Cairns

Cairns (pronounced CANS as in 2 CANS, or toucan, Cantaloupe Island), is humid, warm, and not too crowded. It can rain like crazy around here. It rained so much last week that they don't have the pharmacist's favorite motion sickness medicine in stock--the roads a little south of here are still closed.

Did you know that the running time of the epic movie, Australia, is 2:45? The pilot crew announced the flight time of 2:40. They knew what they were doing--to us it appeared that something was wrong, but really they were just fast forwarding so they could finish the movie. Nicole Kidman was finally reunited with the Aboriginal boy during our final approach.

Nice little hotel. Checked in, walked around the town, stopped by the pier to talk to our scuba diving company. Then, without a nap, dinner.

What should we eat? We went out for a nice meal. Ordered the game platter served with deep fried yams, bok choy, and sweet potato au gratin. What would they serve on a Australian game platter?



















Deep fried crocodile was not our favorite, but the Kangaroo fillet was really tasty and tender. The emu was lean with excellent texture.










The above post written by Dave while I was off trying to discover what bird was making such a raucous sound. Turns out that it was hundreds of incredibly huge bats flying into a banyan-looking tree (still need to research what type of tree it is!). They were quite literally larger than a large crow. By the time I came back to find Dave so he could appreciate the madness, most were already hanging upside down in the tree. Photos tomorrow morning.

We're off to dive today.