Australia part two...Cairns.
Oct. 30th, 2004 09:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
valis2I flew into Cairns early the next day, and had a few hours before my friends would arrive (they had a later flight), so I went to my hotel to check in.
The hotel was a bit disappointing, but not overly so, because it was so economical. It had a long bar attached to the key---yes, an actual key, not a swipecard. Only once in the last seven years have I stayed in a hotel with a key, and that was in the middle of nowhere. And I've stayed in a lot of hotels. I digress, though. The long plastic bar had to be inserted into a cradle next to the main light switch inside the room in order to turn the electricity on.
Yes. You read that correctly. There was no power to the room while the cradle remained empty. Each night I would return to the room and it would be dark, hot, and humid. Nice for energy conservation...but stuffy nonetheless. The room was basic, and adequate in all ways except for the prison shower, which had no curtain and was simply a cube of tile with one half of one wall open.
As soon as I walked into Cairns proper I I began to understand the shape of the city.
Cairns is one of the larger cities in the Northeast, and the beginning (or end?) of the backpacker trail along the east coast of Australia. It is edged by a mud flat. Not a beach...just an expanse of mud and straggly plants and seagulls. There is a beautiful public swimming "lagoon" right on the edge of the shore.
The downtown blocks are taken up by hotels, hostels, restaurants, currency exchanges, opal shops, and stores. It was a little disappointing, because I had expected something a little different, something a little hipper, or upscale. Most of it was tuned either to the average tourist or to backpackers.
We found a lovely restaurant right on the mudflat called "the Raw Prawn" and it was terrific. We went back a few times. Their barramundi with avocado is fabulous. Their creme brulee is out of this world. Love love love. We did a lot of walking and looking at stores and had a decent time. I was surprised that the one sushi restaurant that we ate at was only good, not great, considering the vast amount of Japanese tourists that travel to Australia.
Highlights:
Cairns Night Zoo. We saw wallabies, white kangaroos, crocodiles, snakes and lizards, more crocodiles, sulphur-crested cockatoos, still more crocodiles, an owl, a toad, and...lots of immature crocodiles. Did I mention the plethora of crocodiles? When we left the reptile house there was a rainbow python coiled contentedly on the grass in front of the house. Turns out it was not an escapee, either. There were a couple interesting moments. At one point we were watching one of the guides, who was standing in an enclosure with a twenty-five foot crocodile. The crocodile, of course, was doing absolutely nothing, in the manner of crocodiles. She kept nattering on about how they hunt and whatnot until she tossed a chicken head at the crocodile very quickly. No one was expecting this. It was quite a surprise because the crocodile suddenly moved in a most rapid manner and snapped his jaws. It was as if a hundred million years of perfect evolutionary design came to life. It was an intense, primal moment. Anther moment was a bit where we went to feed the kangaroos around a campfire. When we walked up they were all lying on their sides on the ground, all fanned out in concentric circles from the main fire. It was quite cute, even though I am usually partially immune to such things. There was an Attention Whore in the group, who kept grabbing children and picking them up to show them things close up---mind you, they were not her children---and talking loudly. In the beginning of the tour we sat down for a buffett dinner and she was incensed that the animals did not eat at the tables with us. Later on when we fed the kangaroos she grabbed an entire plateful of the bread and apportioned it out in very tiny pieces so that she had ten kangaroos around her for the entire time we were in the kangaroo enclosure. Then later the guide laughed because a lady mentioned that she had a pair of alligator skin boots, and the Attention Whore said quite loudly "That's disgusting." Keep in mind that she ate meat during the meal and had a leather purse. At the very end you could pet a very docile wombat that was being held by one of the guides, and of course AW kept saying in this very breathy and "awww" voice how wonderful the animal was and generally getting in the way. There were many Japanese individuals with us on the tour, and two girls wanted to have their picture taken with the wombat, and so they gave their camera to their friend. As he goes to take the picture the AW gets in the way and fixes one girl's hair and moves the other girl's bra strap. I am not making this up. There was another lady who was quite rude; she came on the tour alone and, when my friends went to take a picture of their six-year-old son with a koala (a guide was purposely holding the koala very low to the ground so that the picture could be taken) she steps right in front of him. She had asked someone else to take a picture of her and had forgotten to take the lens cap off, so we all stood there and waited (the guide was in pain from holding the heavy koala so low) while she got herself together, but it took forever. The rest of the group had left. Finally my friend said, "Excuse me, we're ready to take the picture NOW." She got out of the way. Anyway, it was interesting to be at a zoo at night, and we danced and sang "Waltzing Matilda". Had a good time!
