Carole, Jake and Sam all got up early with us so that they could take us to Robina station for 6.15 (Dan was already at work). Carole had offered to take time from work to take us to the airport but as we told her, we’re quite adept at getting trains – China was good practice! The kids were very quiet and we could tell they were a bit choked that we were going.
Sid hated the flight from Brisbane to Cairns – small domestic flight syndrome. But all went fine and we caught the shuttle bus to Port Douglas where we’ve hit the jackpot – the apartment, the resort and town are all absolutely wonderful. I’m so pleased because I really struggled and struggled to choose between staying at Palm Cove, Cairns or Port Douglas when I was booking. I’d heard that Cairns isn’t particularly special but didn’t know anyone who’d stayed at PC or PD, so took advice from my friend, the website Tripadvisor.com, and it’s proved to be very good advice.
The hotel – Portsea Resort – is a low rise building with apartments all built around a lagoon style pool – a sort of wide swimming river – running through the place with bridges to swim under, waterfalls and shutes to swim in. The studio apartment is big and bright with great facilities. The town is really pretty, with a large harbour and a very attractive main street, with loads of great individual shops, (which I’ll have to avoid, as my suitcase is already overstretched!) bars and restaurants. We really are in the Tropics now – not as humid as we expected but the green jungle feel with huge palms and tropical plants everywhere shouts tropics.
Also it’s the wet season here – we knew that of course when we booked, but summer for the rest of Australia hits the wet season in North Queensland.
We picked up loads of leaflets and flyers today because the real reason for visiting this area is, of course, to snorkel the Great Barrier Reef and see the Daintree Rainforest. After much deliberation (there are loads of companies offering GBR tours), we’ve chosen to go with Wavelength – again, the company recommended by people on Tripadvisor. It’s the smallest boat which does the reef (downside: potential seasickness; upside: fewer than 30 people, specialist snorkelling not diving trip, comes highly recommended). In many of the tourist information offices, they tried to ‘sell’ us other companies, warning of seasickness on Wavelength and I was starting to waiver. But gut instinct said ‘don’t change from what you’d researched and planned for all those months, so we’re doing it tomorrow, so more on that then.
Won’t post this for a few days as the hotel internet is rip-off-ly expensive so I’ll wait till I’ve got a few posts to do together.
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