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This begins my travel journal for the 2+ weeks I journeyed through bits of Australia. My exploits will be documented here in the next few weeks.
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My last days in Adelaide were filled with fun and friends. They gave me a great send-off (even though I was coming back for a few days in December before my final departure). We took a tour of the Adelaide pub scene; at least, our favorites. The next day I went to Glenelg Beach for the last time with some friends. Even though it was cold, they still tried to throw me in.
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| From Last Look at Adelaide |
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| From Last Look at Adelaide |
Our flight to Cairns was early on Sunday morning; I had been planning this trip for several months with some of my American friends, and we all boarded the same flight. It was long, but direct, and I was able to sleep most of the way, not getting much the previous night due to last-day goodbyes. It seemingly instantly went from chilly at around 15C to hot and humid at 35C when we got off the plane at our destination.
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| From Diving the Great Barrier Reef |
After collecting our bags, we hitched a ride with a van that our hostel provided; it was a joint operation between several of the hostels in the area, so we made multiple pickups. The driver was insane; he seemed to take it as his personal mission to drive as fast and recklessly as possible around the streets of Cairns, to scare travelers or something. We arrived at our hostel, Jimmy’s on the Esplanade, in one piece and took a look at our surroundings. Conveniently located on a major thoroughfare, and not 10 meters from a pool, a park and the ocean, the hostel was perfect. We had also managed to a get a room just for the four of us, so it was very nearly like a hotel. Ditching our bags in the room, we quickly got into our bathing suits and headed for the beach.
Cairns itself, we soon realized, doesn’t have a lounging beach, but a deserted and muddy expanse of dirt that borders the ocean. Instead, people swim in the pool directly beside it and set up their towels on soft grass, a very pleasant alternative. The afternoon was spent thus, swimming and sunbathing in the warm and strong summer sun. Australia gets much more powerful rays than I have ever experienced in the States, so it is imperative that you wear sunscreen or else you’ll get burned fast.
After showering and getting presentable, my friends and I decided to scope out the Cairns scene. It’s a very small, touristy town, and reminded me excessively of Myrtle Beach or a small coastal Florida town. Souvenir shops everywhere, cheap places to eat, hotels and hostels in abundance, and people in Bermuda shorts with accents give it all away. We wandered around for a while, and unfortunately, no place was open for food (many eateries in Australia close for the slower afternoon hours). Instead, we decided to park ourselves at a local bar and ordered several pitchers of beer until dinner time came. We ate at the same pub, and then took ourselves to a very large and wild hostel with a poolside bar to swim and enjoy the DJ.
That evening, exhausted by the day, I spent sleeping in our air-conditioned room. It was rather depressing for me that every hostel I stayed in during those few weeks of travel provided better beds than what I’d been sleeping on for the last several months in Adelaide, but it made me appreciate the comfort all the more. The next day we had to wake up early for our first day of scuba training.
