Vanessa, pride of place on Cairns Main Street…yes, outside Gucci
Mission beach to Cairns
We woke up this morning with a bit of a somber attitude…today was the final leg of the ‘campervan section’ of our trip and the final day properly driving Vanessa round this part of Aus. A sad day but the show must go on.
Surprisingly, we has another lazy morning…given that Cairns was only 2 hours away and there was no real push to be there at a certain time, we could take it easy and enjoy a slow breakfast with plenty of time to pack the van.
The 2 hour journey was relatively uneventful. Some amazing scenery as we entered the region of Aus where ‘the rainforest meets the reef’. Amazing colours and scenery all round but, as Amy likes to remind me that I’m trying to be Attenbourgh, it’ll be easy to demonstrate with photos when we are back.
After we arrived at our campsite, we decided to give Cairns a bit of a tour. This strategy worked well when we were in Noosa – after our small town tour, we found a much closer campsite and booked ourselves in rather than the original one. Our Cairns adventure didn’t provide the same success however, it did allow us to swing by the Holiday Inn to pick up Lady Shambles shoes that Tom had kindly dropped off when he was in Cairns (fortunately for us (mostly Amy), Tom and Debs were flying to Cairns for a wee holiday the weekend before us as so could drop off the shoes). After a quick stop at the Holiday Inn (our hotel in Cairns after we drop Nessy off), we decided to go for a wee wander round and also book our adventure for tomorrow – the Kuranda rainforest trip.
After the wander and the booking, we decided to retire to the campsite – and what a campsite it is (when you spend two weeks in a camper, it’s amazing what becomes exciting)! There are two pools, a 18 hole Mini Golf course, shop, fuelling station, buggie hire and a state of the art gym…the latter clearly just a feature of the site, not high on our list of attractions. Still, the site is a cracker and so, after parking up, we decided to hit one of the pools – with both hot and cold jacuzzis.
After the splash we reckoned that, as we’re in a ‘big’ city, why not do something really Australian…something that we cant do in the UK..going to a cinema. To be fair, it was a nice change and we saw quite a good film called ‘Captain Phillips’. After the film, we popped down to the food court where we grabbed a late bite to eat – Amy enjoyed hers so much that she decided to take some with her…on her new white jumper! Hopefully Jen and Paul all have some vanish or the Aussie equivalent!
With the exception of the tomato sauce/jumper incident, the evening was pretty subdued with a quick set up of Nessy before getting our heads down. An early start for the Kuranda trip tomorrow (pick up at 8.10) so bed early was a good way to end the trip.
Ps. I technically finished my 2nd book of the trip today (‘a time to die’ – book on the sinking of the Kursk)…Amy is still on her first. It’s not a competition but…
graememckinley 
More exciting stuff!! You’ll miss Vanessa! She’s been a trusty friend!! Enjoy the next bit!!! Xxx