Day two - Cairns

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Not a good start. I was planning on going to town and spend the day there but when I got up at 5:30 am (thank you Mr Jet-lag) it was rainning...and it continued rainning until 2pm.

I forced myself to be up until 10 pm yesterday to minimise the effects from the jet-lag and because I hadn´t slept much in the previous 24 hours, I slept like a baby until 5:30 am...despite of having a disco with music from the 90s right by my window all night, which probably explains why I woke up wistling a song from the 90s...

I had a long list of things to do in town today, with all the flying and the waiting of the past 2 days I finished reading two of the books I brought with me hence I was thinking of putting them in the post and send them to myself so I won´t have to carry them acrosss Australia (I liked them so I just can´t bring myself to throw them away).

I also needed to exchange some money. I got some yesterday at the airport but today I was planning on exchanging enough to be able to pay for a few activities, and also to buy some trekking shoes... I didn´t buy them in Spain since I had to throw mines away last year because I didn´t want to carry them with me all the way here.

Another compulsory buy would be some t-shirts. :-)

And since I have a fridge in my room, I also wanted to buy some drinks , it´s really hot and humid in here and although it may be cloudy and even rainning make no mistake, the temperature is probably close to 30 C.

So at 10:30 am I was fed up with waiting for the rain to stop so I thought, sod it! I'm going anyway!, I waited for the shuttle to turn up, hopped into it when it arrived and off to town...

You´ll probably find the next laughable but when I got there 90% of the shops were closed saying they were closing for the Australia Day...yes ladies and gentlemen...today Tuesday 26th of January is AUSTRALIA DAY!!! that goes to prove how even the most simple and well laid out plans can all go horrible wrong with an ill twist of fate.

The rain and Australia day didn´t put me off though I had a plan and I was sticking to it!, besides...putting things in perspective and thinking positevely as I found out later, it could have been worse. :-)

Despite of wearing a raincoat, I got soaking wet, it was raining so much that sometimes you would consider for a few seconds whether it was worth crossing the road, do you *really* need to cross it?. Most streets offer some protection from the rain but crossing a road offered no protection whatsoever you were on your own, so after a few road crossings and after walking for a while I got to a money exchange place where I exchanged some euros into the local currency (the Australian dollar, 1 AU$ = 0.6 €), the guy saw me all soaking wet and cracked a joke about how much it was raining today and then he told me I was very lucky...how´s so I asked in amazement, last week we had a cyclon!...and he was right...There I was all soaked up to my toes, doing some shopping on Australia day, raining like on the inaguration of Noah´s arc and I was feeling like A LUCKY GUY!!! because it can always get worse. :-)

So there is no much more to tell about the day, I didn´t book a 14000 feet skydive on a cloudy day when is raining like there is no tomorrow...I had enough water as it was for feeling like doing some white water rafting, ballon on a day like this?, banging jumping? (perhaps without the rope with all this water I could proably dive at the bottom) sailing? (yeah right!).

In the end I went to have lunch to an Italian in order to try one of their pizzas which wasn't too shaby I may go back there another day and try something else. I bought some drinks, fruit and milk and went back to the hotel where I got into my swimming trunks, grabbed a towel and jumped into the swimming pool...even when it rains it´s really hot so the swimming pool is always whispering my name...

I haven´t taken too many pictures today.The day wasn't very inviting to photograpy.

The streets on a rainy day:

People were using the public swimming pool despite of the rain...

Another photo of the promenade:

Another thing that may be worth mentioning is how patriotic everyone is around here, specially young people. Most Australians between 20 and 40 years old painted their faces either with a fake tattoo saying I Love Australia, or simply the australian flag, most of them were wearing the flag with them around town and they were LOUD!!! alcohol may have helped on that though...they were a very happy bunch. :-)



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