Cairns

It took a while to get the proper pronunciation of this town. As has been pointed out to me in the past, several times, a sentence means the same thing even without the gratuitous inclusion of the F word. Similarly, the letters “I” and “R” in “Cairns” are gratuitous in their presence and the name is pronounced properly when you remove those letters from the character string altogether. Cans. That’s where we are.

The weather is really nice but very warm and very humid. Like being in a sauna. We kept waking up to 30+ degree temperatures and I’m not sure how humidity is measured because we never see it in Calgary. On our first day we toured the Great Barrier Reef. We were very jealous of everyone who was able to snorkel, scuba or just swim with the fishes. Since both Karla and I have earned the swimming badge level of “Ballast”, we regretfully had to forego the personal touch and watch the reef and fishies from the glass bottom bilge in the semi-submersible sub. Spectacular as this was, pictures taken through the filter of an inch of bulletproof submarine grade glass came out as expected – about as clear and colorful as the first live pictures of the moon.

One of many fish. This one gave me the finnger as he passed.

Would you believe in real life these fish are a bright blue?

Karla manning the directions booth. Note actual people in the background having fun

Our second day saw us take a hiatus from any organized tours and we just explored Cans by taking a City bus to the core and walking through shops and points of interest. There is an unfortunate theme we have noticed in most of the cities we have visited which is a high number of boarded-up businesses, largely we are told, a result of COVID shutdowns; the sustained travel restrictions on locals and of course of International visitors. Those root causes have all but vanished over the past six months or so and local travelers and travelers from abroad are picking up the pace but not before the interruption took a pretty big toll on smaller businesses.

Third day in Cans – we went on another organized trip to Kuranda. This is a small community in the rainforest with much of the tour being run by the Djabugay Aboriginal peoples. There’s a 7.5 km granola (spelling from Karla) ride, lessons on spear throwing and boomerang throwing, Aboriginal dance ceremony, big smorg meal, tons of shops (maybe that part feels a little like Banff), a ride on a Korean-war vintage amphibious “Duck boat” and an old-school narrow gage rail ride back down the mountain. Great full day out.

Saw a bunch of these spiders, about 8" across. They look pretty but maybe not so much if it was on your shoulder.

You can never have too many koalas. This one in Kuranda. Koalas sleep 21 hours a day. I want that job.