The Cairns airport was pretty tiny and the baggage came out almost immediately! Score! I proceeded to the bus depot without any difficulty. I was taking it in faith that the bus would show up since I had “booked” it. All that was entailed was putting my name and a few details into a website and it popping up a little message saying “see you at the airport”. The bus was just called Cairns Airport Shuttle. No payment required no email to confirm. Nothing. There were 4 other people waiting for him, which made me feel better. They were all as nervous as me about the shady booking site. But he showed up with a list of names about ten minutes later. And he only charged me $5, while charging the two girls $8 each and the two boys with surf boards $10 each. Maybe I just looked the most broke. It seemed completely random, but all were under the $12 the website quoted for airport to lodging rides. . The driver was very talkative and made fun of me for making two bookings. Every other word was “bloody”. He was quite entertaining. I’d definitely take that bus again.

We dropped the guys off first at an extremely dodgy looking hostel called The Asylum. It looked like an abandoned warehouse. The word Asylum was graffitied over a roll up door. You should have seen the look on their faces. Talk about budget accommodation. We almost wanted to go back for them. The bus driver assured us it was not actually a halfway house and that they’d be just fine.

My hostel looked nicer. There was an exceedingly friendly girl waiting there to check me in. No issue whatsoever. It was pretty late so I just claimed my bunk and put my stuff away real quick. I didn’t have a lock to lock my locker so I kept all my valuables on the bed that night. I didn’t really say hi to all my roomies hopefully they didn’t think I was being rude. They were all getting ready to go out.

They, of course came back at midnight and had absolutely zero worries about talking and banging around the room. Pro Tip: No one in a hostel gives a crap about being considerate towards others. This goes double if they’re in a large group. This on top of the girl below me talking to her parents for an hour on the phone. I wanted to punch something. I even had my earplugs in and my eye mask on. Didn’t make a difference. Finally got to sleep around 0030.

7 Jan 2014

I wanted to make a huge racket when I woke up, but I decided to be the bigger person and quietly got ready. I went off in search of a grocery store and a post office so I could get my tax ID. Google maps showed them right across the street from each other and not about two blocks from the hostel.

When I got to the location there was a department store instead. I was super confused until I realized the department store lead to the mall. The mall had the grocery store and post office in it. Weird.

So I got my tax ID without an issue with my 6-year-old, expired college ID. I decided to actually shop on a budget this time and have myself $50 to spend for the 7 day stay in cairns. I tracked everything I bought on my ipod as I shopped and I pretty much only bought things on sale. I went slightly over, due to an indulgent purchase of breath mints, but decided it was ok.

I went out to the balcony to eat and shortly thereafter was joined by the German chick from the bunk under mine. Her friends had left that night so she’s now alone in Cairns. We chatted about traveling and plans and whatnot. Then I went in to clean dishes. I was going to go exploriing but got sucked into my ipod and looking up stuff to do. Mostly stuff Karina, the German girl, mentioned.

It was about this time I began realizing public transport won’t get you anywhere interesting. After about two hours, I gave up and went down to the front desk. Pro Tip: Not only can you not get places by public transport, if you can find a way it’s usually more expensive than taking a tour anyway. So I left with pamphlets in hand about waterfalls, rainforests, and the reef. I was advised that I should cheap out on everything except the reef. Apparently the more expensive tours take you further out to less traveled reef, which entails higher levies from the government, hence the more expensiveness.

At that point I really did go exploring. I went down to the Esplanade, the pool by the beach. It was pretty packed but I managed to find myself a place to put my feet in. I didn’t feel like swimming and the water is only 1.5 meters deep so eh. I got hot pretty quickly and went to hide out under some nice trees. I was intending to look at my brochures but I took a little nap instead.

After I woke up, I wandered a bit and went in some tourist shops. Mainly I was looking at hats but ultimately decided they were too expensive and I’d just be diligent with the sunscreen. During my nap and wandering I decided I should just do the stuff I wanted to do and pay for it by not spending money on food and fancy lodging. I’m not sure I’ll ever be back so I should experience it now. So I went in and took up the exuberant hostels girl’s time for over an hour booking the fancy reef tour, a rainforest expedition for 3 nights, and an overnight waterfall adventure.

So with my plans all booked I headed up to the room. Karina was there so we chatted a bit about what I was doing. Then it was free dinner time so we went down and ate together. I think I officially have a friend.

I ended up falling asleep around ten with the hopes of getting up for Tai Chi.

8 Jan 2014

First, I forgot to mention that fact that I think I saw the worlds hairiest man at the Esplanade. He was fur from pretty much the nose down. He was wearing trunks but from what I saw of his back, belly, and legs I have no reason to believe the stuff under the trunks wasn’t hairy too. Very impressive

I didn’t get up quite early enough for Tai Chi, I got up at 7 and it started at 630. Whoops. Later If ound out it had been canceled anyway, so my physic powers were probably just helping me out.

I headed out to go geocaching. It took me all around. The first was by the mall, I didn’t find it. The second was in a kinda sketchy industrial area. I was concerned about being kicked out but no one saw me. It was stuck to a windmill. It looked like some sort of government issue ID sticker, but closer inspection revealed it was a magnet.

I walked along a grass sidewalk (it was actually a grass sidewalk. It has little ramps at the intersections so I don’t see how it could be anything else) in the outskirts to the next cache. I was trying to see non-touristy things, but managed to find the convention center. Oh well. I did see some bums, I was wondering where they’d been hiding. Next was a cache hidden in a fig tree that had been turned into a playground. After creeping around for the better part of an hour I gave up. Mostly because I felt creepy hanging around a playground staring at it intently.

That spit me out on the cruise line docks. They weren’t locked despite the lack of a ship so I walked along them until I got to a boardwalk and marina. There were neat folk stories posted on tree trunk and other trunks worth strategic holes drilled in them. If you looked through the holes you could see the area the folk story was talking about. After that there were tourist shops, which signaled my return to the Esplanade. I went there for a bit. And stayed a bit longer when I figured out there was free wifi. Pro Tip: The Esplanade is pretty cool. You can swim, do free exercise classes, and get free wifi. Probably all at the same time if you’re coordinated.

With nothing better to do I decided to do more caches. I went to one by a church and actually found it. Now I was in a still touristy, but slightly more, um, ethnic neighborhood. It was seedy and the Asians seemed to be quarantined there. A small amount if black people too. It’s sad that that always seems to be the case. The had some good shops, though. Then I headed to another back at the Esplanade. It turned out to be under a dock full of tourists so I decided it wasn’t a good idea. So 2 out of 5. Which probably isn’t bad considering how touristy the area is.

Then I was bored so I decided to hop on the internet and research the caches I couldn’t find. They were all I working order so I must just have been looking in the wrong places. I downloaded a few more and spend the next 15 minutes creeping. Again. This time it was at the workout area where all the muscle guys do push-ups and sit-ups. No luck. I vaguely looked for the others again while heading back for another pass at the fig tree. I really want that one cause it has a travel bug in it. Still nothing. I may try to hit it up early tomorrow when there are no children there.