Day Nine

We get up in time to get on the beach by 5:30 am. We take another walk, Miriam snaps a few photos, and we walk back in time for flat whites and (for me) another streusel.

Then we clean, pack and queue up for the bus. The bus is chock full of dragonboaters who have lots of luggage. The luggage all needs to be packed under the bus. The driver stands about 5 foot three, is portly, and is wanting to load all the luggage himself. The day is hot, the driver is disheveled and perspiring, and after 20 minutes only about a third of the luggage is loaded. It is already apparent that all the luggage may not fit.

I see someone put their luggage directly into the baggage compartment themselves. Lightning does not strike them dead. I start helping to load, and incidentally load all Miriam’s and my luggage while there is still room. We finally depart for the Brisbane airport. The driver, still perspiring heavily, picks up the microphone, thanks us all for coming to Caloundra, and requests that, if we come again, we bring less luggage.

The Brisbane airport is awash in dragonboaters and their traveling companions. Huge queues snake through the lobby, going to unknown destinations. After several false starts we are able to get boarding passes, check our luggage, and go in search of food. We have little time and the food queues are impressive. Miriam instinctively moves to the longest and slowest moving. After a while I convince her that some food is much better than food you want but don’t get to each. We order from an Asian counter with no line; it is delivered quickly and quite edible.

We munch and run to the plane. We don’t have seats together but we both have aisles. The flight only takes a couple of hours and is uneventful.

We all arrive in Cairns. The City’s name s pronounced something like “Canes” because the “r” is silent.

Actually, we don’t all arrive. My large bag with most of my travel gear decides to stay in Brisbane and party with other tardy luggage. The kindly but overwhelmed lady at the lost baggage counter says it will probably be the next day before they can get my bag to Cairns, because the tardy luggage party in Brisbane is huge, and the next flight to Cairns is already full of luggage that is tardier than mine.

We get to the hotel about 6:30 pm. We are going to the Great Barrier Reef at 8:15 am the next morning. All the conventional, accessible stores are closed at 6:30 pm, and don’t open by 8:15 in the morning. I need swimming gear, so we ask at the desk and are directed to the “night market” on the Esplanade in central Cairns.

The hotel has a shuttle that leaves every hour. We wait for the shuttle. It arrives on time, but we are too polite and end up missing the shuttle because some people who started waiting after us are not so polite. However, the shuttle comes right back. It takes us to downtown Cairns right near the water. The drop off point is a small park at the end of several blocks of well-lit niche stores. It’s raining lightly but warm, and the area is very pleasant. We find a “Billabong” surf store and a very nice young man helps me pick trunks and a “rashy.” A rashy is a stretchy shirt with UV protection that can be swum in; it keeps you from getting a rash when you lay on your surfboard. I choose basic black, and look rather sheik if you ignore the unsightly bulges in the stretchy top, which are no doubt due to poor Australian tailoring.

The very nice young man gives us directions to a building on the water that has several restaurants. We walk by the “lagoon,” which is a lighted pool just next to the ocean and quite lovely at night. The restaurants have indoor and outdoor seating. We choose “outdoor” and are directed to our table by a very pretty aboriginal woman.

Miriam gets a lamb dish, and I get “prawn and bug salad.” Both the prawns and the bugs are local. The bugs are like a large, saltwater crawfish with a very thick shell. My salad consists of some lettuce, several different kinds of melon, citrus wedges of unknown type, a sliced passion fruit that is both beautiful and quite tasty, a half dozen prawns, and one horizontally bisected bug about seven inches long. It is all delicious and we wash it down with the house Shiraz.

It is still raining lightly but still warm. The walk back to the shuttle is pleasant, as is the wait on a bench at the end of the tiny park. A lot of people come after us. The shuttle arrives. Miriam, who is much better in crowds than me and learns more quickly from experience, secures us a place in the front of the shuttle. We ride home and go to bed.