Postcard from Cairns – Part 1

This is part 1 of 2 part blog posts on Cairns.

I have a question for you. How do you rank your memories and say – “Well, this one was definitely the top one”? It’s getting extremely difficult for me to rank my top memories especially when all of them were around cute Australian animals and one around ice cream. To list them from our trip to Cairns (in no specific order) –

• Hugging a koala bear and getting family photo taken with the cuddly guy
• Feeding and petting kangaroos
• Hugging a huge smiling Maori Wrasse fish
• Taking a photo underwater with a huge Tortoise
• Eating three scoops of sumptuous New Zealand Naturals ice cream all by myself

I told you. It is difficult, probably impossible to rank these memories!

Cairns was freaking awesome when it came to the experiences we had. I remember when we landed in Cairns, it gave us such a beachy tropical vibe. We went there in spring and it was so much warmer as compared to Sydney & Melbourne. People were dressed in floaters and shorts and short dresses and beach hats. One the first day we walked along the Cairns esplanade during sunset. The sky, the infinity pool* overlooking the ocean, the ocean itself and the luxurious yachts harbored at the deck – everything looked so beautiful.

The coastal area is lined up with numerous restaurants serving cuisines from Australian to Greek to German to Italian. I remember we were at this Greek restaurant having our dinner of Spanakopita and we heard some plates breaking. We turned around to see that people were actually celebrating someone’s birthday by smashing plates. That was an interesting Greek tradition to be witnessed in Australia. Another night when we had just finished our dinner, we saw some spectacular firework display which went on for good 15-20 minutes. Everyone was outside enjoying the show.

Cairns, which is a small city in North Queensland, Australia is also a gateway to the famous Great Barrier Reef. There are numerous touring companies which take you to the Great Barrier Reef** and you can choose the kind of activity you want to do from scuba diving to snorkeling to boat rides on glass bottom boats. I did instructor led scuba diving. Swimming with colorful fishes, touching corals and other sea animals, having photos taken underwater with a huge tortoise and fish – this is one experience I will not forget in a long long time. Later Raga and I did instructor led snorkeling. I am so proud of Raga as he is scared of deep water but he still managed to keep his face underwater for some time. By the end of it, I could see his hand moving to touch the fishes and I realized that he actually enjoyed the whole thing.

Cairns also offers a lot of other adventure sports activities like sky diving, bungee jumping etc. I wanted to do Sky diving (Raga has already done it in US before), bought the package and went for it. But unfortunately the weather became bad just before my turn and they said we will have to come back later. Well, we only had a few days and having spent almost one whole day to get to the location and back, I felt it wasn’t worth wasting another day when there is no guarantee that the weather will be good the next time. So, that’s on hold for some time later. Maybe in Spain inspired by the movie ‘Zindagi Na Milegi Dubara’!

Foot Notes:

* The infinity pool is free for public if you wish to go enjoy the water. 🙂

** Don’t forget to take the sea sickness pills when you go to the Great Barrier Reef. Thanks to the shop owner from whom we bought the tickets for the Reef tour for suggesting it to us. There were people puking left, right and center. And once you are sea sick, your entire trip spoils. We were saved just by the pills.

Click here for part two of the blog post on Cairns ..