After the OzIntro week, our group more or less split in two. One sub-group planned to stay in Sydney permanently (or at least until the New Year), while the other planned to book flights up the coast to Cairns and travel South back to Sydney over a couple of months.
My plans fitted more closely with those of the second group, but I wanted to spend a couple of extra days in Sydney before setting off up the coast. So as the second group set off for the airport, I booked a flight for a couple of days time and checked-in at Wake Up in the city centre with the rest of the guys. Compared to the Surfside in Coogee, Wake Up is like a proper hotel. The ground-floor lobby and first-floor kitchen / TV room are open to all residents, but the lift operates on a card system, and only allows you to stop at the floor your room is located on. This is pretty good from a security point-of-view, but just proved to be an inconvenience when it came to meeting with people on other floors. The atmosphere in the hostel itself wasn’t very good, but the bar next door (Side Bar) was busy and had a couple of good live bands playing.
After two days of walking around Sydney, I got the bus to the airport and flew up the coast. I thought the weather in Sydney (in Winter) was comparable to what I’d left behind in Aberdeen (in Summer), but Cairns, being in the Tropics, was like another country completely! I had landed just after seven o’clock in the evening, but the temperature was still in the high 20’s and the humidity was just starting to drop. I met the rest of the group at the Calypso hostel about an hour later and ended up in the same room. Calypso is quiet and has a nice bar, but is about a 20-minute walk from the centre of Cairns. The hostel runs a free bus throughout the day until about 9 o’clock at night, but can still feel a little isolated.
On Sunday morning we got up early and boarded the Jungle Tours bus up to Cape Tribulation, where we were going to stay overnight. The drive up the coast was broken-up by a walk through the rain-forest in Mosman Gorge (and a quick swim in the river that runs through it!), and later for a crocodile-spotting river boat trip. After the scenery on the drive up the coast, I found Cape Tribulation itself to be a bit of a disappointment. The beach is very nice, but I’m not the sort of person who can just sit on a nice beach all day. The next afternoon we got back on the bus and drove directly back to Cairns. This time we had decided to stay closer to the city centre, and myself and Martin checked-in at Bohemia Central. We were in a 4-share room, which only really had enough space for two people, so after a couple of nights I moved to Giligans. Giligans is a huge hostel, much like Wake Up in Sydney, but was cheaper and has much bigger beds than Bohemia. I soon learned that it does have a bad reputation for bugs, but I was only there for a couple of nights and thankfully managed to avoid them.
During our trip to Cape Tribulation it had started to rain a little. Once we had returned to Cairns this rain had turned into a tropical downpour that didn’t stop until we left on the Friday morning. As a result of not really being able to go outside, the rest of our time in Cairns had descended into a long, drunken mess. This culminated in a night at the Woolshed, which is probably the most “energetic” bar I’ve ever seen, and was almost made it worth spending the extra few days in the tropical rain before we could get the bus to Mission Beach.
