Aussieland Day Five: Cairns

When we woke up in the morning we took our rental car back to the airport and hopped the first flight to Cairns. We boarded an A320 that had no first class or business class, just rows and rows of coach! I had never seen anything like it!

It was a 3 hour flight and we admittedly slept most of the way there. When we landed we felt as though we had definitely arrived in a magical, tropical location. The air was humid and we were surrounded by lush rainforest. The airport was small and only 10 minutes from town. We took a taxi to our hotel and the people behind the front desk showed us that everything in and around town was less than a 15 minute walk away.

We walked down the boardwalk and had pizza at a local restaurant. The boardwalk was high above the beach and there were ladders every so often to get down to the beach below. However, a local informed us that the beach if off limits due to crocodiles and to go hang out at the lagoon instead. I've seen beaches closed down due to jellyfish and a shark sighting but never crocodiles!

What Cairns lacks in beaches, it more than makes up for with the Esplanade Lagoon! It's a giant, shallow, warm, salt water pool that is right on the boardwalk and is open to everyone for free. You can lay on grass or sand and there are plenty of trees for escapes from the ozone free sun.

As the sun started to go down, we headed back to our hotel, changed and headed back out for a night on this little town. I had been warned about bats but I was still unprepared for just how many bats and how loud they would be!

There's a casino nearby if that's your kind of thing but we spent our evenings at the Night Market. It is a partially outdoor market filled with vendors for everything you could imagine. If you ever wondered where you could get every souvenir imaginable, dinner, a massage and dessert for very little money- this is the place! We spent every evening we had in Cairns exploring this market, it was so much fun!