Saturday.
Today we left for airport at about 3:40am. We walked to
Burwood where we met our taxi driver at 4:00am. We took a cab with Becky,
Jenae, Sarah, Emily, Carly, and Megan. We got to the airport, checked in, went through
security. Security is nothing. It was almost unnerving. I got to keep my shoes
on. Didn’t have to chug my full water bottle. Not even sure if someone watched
me go through the metal detector… and no one checked my ID or my plane ticket.
Come on people! Verify who I am!
So that took .5 seconds. So then we had time to kill at the
airport. We got to the gate and waited to board. Janae went to subway for
breakfast sandwich and gave me half. What a gem. Then, the rest of the people
from our ASC group came. There was 17 of us total who had decided to go to the
reef this weekend.
We finally boarded and took the 2 hour and 55 minute flight
to Cairns (pronounced cans). I slept for most of the ride, off and on, had
aisle seat so it was not the most comfortable. We got to Cairns and split into
our hotel/hostel groups. My hotel group: my room: Katie, Lindsey, Becky,
Kristen, and me. Other room: Carly, Megan, Sarah, Emily and Janae. We figured
out how to take a shuttle to our hotel. Dropped of our stuff in lockers because
our room wasn’t ready yet.
We then walked a ways into the “city”. It is a pretty small,
laid back town. And there are lots and lots of Aboriginal people. Not that that
makes any difference, it was just an observation. So the 10 of us went to
breakfast/ lunch at a cute café. I ate the sandwich I packed but got an iced
coffee.
After that we broke off into smaller groups. Janae, Kristen
and I just started walking. Walked by this guy who worked for some company that
throws parties and wanted us to come, for the low price of $30, to ride their
party bus to all the hot bars in Cairns, and to give us food and to play games
with many sexual innuendos. We didn’t say yes, but we felt bad saying no, so we
just said we would think about it and walked away. We ran into some other people on the pier, Kristen went with
them. Janae and I walked around in the opposite direction towards the docks.
There is an Iron man competition happening tomorrow, so
there was lots of set up for that going on. It started to rain so we ducked
into an art museum. Walked around the children’s area for a while and
participated in a craft or two and a magnetic puzzle… we then found a bench
that overlooked the street and we just sat and chatted for a while. It was
really nice to just sit, and be out of the rain.
Finally, we motivated ourselves to head back to the hotel. We got there and a few people had gone
back and checked us in already so all we had to do was snag our stuff out of
the lockers.
We all just chilled for a few hours before we were to go out
for dinner. I had a nap. The best part, is that went to sleep and it was
raining, woke up and it was sunny. I’m not going to ask questions, I’m just
going to be thankful that the rain has stopped.
We went to dinner at a pub on the main stretch in the city.
I got a chicken schnitzel burger and the 10 of us just sat around and chatted
for a while. After that went to night markets. It kind of reminded me of a
nicer version of Paddy’s markets in Sydney. We then went to woolworths (Grocery
store), picked up some snacks. Then headed back to the hotel.
Went wanted to go to bed because we had to get up early
tomorrow to go to the Great Barrier Reef!!
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