Cairns part 2

Well here it is Friday and still no internet where I am living... so I've made the trek to the library in Cairns to book some stuff and give an update. There is a daily data limit of 100mb here so I will post words first then see if I have enough data to add some pictures.

The bus system along the coast is quite good. I took a bus north to Palm Cove last week stopping at a couple of beaches along the way. There were lots of people swimming at the beaches in spite of the warnings about crocs and jelly fish.

Cairns has an amazing Botanic gardens that I have spent a couple of days exploring. Mount Whitfield Conservation park is adjacent to it - a long day hike yielded some nice views of the area surrounding Cairns.

One of the lakes at the botanic gardens:

Views from Mt Whitfield:

I have booked a flight to Darwin on the 21st of August. Prior to that however, I want to dive the reef and have reserved a car rental for the week of August 7-14 to go to Daintree north of here and to visit Cloudy (who I met at Fat Cats in Auckland) at the cattle ranch (they call it a cattle station here) she works at. It's in the outback about 5 hours south of Cairns. I'm really looking forward to seeing her and the place she so loves. I've been postponing the reef dive for a few reasons but will probably go ahead with it this upcoming week. The initial plan was to get certified but I think I'll just go for an introductory dive first, maybe get certified in SE Asia where it's cheap.

Much to my dismay, I have yet to see a kangaroo! Have seen more than my fair share of cockroaches however, a 2 inch long one crawled out of the couch onto me last night - creeps me out still to think about it. Andrew does what he can to control them but living in the tropics they pretty much are a fact of life.  There was also a massive spiders nest I found at the botanic gardens - dozens of spiders from tiny to 1-2 inches in length - yuck!