Again, we were up in good time to have a wonderful breakfast at the Pier One Hotel and then we departed, via Uber for the Sydney Airport to travel on Virgin Airlines to Cairns. We had a very nice Uber driver and on the way, I had booked to drop one piece of luggage off for storage as Andrew and I will be back at the airport on December 6th to overnight prior to flying to Singapore. No issues with Virgin Airlines moving our pre-assigned seats this time and got onto the plane just fine! It was just under a 3 hour flight to Cairns, which included a 1 hour time change with surprised us. Sydney, Australia area recently switched to Daylight Savings time however we soon found out that Queensland, where we are heading up north, does not switch and remains on the standard time. There are funny time zone changes all over Australia – sort of a bit like Canada – Newfoundland and in the Interior of BC.
Arrival at Cairns Airport was MUCH more smooth than the last time I was here 27 years ago! They actually have air bridges ways now! Once we found my walker (I do not think it is common for walkers and wheelchairs to be brought to the plane door in Australia and I seem to remember now Karen having that issue when traveling) we were able to walk through the airport – which it is a nice compact airport and out into the HEAT to get our rental car! Holy smokes! The humidity and heat was like walking into a hair dryer on the highest hot setting! We looked up the temperature and it was about 39 degrees and it was 6 pm in the evening! We got our rental car and made it to the Mantra Hotel which I had elected to stay in for our 1st night prior to driving to Port Douglas and the resort that we were headed for. I had done that for 2 reasons – not to tire Andrew out from traveling and then driving and 2nd, I thought driving to a village named Kuranda would be a nice option on the way to Port Douglas instead – we would get some mountain driving in!
We had a ocean view, kind of, from our hotel room. More like a tree top view! Cairns has changed QUITE a bit from what I remember of it 27 years ago. I picked this hotel for its location which was next to the Cairns Night Markets which Karen and I explored last time we were here however the waterfront of Cairns has now fully been filled in and a huge swimming pool installed! It looked really great from our balcony other than all the trees that have now grown into the area!
It was time to find some dinner so we decided to go for a walk and find someplace to eat along the boardwalk. Prior to getting to the boardwalk though we walked around the area that used to be beach and a pier (that I remember) and saw this beautiful swimming HUGE swimming pool that now fronts onto the beach with a walkway in front of it. The pool starts with a very narrow end and the slopes down deeper with some sand and different pool areas at the end as you can see.
We actually parked the car in front of the hotel in the daily parking bays, as it seems that the accessible parking had no time limit on parking there – such as overnight! The hotel required a checkout by 10 am so we thought the car would be just fine and we could see it from our room too! Tomorrow – back to the village of Kuranda!