Kuranda SkyRail. Amazing skyrail that takes you over a small portion of the beautiful rainforest. It was breathtaking.
Cairns Food & Wine Tour. Now this was the highlight of Cairns. We booked it on a whim, and it turned out to be some of the most fun we had on the trip. We went to eight different stops:
Cairns had amazing banyan trees and lots of birds...lorikeets, cockatoos, etc. There are two fruit trees that are filled with bats during the day and birds at night that none of the locals will park their cars underneath. There is a farmers' market on Sundays, and there was one booth where a gentleman was selling...Kleenex. Really.
There was also a rainforest dome in the hotel we stayed in, and the wildlife was quite lovely. There was a giant black cockatoo named Zorro that took a shine to us and followed us around quite a bit. We also went to a bird exhibit and the birds actually fly up to you and land on your shoulder (or your head). Very cool birds, including red parrots, macaws, and even a cassawary, a bird that is related to the dinosaurs and is quite large and flightless, almost the size of an emu.
They were burning the sugar cane in the fields one evening and it was a haunting sight. Our tour guide almost wet his pants. Apparently they're not allowed to do that anymore. I mean burning the fields, not incontinence.
We also went to the Tjapukai (jab-a-guy) center. The Tjapukai are a tribe of aboriginees that have put together a tourist attraction that involves dressing in traditional clothes, dancing traditional dances, giving presentations on throwing boomerangs/spears, medicines/food, and didgeridoo playing, and hosting a buffet with papadam and miso soup. Oh, the last one isn't really traditional. The presentations were interesting, but I would really have to compare their tribe to the Great Basin Native Americans. They weren't as developed as their neighbors the Maori in New Zealand. I'm not saying this is good or bad, just that it wasn't as fascinating as the Polynesian-based cultures seem to be, at least to me. I did purchase a book of folk tales, though, so I hope to gain a little more insight. I enjoyed the presentation on food and medicine. Anyway, the last thing we did at their center was watch a short film about their creation myths. The six-year-old could have written a more compelling and cohesive presentation than what we witnessed. At one point the announcer mentions that there were two brothers and one wanted "to eat his brother's brains out". So the brother says "I want to eat your brains out" to the other brother. They fight. The brother who is defending his brains in vain presumably dies and turns into a white dove and ascends to a better film (I hope). The other brother eventually gets part of his leg bitten off by a crocodile, and both he and the crocodile turn into a rushing whirling mass of water. And then on to the next strangely underdeveloped tale, with no visible or audible segue. At one point they were discussing the Wet and the Dry (the two seasons in Australia) and they began recounting beliefs about Wet creatures and Dry creatures, which was extremely interesting. Then the man onstage says "I am a Dry man. I must marry a Dry woman." The woman onstage says "I am a Wet woman. I must marry a Wet man." I'm all ready for the Romeo and Juliet subplot to begin when they suddenly and ubruptly begin talking about something completely different. Eventually we are informed that there is a little bit of the brother's leg in all of us, and I must mention here that I am not reassured by this knowledge, given that he has a predilection for eating brains.
I overheard a tour guide telling a new tour guide a story about a "bull koala" attacking a German tourist. When the koala was done the tourist needed 114 stitches.
If I had the trip to do over again, I would spend less time in Cairns. Instead of six days I would have kept it to two or so. Still, it was interesting.
The hotel was a bit disappointing, but not overly so, because it was so economical. It had a long bar attached to the key---yes, an actual key, not a swipecard. Only once in the last seven years have I stayed in a hotel with a key, and that was in the middle of nowhere. And I've stayed in a lot of hotels. I digress, though. The long plastic bar had to be inserted into a cradle next to the main light switch inside the room in order to turn the electricity on.
Yes. You read that correctly. There was no power to the room while the cradle remained empty. Each night I would return to the room and it would be dark, hot, and humid. Nice for energy conservation...but stuffy nonetheless. The room was basic, and adequate in all ways except for the prison shower, which had no curtain and was simply a cube of tile with one half of one wall open.
As soon as I walked into Cairns proper I I began to understand the shape of the city.
