Ah, warmth

Ahhh, now that's the stuff.

Yesterday was a travel day. After days of of chilled Sydney winter weather, along with clouds and spattering of rain, it was nice to finally arrive in Cairns. There was nothing really major to report from yesterday. Although I will say that checking in and clearing customs at Sydney airport was easier than any other airport I've gone through this trip or any other trip I can think of in the past 10 years.

The trip here via Virgin Blue was perfectly ordinary, although a touch of a shock after flying Executive Class with Air Canada. I think we might be spoiled after this trip.

We were picked up at the airport by the nice people at Bohemia Resort, which sounds fancy, but is just a slightly higher end hostel. We have our own private room, which is nice, but they did start cleaning the adjoining rooms at 7 am this morning. Which was a touch annoying, but really won't be a problem over the next few days.

Today was meant to be pretty low key. We headed into central Cairns, got some breakfast and then found the information centre to book some of our adventures for the next few days. One of the slightly annoying quirks about Cairns is that ordinarily when you see the giant 'i' on a sign, you take it for granted that it's a legitimate, government run information centre. Not so much here. Every second private broker uses the giant 'i'. However, thanks to Cathy's extensive reading of Lonely Planet, we knew where the government one was located and went there.

The other thing about Cairns is the sheer volume of things to do and adventures to go on is pretty overwhelming. We like to think we can prepare and plan properly, but I'm not sure how easy that is here. The reason for using the government information centre was simply this - I doubt we got the best deal possible when booking our adventures. But I don't think we got ripped off or taken to the cleaners. And if we like what we go through over the next few days, I doubt we'll care much about the exact dollar figures involved.

So what do we have planned? Saturday is our trip out to the Great Barrier Reef. We're going to the outer part of the reef and hitting three sites, so that will be good, hopefully. Sunday we're spending five hours white water rafting. Monday we're going on a tour of the nearby rain forest. And Tuesday I suspect we'll slip into a coma, but we also might do something else. We'll see.

We're also contemplating buying a didgeridoo. We just left a very nice shop that actually sold real ones and not the tourist crap you normally find. So we'll see. There's something about playing it and having throat singing accompanying it that sounds awfully appealing.

And now, off for some supper, I think. More later if I'm not eaten by sharks. Oh, and we've bought a bag for Cathy's camera, so with luck I'll post some pics from the reef over the next few days.