Day 65: 20231127 Monday, November 27, 2023- Back to Cairns (pronounced caans)
We were under the gun to get our checked bags outside our door by 6am and then head down for breakfast. The Hyatt Regency breakfast buffet is a lot like going through the Horizon Court Buffet on the ship, but at $42 per person, this highlights what a great deal cruising is. When you factor the $499/night base fare for the room at the Sydney Hyatt, a cruise is an even better deal.
Traveling with a tour can have its advantages and disadvantages. The main advantage is having all the itinerary details sorted by the tour operator. Another is the opportunity to be a bit spoiled. This tour has hired a luggage handler for the Sydney and Cairns hotel transfers so all we have to do is put our bags outside our door at the appointed times, and they end up on the tour coach or storage. No dragging heavy suitcases up and down hotel hallways and elevators. But the main disadvantage is there’s always a potential for screw ups. This morning we headed down to the Lower Ground level as instructed and when we stepped out of the elevator a huge door to the right of the elevator banks was propped open. Naturally, we went through it and found ourselves at the underground loading dock for the hotel. We thought it was a bit strange that they would load us on the rear loading dock, but then again, the main entrance driveway was such a tight clearance we could barely negotiate it with our rental car, so loading a bus there was out of the question. However, we didn’t see anyone else around, so we dashed back to the lobby to see if anyone was there, but nobody from our tour was standing around. We went back downstairs and eventually found a back exit after asking a very puzzled hotel employee. There was the bus, and since we were the last to climb aboard, we got the obligatory “Those Guys” cheer.
The rest of the trip to the airport was unremarkable, and although we had fretted endlessly over the weight of our bags, the luggage handlers swept them away and all we had to do was pick up the baggage claim stickers off the handles of our bags before we headed off to security with our boarding passes and carry on luggage.
The instructions were quite harsh about total carry on weight being 8kg or 15#, which is a ridiculously low amount. Our roller carry on bags probably weigh 3kg completely empty. To get them to 15#, they were practically empty on one side and could only hold one change of clothes and a toothbrush bag. Everything else was crammed into our backpack “personal item”. We did have to take off shoes, empty pockets and remove belts to go through security before getting to the gates but for domestic Australian flights, there are no restrictions on liquids, so you could bring a 6 pack of beer in your carry on luggage if you wished. They never weighed or asked to weigh our carry ons so Ben ended taking only his camera bag out of the back pack and stuffing the back pack into the roll on carry on. That was a lot easier to carry around.
The Qantas (Queensland And Northern Territory Air Service) 737-800 was snug in economy class but we could fit our roll on bags into the overhead bins. We were packed like sardines. Fortunately the flight was just 3 hours, and there was a meal service with a chicken pastry and 250mL soda can. The chicken pastry was chicken with a mild curry gravy in a pastry wrap. It was piping hot and pretty tasty. During the flight, we also had to turn our clocks back an hour.
After reclaiming our baggage and having the porter service cart it all to the bus, there was some mix up on the bus, which had a Carnival Cruise lines sign in the window, not a Princess excursion sign. It took a while for Ivy to get it sorted out, but our luggage and then ourselves were loaded onto the bus and driven to the Kuranda Village. We were dropped off there and would later be picked up by the coach on the other side of the mountains in Smithfield. We were on our own to find lunch in Kuranda Village. There were a couple of markets there but most of the stalls were closed on Mondays. We eventually found a Vietnamese restaurant where we had Banh mi sandwiches for lunch. They were tasty and rolls were just the right amount of crunchy and fresh. Another couple was seated and we couldn’t help but notice their Princess medallions and tour group stickers. They were there off the Coral Princess which was docked at Cairns, and were scheduled for a scenic rail ride at 3pm. Their itinerary was taking them from Sydney to Hobart, Cairns, Brisbane and then back to Sydney. They were originally from the Sacramento area and had moved to Nevada in retirement.
After lunch, we walked through the Kuranda village past a lot of tourist shops to the Skyrail station. The Skyrail is a gondola that takes you up through the rainforest canopy to the top of the ridge, and then back down the back side from Kuranda Village to Smithfield. If you don’t get off at the two view points, it takes about 45 minutes to go from start to finish.
The first view point is of Barron Falls, which can slow to just a trickle during dry season but turn into quite the torrent during monsoon. The seasons are just transitioning. It had rained earlier in the day, and earlier in the week so it was a decent creek when we viewed it.
The second stop, Red Peak, had some skywalks with informative displays on the wildlife and vegetation of the rain forest similar to the rainforest skywalk at Mt. Tamborine in Brisbane. Here we did learn that Australia’s rainforests are the oldest in the world- even older than the Amazon. This is presumably because it has remained relatively in place while the rest of the supercontinent of Gondwalla broke up and drifted across the globe to form the present day continents.
As the gondolas descended down the backside of the mountain, a curious water feature appeared near the base of the Skyrail. It looked like an oval racing track but was a circular lake with what appeared to be jumps and ramps, and we could see something moving very quickly in circles around the track. As we got closer, we could see it was a place where overhead tow lines go around the circuit so that riders on skis, wake boards and even hydrofoils can go around the track and do tricks and jumps as they pleased. That was the first time we had seen a water attraction like that.
The drive from Smithfield to Cairns was a short 20 minutes. We got a bit of a driving tour and we could see the Carnival Legend and Coral Princess moored stern to stern on the cruise ship pier. We arrived about 5:30pm, so the ships were probably both preparing to depart. We got checked into our room in the Pullman Cairns International hotel, which was pretty fancy and on the same level as the Hyatt Regency. We then did a short walking tour of the CBD with an orientation to restaurants and other services of interest, as well as a preview of how we were going to be walking to get to the catamaran which will take us to the Great Barrier Reef.
We were advised it will take about 2 hours to get to the floating dock site on the Great Barrier Reef where we will have lunch, and will have time to do snorkeling or other activities.
Janet and I walked back to the Night Market and had Beef Noodle soup for dinner from a vendor called Noodle Party. They were huge bowls with plenty of beef and noodles. These weren’t hand pulled noodles, but still tasted good and were quite filling.
It was a pleasant walk back to the hotel as the temperatures had dropped into mid 70’s. During the day it had been around 80˚F with 60% humidity.