Cairns is one of the larger cities in the Northeast, and the beginning (or end?) of the backpacker trail along the east coast of Australia. It is edged by a mud flat. Not a beach...just an expanse of mud and straggly plants and seagulls. There is a beautiful public swimming "lagoon" right on the edge of the shore.
The downtown blocks are taken up by hotels, hostels, restaurants, currency exchanges, opal shops, and stores. It was a little disappointing, because I had expected something a little different, something a little hipper, or upscale. Most of it was tuned either to the average tourist or to backpackers.
We found a lovely restaurant right on the mudflat called "the Raw Prawn" and it was terrific. We went back a few times. Their barramundi with avocado is fabulous. Their creme brulee is out of this world. Love love love. We did a lot of walking and looking at stores and had a decent time. I was surprised that the one sushi restaurant that we ate at was only good, not great, considering the vast amount of Japanese tourists that travel to Australia.
Highlights:
Cairns Night Zoo. We saw wallabies, white kangaroos, crocodiles, snakes and lizards, more crocodiles, sulphur-crested cockatoos, still more crocodiles, an owl, a toad, and...lots of immature crocodiles. Did I mention the plethora of crocodiles? When we left the reptile house there was a rainbow python coiled contentedly on the grass in front of the house. Turns out it was not an escapee, either. There were a couple interesting moments. At one point we were watching one of the guides, who was standing in an enclosure with a twenty-five foot crocodile. The crocodile, of course, was doing absolutely nothing, in the manner of crocodiles. She kept nattering on about how they hunt and whatnot until she tossed a chicken head at the crocodile very quickly. No one was expecting this. It was quite a surprise because the crocodile suddenly moved in a most rapid manner and snapped his jaws. It was as if a hundred million years of perfect evolutionary design came to life. It was an intense, primal moment. Anther moment was a bit where we went to feed the kangaroos around a campfire. When we walked up they were all lying on their sides on the ground, all fanned out in concentric circles from the main fire. It was quite cute, even though I am usually partially immune to such things. There was an Attention Whore in the group, who kept grabbing children and picking them up to show them things close up---mind you, they were not her children---and talking loudly. In the beginning of the tour we sat down for a buffett dinner and she was incensed that the animals did not eat at the tables with us. Later on when we fed the kangaroos she grabbed an entire plateful of the bread and apportioned it out in very tiny pieces so that she had ten kangaroos around her for the entire time we were in the kangaroo enclosure. Then later the guide laughed because a lady mentioned that she had a pair of alligator skin boots, and the Attention Whore said quite loudly "That's disgusting." Keep in mind that she ate meat during the meal and had a leather purse. At the very end you could pet a very docile wombat that was being held by one of the guides, and of course AW kept saying in this very breathy and "awww" voice how wonderful the animal was and generally getting in the way. There were many Japanese individuals with us on the tour, and two girls wanted to have their picture taken with the wombat, and so they gave their camera to their friend. As he goes to take the picture the AW gets in the way and fixes one girl's hair and moves the other girl's bra strap. I am not making this up. There was another lady who was quite rude; she came on the tour alone and, when my friends went to take a picture of their six-year-old son with a koala (a guide was purposely holding the koala very low to the ground so that the picture could be taken) she steps right in front of him. She had asked someone else to take a picture of her and had forgotten to take the lens cap off, so we all stood there and waited (the guide was in pain from holding the heavy koala so low) while she got herself together, but it took forever. The rest of the group had left. Finally my friend said, "Excuse me, we're ready to take the picture NOW." She got out of the way. Anyway, it was interesting to be at a zoo at night, and we danced and sang "Waltzing Matilda". Had a good time!
Kuranda SkyRail. Amazing skyrail that takes you over a small portion of the beautiful rainforest. It was breathtaking.
Cairns Food & Wine Tour. Now this was the highlight of Cairns. We booked it on a whim, and it turned out to be some of the most fun we had on the trip. We went to eight different stops:
- Macadamia nut plantation. The trees were interesting. They've developed new trees that can grow closer together now so the farmer will eventually replant the entire plantation.
- Coffee plantation. The coffee bean is inside a little grape-sized fruit and is quite sweet.
- Mareeba farmstead. A farmer had planted every kind of fruit he could think of, and we sampled a few that were in season from his trees/bushes.
