Cairns, city on the edge.

Day 19: Sunday, July 5th
Steps taken: 9,721

I was able to get a good eight maybe nine hours sleep, and was feeling refreshed from the long day before.  However, that didn't stop me from vegging the majority of the morning.  I showered, and cleaned up when I woke up, avoided some vomit in the hallway, had some granola bars, and did some gaming.  Many of the others did the skydive in the morning, and bungee & swings in the afternoon.  Those are the kinds of things unless they're included in an itinerary that I will not do.  I wished those that I saw in the lobby a wonderful time, and headed off for my own thrilling adventures for the day.

I was interested in snorkeling, rainforest walks, wake boarding, and waterfalls, but since most of those things would have taken a full day I walked to the Cairns Botanical Gardens instead.  First, I had lunch at the Ocean World Fish Market.  I had a piece of locally caught mackerel, and a butterfly prawn.  Good quality seafood.

The botanical gardens were pretty close to the fish market, and the hostel.  The first thing that I did there was do the red line walk.  Online they said it would take half an hour or so.  Reception said it would take three hours and the blue line four or five.  I still had time before dinner so I took the red line.  The hike up was arduous, but no worse than some of the mountains in Romania.  It took me about thirty minutes to get to the lookout close to where the red and blue lines meet.  I was followed by wild turkeys part of the way.  The view was nice, but a little overgrown.  From there you could see the airport, the ocean, a river, and parts of the town.  I hung out here 10-15 minutes reading, and walked down the path again.  I asked a woman if she wanted me to take a picture of her with her three kids so it wouldn't have to be just the kids in the photo.  She told me to do this walk at sunset for a better view of the town.  Unfortunately I didn't have the time for that.  Then a cute woman with long black hair in a ponytail jogging said hi to me, so I became a little more open, and said hello to some of the people I passed on the trail.  Funny how that works sometimes.  I was tempted to do the blue line walk, but decided to see as much of the gardens as possible before heading back instead.

The gardens themselves were cool.  There was a theatre there for music events, and a bunch of different sections.  The Pangaea evolution sections, and rainforest walks were my favorites.  This way I sort of got the rainforest experience.  I still really, really want to go to the Brazilian rainforests.  I pent two hours walking around before heading back to the hostel.  After the rainforest walk I walked along the path around the lakes, which brought me back to the main road.  Along the way, my major sighting was a crane along the river.

When I got back to the hostel I relaxed until 7 when we met in the lobby, and we took a shuttle into town for dinner.  We ate at a place called Rattle and Hum, which was emu themed.  I did not get an emu burger. (I don't think it was on the menu though.) I had a rack of ribs, and a cider.  Originally, we were told that any food that wasn't pizza would taken an hour and a half because of how busy it was.  Thankfully, it took half an hour.  The ribs were pretty good.  Not the best I've ever had, but still good.  Good enough to get my achoo syndrome going when I'm full.  At dinner I heard stories of what everyone else did during the day.  The skydive, bungee, and swing stories were awesome especially the one about Caitlin bungee-ing in a hot dog costume.  If I knew that was going to happen maybe I would have bungee'd.  Unfortunately, a few were not having such a good day.  Lazar was in pain from hitting his chest on the ladder of the Boomerang, and Sally was hospitalized for her spider bites.  She was going to be okay, but had to remain in Cairns, which was sad that she wouldn't get to finish the tour.

After dinner, we went to a bar called the Woolshed, which was ram themed.  It was all right.  I had a Somersby pear cider with a shot of Fireball whiskey.  Tasted like pear pie.  After enough mediocre music, and watching drunks dancing on top of tables I left to catch the bus back to the hostel with Michelle, Corinna, Maireke, and Lena.  Since the bus came once every hour on the 7 of the hour, and it was only 10:20 we had to wait another 47 minutes or so.  The bus stop was in front of an Asian & Australian marketplace so I wandered around.  Some decent deals on things, but nothing jumped out as a must have item or gifts for people.  I got some gelatto, which was a delicious mistake.  I got a scoop of cherry ripe on top of a scoop of Ferrero Rocher.  I felt fine after the first scoop, but after that my stomach was at max capacity.  I walked around the market until the bus came.  When the bus arrived, there was too many people so they had to make a second trip, which thankfully didn't take long.  We were back by 11:30 and I was asleep by midnight dreaming of the Outback.