Robert's Travels

Today was an early morning! Our flight from Sydney to Cairns, on Tigerair, was scheduled to depart at 7:15, and even though the flight was domestic we wanted to be at the airport 90 minutes ahead of the flight. This meant an early start! We woke up at 4:15, quickly showered, packed and checked out of the hotel; we were walking back to the Museum subway station stop just before 5:00. We were treated to a beautiful view of the Anzac memorial lit up and nobody in sight as we reached the Museum stop. We caught the 5:16 subway to the airport, and reached the terminal shortly after 5:30. The airport wasn’t very busy, so we were able to check in our bags and clear security in about 15 minutes, which gave us lots of time to grab breakfast. I had a bacon and egg McMuffin from McDonald’s, while Todd had a bagel and a donut from Krispy Kreme. Boarding went quickly, and our flight had an on time departure.

The flight to Cairns was uneventful; I spent most of the flight reading ‘Caliban’s War’ (the second novel in the Expanse series) while Todd napped. We landed in Cairns just before 10:30, picked up our bags without issue and stepped out of the terminal to a warm, humid and overcast morning. The Uber pickup point was in a dedicated area past the taxi stand, and it only took a few minutes for the Uber driver to reach us once we scheduled our pickup. The was a short, 5 minute drive to our hotel, the Holiday Inn Cairns Harbourside. We were able to check in early, and even got a waterfront view, which was a nice surprise. We spent a few minutes relaxing in the hotel room before we started walking from the hotel to the downtown. Unfortunately, about 30 seconds into our walk it started raining heavily, and after waiting a couple minutes under a tree without the rain letting up we retreated back to the hotel. We had a backup plan - the hotel had a shuttle which went downtown and we only had to wait about 10 minutes before we were on our way (in a much drier form of transport).

The shuttle dropped us off at the entrance to the night market in Cairns, which put us right in the middle of the downtown area. I had been looking for lunch options on the ride over, and we settled on a Thai place just steps from the night market entrance. Todd ordered a Massaman curry while I had their Pad Thai; both dishes were delicious. The rain had let up by this point, so we walked down to the waterfront to get a better view of the ocean. There was a pretty elaborate pool/mock beach right beside the waterfront that looked like some fun, but we hadn’t packed our bathing suits so decided to keep moving.

We walked several blocks north to reach the Pro Dive Cairns shop, our major destination for the day. We were booked onto a 3 day SCUBA liveabord that was departing early the next morning, and it was necessary to check in and make sure everything was in order. We had chosen Pro Dive Cairns based on a number of positive Google reviews, and the first impression of the store and the staff backed up the reviews I had read. We were checked in quickly, had a good overview of the schedule given to us, and then we were on our way without any issues. As we already had the mask, snorkel, fins and boots we didn’t need to get sized for any equipment, which made the check in process much simpler. We had no issues with the PADI Open Water referral paperwork that we got after completing our classroom and pool training sessions with Float N’ Flag in Burlington.

Once we were ready for our SCUBA trip, we decided to walk around downtown Cairns a bit to see what the city was all about. We walked a few blocks north to the Cairns railway station, in order to get a sense of where it was ahead of our trip to Kuranda. The station wasn’t anything special, but it was easy to find. Along the way we discovered a shopping mall where we picked up a few snacks for our time on the liveaboard. We then started walking back to the hotel. We passed by a cathedral that was hardly more than a building, but had a pleasant walk along the esplanade. We found some cockatoos playing in the trees lining the pathway which was nice. Our walk back was thankfully not interrupted by any rainstorms and we made it back to the hotel dry.

Once back at the hotel we had a bit of downtime. We had made it back to the hotel shortly before 15:00, and with nothing scheduled Todd decided to go for a swim. The hotel had a very nice outdoor pool that he enjoyed while I continued reading in the shade of the hotel patio. After about an hour in the pool we retired back to the hotel room, where Todd took a nap. I confirmed the details of the AirBnB we had booked once we returned from the SCUBA trip, and then did a bit of planning for our day trip touring around the parks outside Cairns. We left the hotel for dinner shortly before 18:00. On the recommendation of Google Maps we went to an Italian restaurant named Little Ricardo’s, that was known for both both pasta and pizza. We were both in the mood for pizza so it was an easy decision. We arrived just after a large, 15-person group had been seated, but we were able to place our order ahead of the group so our food came quickly. The pizza was delicious - we ordered a single family-sized pizza and just managed to finish it between the two of us. The meal didn’t take much over an hour, and when we were done we walked back to the hotel. We had an early evening - I booked a rental car for our trip to the rain forest once we returned, then went to bed early.