We had to be out of the Mantra hotel by 10am so we were up fairly early and had a quick breakfast in the room and departed the hotel, with me filling up our water bottles in the lobby for the drive as I was certain it was going to be a hot and humid day! Here is the morning sunrise over Cairns –
We got to our car parked in the accessible parking spot and no tickets which is good however the birds in the tree had done a number on it overnight! We were now driving a very dirty car! Oh well, those are the breaks! The Mantra had limited free parking and I thought why take up one of the stalls when we can park on the street instead? Yup! Paid for that with a dirty car now!
We quickly got out of Cairns and on the drive to Kuranda. Most people, including when Karen and last visited Kuranda, take the train up one way and the skyride back down. The Kuranda Tourist train leaves from the Cairns train station, where we will be departing in 5 days to take the Queensland train to Brisbane. They do have a bus that returns people who take the skyride down from Kuranda back to the bus station. It is a worthwhile trip, however I distinctly remember how hard the train trip was on Karen and myself and personally, despite Andrew liking trains, I really did not want to experience it again. I was doing some reading prior to our trip and saw that we could take some “backroads” to Kuranda and then continue inland around to Port Douglas, which is north of Cairns by an hour. That is what we ended up doing!
It was a nice drive – at times reminded me of driving the Hope Princeton with the curves in the road and there was some construction going on however it was very well managed with temporary stop lights and queuing to use the single line. Soon we got to the Barron Falls Lookout, which is actually a stop on the train trip up to Kuranda. After parking at the lookout and walking down the sloping raised accessible pathway in the woods to the viewpoint what do you think showed up below us? The train! It stopped on its way to Kuranda village which was only about 10 more minutes up the small mountain. We got to see the train pull in below us and the people get out to take pictures of the Barron Falls (which were pretty small at this time of year) and then we went back to continue our drive to Kuranda town.
Kuranda is in the rainforest that surrounds Cairns and goes up the coast past Cape Tribulation. Port Douglas, where we are staying is on the beach, about 1/3 of the way to Cape Tribulation. I remember getting to Kuranda on the train with Karen, it being 100% humid and hot and seeing all these really cool artisans selling some very interesting handmade goods! I am not sure if it was because we drove into town, it has been 27 years, or COVID hit this area really hard but Kurana was just not the magical place that I remembered. It was 100% humid and hot though! I did buy some Australian souvenirs at a shop and then we walked around for a while, but the artisan feeling was gone. There were more tourist attractions (traps) now to visit too. I was just turned off! That said, we had some ice cream – good thing to do when it is bloody hot! Walking back to the car, I decided I needed a cold drink for the drive so we stopped at a restaurant stand and look what I found! Gluten Free Rice Burgers! Now, with this heat, there was no way I could eat one of these so I just took a picture instead and got my Coke Zero! Then we continued our drive to Port Douglas through the back hill country!
It was an interesting drive – unfortunately taking pictures from a fast moving car is not my forte so my pictures did not work out! It is also hard for Andrew to stop when there are cars behind us. We drove through some really nice small towns and then started down into a valley towards Port Douglas. We saw that there recently had been some type of forest fire (not huge trees – more like small trees but the ground was smoking and the trees were burnt) and that stunk as we drove by however we soon made it into Port Douglas and to the Sheraton Mirage Resort where we are to stay for the next 5 nights.
Finally we arrived at the Sheraton Grand Mirage Port Douglas Resort. I have been impressed with this resort so far – really early they sent out an email, as I am a frequent guest at Marriott hotels, asking me if there was anything that we wanted to do or needed during our stay. I responded indicating that I needed a shower chair for the walk in shower in the upgraded room that I had booked and I had some questions about activities as the original email mentioned booking early due to school vacations and holidays. They were awesome at getting back to me and told me that we were just before the school holidays, so we should be fine not making reservations at the restaurants however the Great Barrier Reef cruises do fill up. I then booked both dinner at the hotel and a trip to the Great Barrier Reef from Port Douglas. They also confirmed a shower chair would be in our hotel room.
I was met at check in and addressed by name, which surprised me, when we arrived and we were checked into the hotel. They mentioned they had “upgraded” us to a 3rd floor room in the North Tower. I thought that was strange as I had booked a Lagoon/Pool view room that I thought was on the 1st floor. However, I figured it had to do with the shower situation. The bellmen took our suitcases to our room and I was driven in a cart while Andrew drove around and parked. He then jumped onto the cart and we were driven to the North Tower where our room was located. It required us to take an elevator up to the top or 3rd floor, go through 2 doors where there were hotel rooms in an air conditioned corridor with flat access and then to our room which had about a 4 inch lip to get into the room. I thought that was strange due to the discussions I had with them with regards to accessibility and the fact that they said we were upgraded. Sure enough, there was a walk in shower and a shower chair so I was happy! There also was a balcony however it faced the garden, it was not the Lagoon/Pool view room that I had paid to upgrade to. No issues I thought – just happy to be here!
We were going to go for a walk to check out the property however someone fell asleep (common occurrence at this time of the day in this kind of heat) so we postponed the walk until the morning!