Day 8
Summary: Train to Cairns, explored Night Markets
Thursday, January 9th
Our alarms went off at 4:30am and we all got up, brushed our teeth, packed up our bags, and met outside the hostel in the dark.
The shuttle came and took us to from Airlie Beach to Proserpine Station where we boarded the train at 6:40am. On the train, Greg and I watched the live action “Aladdin” and thought it was alright, but we still prefer the original.
One of the stops along the train ride was Tully! Greg and I grew up in a tiny town called Tully in Central New York, so our ears perked up when we heard the announcement of the next station. Apparently, this Tully is said to be the wettest town in Australia because the highest-ever annual rainfall in a populated area of Australia was recorded there. As a tribute to their rainfall achievements, they erected a giant rain boot with a frog climbing up the side. Even though the train stopped at Tully, we did not get off, so I guess we’ll just have to go back to see the giant rain boot another time!
We arrived at the Cairns train station around 4:30 pm and walked to our hostel, Cairns Central YHA. Greg and I shared a bunk room with three other girls from our tour group. We had a free night, so Greg and I walked to the water and explored Cairns a bit (they pronounce it like “cans”). Cairns has a tropical climate, so we experienced several warm rains while we were there.
We figured we should have some seafood, so we ate dinner at a restaurant called “Splash”. I had mahi mahi and Greg had mackerel.
When we stepped out of the restaurant, I noticed what I thought were hundreds of birds flying around in the evening light. But it was actually a ton of fruit bats, also called flying foxes. I love bats, so I was thrilled to see so many! They flew into the trees, I’m assuming to eat fruit. When we walked by the trees in the dark, you could hear them squeaking and rustling around. So cool!
We stopped to get some ice cream and the rainbow flavor caught my eye. I asked to try it, and when I realized it tasted like cake batter, I was sold! The two kids in line ahead of us had also gotten rainbow, nice choice! Greg got the coffee flavor like an adult.
As we ate our ice cream, we checked out something called “Night Markets” which was an indoor area filled with a whole bunch of booths that had things from souvenirs to massages.
One booth caught our eye: it was just a young guy with a camera, a computer, and a printer, but he takes a super closeup picture of the iris of your eye and prints it out for you! He had a bunch of examples hung around his booth and we decided to do it. He told us to rest our chin on a little pedestal in a small photo booth box and all he needed was one picture to get it. They turned out so cool! In the photos, we can see that our eyes have the same colors, just different amounts and designs which from farther away make mine look more blue and his more green. Greg also has a little brown dot on each eye that you don’t even notice is there until it’s magnified in the photo.
Greg’s is on the left and mine is on the right.
We walked back to the hostel and prepared our bag for snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef the next day!
Thanks for reading!
-Rebecca
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