Cairns

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Cairns - Say Cans

We arrived on time this morning which was good because the announced sailaway time is an hour earlier than the published time. Unfortunately, they blamed the half-hour delay disembarking the ship on first Australian officials not arriving to clear the ship and then on technical problems setting up the gangway. We were fine but there were a bunch of people trying to make a 10:30am pickup by Skyrail and it had to be tight for them if they weren't late. We had a leisurely time making our 11:40am pickup at Pullman Cairns International which was about a 5 minute walk away. A small bus picked us up along with maybe a half dozen others all from the ship. Oceania charged $209 pp for this equivalent excursion and we paid Skyrail directly $256.50AUD for the 2 of us. We upgraded to the Diamond View with the glass floor which added to the experience. But, the main reason was the regular cars sat 6 and they would only put 4 in the glass floored cars. We saw they were only putting mostly 2 people in every car in practice. So, we got off to a late start by about 15 minutes because some of the people our shuttle bus driver had to pickup were not where they were supposed to be so we got to make 2 full loops around central Cairns. It was a very quiet place on a late Saturday morning/early Saturday afternoon. I saw big bats hanging in trees on the way out of town before we hit the sugar cane fields. We boarded the Skyrail cable tramway 15 to 20 minutes late but since it was their fault for driving around not wanting to leave anyone behind they just issued us our tickets without a word. We had until 3:30 before we had to catch the train back from Kuranda so basically it meant we had to skip lunch. It was fine. Kuranda is an ancient center of rainforest Aboriginals and today mostly a tourist attraction. On arrival, we took the complimentary shuttle to the farthest point uphill in town and walked back through to the train station. We enjoyed the 7.5km cable car ride and with getting off and walking the 2 different stops we took the full suggested 1.5 hours to make it from Smithfield Station to Kuranda. We saw 3 colors of butterflies, a turtle and an Australian brush-turkey. There were signs up at one of the stations warning about aggressive cassowaries and we hoped to spot one but no luck. It was a hot sunny day which I guess is a rare experience when visiting a rainforest! We got assigned backward facing seats so the train trip could have been better. It was interesting though with a couple of hairpin turns and I think 15 tunnels. They had us off the train at Freshwater Station to a shuttle bus back. We must have told them we were actually here on the cruise ship when we booked because instead of returning us to our pickup hotel they moved us to a big chartered bus and after dropping a half dozen people at hotels they dropped most of us off at the Cairns cruise terminal. But, most interesting was the thousands of fruit bats hanging in the trees along Abbott St. centered around the library. I am certain that we drove up and down the same route this morning and either the bats weren't there then which seems unlikely or the driver just didn't point them out and we didn't notice them. We walked back. It was incredible. The driver said at dusk they would fly across the river to the fruit orchards to feed. He and the sign in front of the library described a black cloud of bats but we never saw more than a flew hundred in a bunch. That was enough. They were about the size of a Pekingese. It was amazing and more than a little creepy! Enduring memory of Cairns will be the silhouettes of giant bats flying across the river towards a big full moon at dusk. Sorry no photos. I haven't mentioned that Clay's new Panasonic Lumix though priced similarly was a poor substitute for the Olympus that he dropped in Cambridge Bay.

We got back to the ship an hour before all aboard right around sunset. We had a quick dinner in Terrace. I asked Clay if he didn't eat sushi every night aboard Marina and he said yes. I asked him why he wasn't having it on Sirena and he said because they don't have it! Of course, they have it! I don't know how he's been missing it. It is across the aisle from the grill and I guess that is as far as he's gotten every night at Terrace. We'll see how it goes from here.

Tomorrow is a sea day.. Fingers crossed for more calm Coral Sea!

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