G'day Mate!!!

Wow! I am in Australia! It is 5:20 am on Saturday and I am sitting at the boardwalk behind the hotel. I would say it was a beach, but that you would definitely not convey the right picture – especially to all of you Florida people. There is water just ahead, but between that and me is a sizeable expanse of mud flats. In fact, yesterday as we wandered along the boardwalk, I decided it looked like a good Survivor challenge to get to the water out there. Now the tide is out and it would be much more difficult. The birds don’t seem to mind though. They just wander around out there searching for insects and taunting each other with various species of bird calls. In the meantime, I am waiting for a sunrise. Unfortunately, I don’t think it is going to be too spectacular because it is somewhat cloudy and there seems to be a mountain in between the eastern horizon and I.

Oops…aforementioned clouds decided to get serious about the droplets of water it was dropping on my computer screen and I had to relocate to a covered area. Apparently I am going to need to invest in an umbrella. Yesterday is started to rain as we started to walk into Cairns. Luckily the weather here seems to be very similar to Florida. Hot, humid, and prone to short rainstorms that quickly clear up and drift away. In fact, there are several similarities to Florida.
1. Weather
2. Cairns is in Queensland, Australia and the license plates proudly proclaim, “Queensland, the Sunshine State.”
3. The flowers and trees are very similar…There are mangroves along the shore, those big trees with the root thingies that goes straight down from the limbs of the branches. Oohh…two friendly Australian guys stopped to talk to me…yes, I am going to need to marry an Australia (or someone from the British Isles). The accent is the clincher! They told me that I talk funny and asked where I was from….I said Florida and they asked me if I felt smarter than everyone else. Um…no…do they think that Floridians are intelligent? The is a novel idea… Anyway, they wanted to know what I was doing sitting here with my computer typing away. I told them that I was writing to family and friends at home and they asked what I was writing. So I told them that I was pointing out how similar it was here to Florida. And they asked how so and I told them that the trees and flowers were similar so they started naming the trees and the name I was looking for is a banyan tree. Yep, that’s it. They also pointed out the more obvious one, the palm tree. I told them that that one, I recognized! LOL...it was quite an interesting conversation! Not the specific guys I would like to marry, though they did come back to ask my name and where I was staying, as they were obviously wandering along the boardwalk on their way home from spending Friday night in the bar and trying to rehydrate themselves with large bottles of water. Getting back to flowers and trees, however, there are several others that are the same, but I have no idea what they are called, so you will have to take my word for it.
4. Wandering along the Cairns Esplanade is very similar to wandering around the beachfront of Fort Lauderdale or in the keys. The restaurants and hotels and marinas…very Florida like.
5. The hotel rooms smell like Florida hotel rooms…slightly musty, mildewy, and tropical all at once.
6. Apparently the Everglades are nearby…
7. No-see-ums that bite your legs while sitting near the beach enjoying a sunrise…a similarity that I could have done without.

That’s all I can think of at the moment…but there were more. The sun is still making its way up and I can’t tell if it is still behind the mountain or if it is behind the cloud over there, but it was still nice. It needed some more red and better visibility in order to get top marks…maybe out on the boat next week. :)

Jason - You are ugly and your momma dresses you funny. ;) (He said my blogs are too long...so I don't have to worry about him seeing that.)

Yesterday was a long day…nice, but very long. We left Japan on Thursday night at 9 pm and arrived here on Friday morning at 5:15 am. There is only an hour time difference here (from Japan) so it is easy to get used to. Since we “slept” on the plane, we were quite tired when we arrived, but we went to our hotel and were thrilled to find that they had a room ready for us. Since neither Evelyn nor I could justify sleeping away our first hours in Australia, we showered, changed and headed to breakfast. After that, we wandered around Cairns shopping and sight-seeing until having lunch at a Mexican restaurant! MMMMM…I love Mexican! Then we found the mall, with a Target that wasn’t quite like the ones in the US. After that, I was happy to find that there was a reasonable place to get a pedicure…I was sorely in need since I couldn’t get an appointment in Yokosuka before I left. After that, more wandering and shopping and chatting and feeling the sense of vacation settling over us. After dinner, we headed back to the hotel to get ready for bed and try to stay awake until 8 pm. I’m not sure if we succeeded, but shhhh, don’t tell anyone!


4:25 pm – Saturday, December 23rd

Today, Jill arrived on the same flight that we came on yesterday. She was pretty wiped out, so we are taking it easy today too. We wandered around Cairns for a while showing her the highlights. Then we ate lunch in another Mexican restaurant. It was even better than the first! Afterwards, we headed back to the hotel pool and laid around and chatted and swam and read for a few hours. THEN I remembered that we had discovered Coke Slushies this morning on our walk. Woohoo…so I abandoned the pool and walked down town to sip and surf – the internet that is! :)

I am currently uploading some pics to Flickr…go see them if you wish… http://www.flickr.com/photos/jennellinjapan/.