fact it was a souless cubicle with a power jet on one side and a foaming brush the other. It takes a while to get the hard caked dead flies off and working hard in the heat with a hangover is no fun, but the van is soon gleaming and i drive it back to the handoff point with plenty of time to spare. Unfortunately it seems that saturday is a busy time for van and car rentals, and its an hour before they can do anything. No damage means I get all my bond back, and I head out to explore the city. 

Cairns seems to be dead, its almost like a ghost town with very few people on the streets, or in the shops. Its not until I find the market that it gets populated again, and the smells are fantastic with all the fresh fruit and vegtables locally grown on sale. I tried an orange, and its the juiciest tastiest orange i've ever had. As i walk further round, i spot something that i just have to try - Cane Sugar Juice. Its made fresh while you wait, and a little old man passes what looks like a bamboo cane (but must of course be a sugar cane, i've just never seen one before!) through a compress, after the first 2 times through, he cuts a small green fruit and adds half to the folded cane so that this is also added to the resulting juice as he puts in through a few more times. When asked what the fruit is, he tells me in broken english its a lemon, then goes on to explain that its similar to a lemon and is called a qumquat SP. The juice is sweet (no surprise!) but actually pretty tasty and definitely goes well in helping the hangover. 

Its still hot outside, and so I headed down to the lagoon pool. Still very quiet through town, but there are again a small pocket of people near the lagoon. The lagoon itself is right by the beach and i was wondering why it was there. Looking at the water, its less than tempting as its very muddy, and there are warning signs around to watch out for crocodiles. The sun has disappeared behind a thick cloud bank on the way down but its still very hot. While there is still light, i take a walk down the esplanade. Further down the beach, presumably where there is less chance of crocodile attack, I watched a man walking up and down the muddy shoreline with a net. It turns out he is looking for crabs, and brings out 2 or 3 every throw of the net which he then free'd from the net and kicked with his barefeet back out to the water. As he passed it seemed that he was only keeping the big ones as a monster claw lifted out of his bucket, and the largest I saw him through back was about the size of a babies head.

Following the shore round to the rainforest I was very dissappointed to not see any crocodiles, but walking back towards town the peace of the evening was drowned out by the birds. There were hundreds off them it sounded like, hidden away in the branches of the trees.

Its been my last day in Cairns, and its been fantastic in many ways but definitely doesn't match up to the places further down the coast. I leave tomorrow at 4am in the morning to get to the airport, so its going to be a quiet night tonight and early bed.... Yeah right!