Cairns

We slowly drove from Port Douglas to Cairns, it is only about 65km but we took half the day as we stopped along every beach and drove through every little scenic spot we came across.

We found a nice little spot just out of city centre and booked in for a couple of nights.  We were just across from the swimming pool which we made good use of.

One day we took the public bus into Town and walked all around the Esplanade.  We found the Casino and went in for lunch and Dalton came out about $20.00 richer.  After leaving the Casino, while deciding what to do next, we got a phone call from the people we met a couple of weeks ago, they are also in Cairns and just happened to be driving by our location.  After meeting up with Paul and Kylie, we walked all around the Esplanade again.   Paul went into the Lagoon for a swim but the rest of us didn't have our swim suits on so we stayed out.   We had a leisurely beer in one of the open air cafes, caught up with the news from the past couple of weeks since we last saw each other and made plans for the next day.

We had to take the Van in for a service so we made plans to leave it there for the full day.  We took a bus up to Kuranda.  We wanted to take the train but there had been an avalanche along the track and it wasn't cleared yet so we opted for the bus.  We wandered around the Village for the day, took a boat ride down the river to learn more about the tropical rain-forest and took the Skyrail back down.  The Skyrail was awesome.  It is just like riding on a Gondola.

This is the river we went down

We stopped to feed the fish and try to feed the turtles along the way but they were too slow and the fish got all the food

The train station we should have come up on

This is one of the three engines, Dalton said that when he took it years ago, it only had one engine.  Tourism is a wonderful thing for some areas.

 Usually this waterfall is just a trickle but they have had so much rain lately that it now gushes

One of the other waterfalls we saw on the way down on the Skyrail

Dalton and his buddy, Paul

This is a man made lake that has a cable running around the top and you can water-ski without a boat.  Those long things are ski jumps.  So if you like to water ski and you don't have a boat...  What a novel idea