- Rock wallabies. In the middle of nowhere lives a guy named Jack. He likes it there. There are a lot of big rocks. Rock wallabies live there. You can feed them. I wasn't interested in feeding them but I did go back a little farther and found a tiny beautiful waterfall.
- Lunch. Exotic fruits like canistell (yolkfruit), which is like a dessert avocado, star apples, passion fruit, kiwi (okay, not so exotic but still tasty) and a couple others whose names I cannot recall were part of lunch, as well as a tasty barramundi.
- Overlook. Side of the mountain, look across to tiny Green Island or whatever the hell it was called. A sundial was there from the fifties.
- Liqueur. HEAVENLY liqueurs from Mt Uncle Distillery. They had a liqueur made from the ladyfinger banana, which is smaller and sweeter, and it was absolutely amazing. Plus lime and lemon liqueurs. They also had a coffee liqueur. And a Davidson Plum liqueur. The Davidson Plum is a fruit that grows in the rainforest and is picked by hand from the rainforest alone. This liqueur is $90 a bottle and is worth every penny. It is the most amazing purplish color and it tastes astonishing.
- Wine. Lychee wine, etc., and two different ports that were spectacular.
- Tropical fruit ice cream. Fabulous. I had a scoop of the black zapote/puddingfruit and it was delicious. Not overpowering. Lovely.
Cairns had amazing banyan trees and lots of birds...lorikeets, cockatoos, etc. There are two fruit trees that are filled with bats during the day and birds at night that none of the locals will park their cars underneath. There is a farmers' market on Sundays, and there was one booth where a gentleman was selling...Kleenex. Really.
There was also a rainforest dome in the hotel we stayed in, and the wildlife was quite lovely. There was a giant black cockatoo named Zorro that took a shine to us and followed us around quite a bit. We also went to a bird exhibit and the birds actually fly up to you and land on your shoulder (or your head). Very cool birds, including red parrots, macaws, and even a cassawary, a bird that is related to the dinosaurs and is quite large and flightless, almost the size of an emu.
They were burning the sugar cane in the fields one evening and it was a haunting sight. Our tour guide almost wet his pants. Apparently they're not allowed to do that anymore. I mean burning the fields, not incontinence.
We also went to the Tjapukai (jab-a-guy) center. The Tjapukai are a tribe of aboriginees that have put together a tourist attraction that involves dressing in traditional clothes, dancing traditional dances, giving presentations on throwing boomerangs/spears, medicines/food, and didgeridoo playing, and hosting a buffet with papadam and miso soup. Oh, the last one isn't really traditional. The presentations were interesting, but I would really have to compare their tribe to the Great Basin Native Americans. They weren't as developed as their neighbors the Maori in New Zealand. I'm not saying this is good or bad, just that it wasn't as fascinating as the Polynesian-based cultures seem to be, at least to me. I did purchase a book of folk tales, though, so I hope to gain a little more insight. I enjoyed the presentation on food and medicine. Anyway, the last thing we did at their center was watch a short film about their creation myths. The six-year-old could have written a more compelling and cohesive presentation than what we witnessed. At one point the announcer mentions that there were two brothers and one wanted "to eat his brother's brains out". So the brother says "I want to eat your brains out" to the other brother. They fight. The brother who is defending his brains in vain presumably dies and turns into a white dove and ascends to a better film (I hope). The other brother eventually gets part of his leg bitten off by a crocodile, and both he and the crocodile turn into a rushing whirling mass of water. And then on to the next strangely underdeveloped tale, with no visible or audible segue. At one point they were discussing the Wet and the Dry (the two seasons in Australia) and they began recounting beliefs about Wet creatures and Dry creatures, which was extremely interesting. Then the man onstage says "I am a Dry man. I must marry a Dry woman." The woman onstage says "I am a Wet woman. I must marry a Wet man." I'm all ready for the Romeo and Juliet subplot to begin when they suddenly and ubruptly begin talking about something completely different. Eventually we are informed that there is a little bit of the brother's leg in all of us, and I must mention here that I am not reassured by this knowledge, given that he has a predilection for eating brains.
I overheard a tour guide telling a new tour guide a story about a "bull koala" attacking a German tourist. When the koala was done the tourist needed 114 stitches.
If I had the trip to do over again, I would spend less time in Cairns. Instead of six days I would have kept it to two or so. Still, it was interesting.