12/12/2009

What a journey!!
We arrived at Singapore airport with plenty of time, intending on enjoying some of the facilities it has to offer. However, when we went to check-in the system was down so spent a good part of an hour standing around while the check-in crew tried to work out how to do it manually. Eventually we went through and boarded the plane - with people double checking our tickets the whole way even once on the plane - as if uncertain if we were actually meant to be on that flight!
Arriving in Darwin 1 hour late having left late and the pilot taking two attempts to land because of the monsoon rains and high winds that were hitting the town, we had just under two hours to grab our bags and check-in for our flight to Cairns.
This is were the trouble started. We were taken aside to the Qantas ticket desk and explained that we were not down to be on this flight, or the one before infact. To cut a long story short - our itinerary was correct but our actual tickets didnt match this and were our original flight routes and dates that were dummy dates until the actual dates became avialable, as we booked back in March. In the end we had to pay Qantas 50 quid each to let us on the flight and we boarded with minutes to spare... queue an angry phonecall to STA Travel!!

Anyway, we landed in Cairns and the weather was glorious, the sun was so hot. we got our free shuttle to our hostel - Nomads Serpent and dumped our stuff. The first day we went for a dip in the pool then popped into town to relax by the lagoon on the seafront. We bought some bits for dinner from the supermarket, Woolworths and went home to cook - for the first time in over 2 months.
On sundays our hostel do a 'sunday session' which involves a lot of drinking and games so we got involved and ended up winning a 2 for 1 jungle trip (which we didnt end up doing) That night we went out with some of the people we met that day but it ended early with me and Steph forgetting that in the western world you need to take your ID out with you!! ah.
The next day we relaxed again next to the amazing Esplanade lagoon in the sunshine and booked ourselves onto a 3 day 2 night trip to Cape Tribulation, departing the next day. The evening was spent packing our day bags for our trip and after hearing about food prices being exstortionate up there we made some sandwiches and pasta salad to eat for lunch and dinner.
Up early to check out and catch our bus the next morning we boarded for the 2 hour drive north!