A leisurely morning with no pickup until 10:30. Dana went off to yoga while I dug into packing and arranging Wednesday with Southern World (local Aussie tour company). Dropped the reef snorkel, and continued working on a train outing to Kuranda volcano with a cable car return. Christian showed up for our transfer to our Cairns hotel, Crystalbrook Riley Resort. Same good conversation all the way there.
The hotel was impressive: newish, ultra-modern, very open ground floor, a lot of glass and metal. Same in the room, with a fine view of Trinity Bay. Had a little time-share vibe though.
I relaxed a bit and worked on tomorrow, spotted some birds in the Bay at very low tide and went down and out to the Esplanade to video them. They were pelicans, doing some very serious self-grooming.
The 2.5 K Cairns Esplanade is one of its proudest features. It has trees, a boardwalk, exercise sites, excellent imaginative playgrounds for kids, fountains, gas grills for barbies, basketball courts, and a huge gondola ferris wheel.
I connected with Dana and we agreed to meet back at the hotel to get a couple of their bikes to ride to the Cairns Botanical Garden.
We started the ride on the Esplanade where we saw a cool Masked Lapwing…
and a lively cockatoo.
The ride to the garden was a little tricky, through city streets, with me trying to follow verbal google maps instructions through my iPhone in my pocket, but we made it. We locked the bikes at a bike rack and made a circuit of the garden. There was an abundance of plants that caught my eye. So many that I will exclude the garden’s orchid collection.
We made our way back to the hotel, showered and headed east on the Esplanade for an East Indian restaurant Dana had seen. A lively scene, with excellent sunset views.
The food at the restaurant was ok, the service was not, but the walk back was excellent.
Big day in Kuranda National Park tomorrow.
Dana and Roger Travels 