Greetings from the “land down under”...
We have left hot, humid Cairns, and have come to “four
seasons in one day” Melbourne.
But, before I talk about Melbourne, I need to finish up our
stay in Cairns...
We finally finished up our cleaning duties for the hostel,
and for our last day, decided to do a tour of the rainforest and waterfalls.
Little did we know, this was no ordinary tour...
The day starts out at around 8 am, where a bus (whose name
is Gus... We’ll get into that later) picks you up right from your hostel. As
soon as we got on, our tour guide made it his mission to memorize everyone’s
names (which he successfully did). As we drove into the rainforest, our tour
guide, Cousin or “Cuz” Rohan, informed us on all of the landmarks and other
interesting things about the rainforest and the town of Cairns. He also
explained to us that the bus we were driving on was named Gus. Gus the bus had
his own personality for sure. He would honk (talk) and Cuz Rohan would
translate for us. If you think this sounds odd and random, you’d be right...
The whole day was packed full of odd and random things that kept the whole bus
laughing. The sights were gorgeous, and swimming in the different waterfalls
was a blast! Especially the one where you could actually slide down... He had
snacks and juice for us in the morning, and we stopped in a little town for lunch
that overlooked the Tablelands (the valley), then at the end of the day we got
hot chocolate and more snacks. On our way back home, instead of being exhausted
from a long day, he kept us singing and dancing to oldies, and by the time we
got back to our hostel, we were buzzing with energy.
It was by far the highlight of my trip so far!
The next day, we hopped on a plane and headed down to
Melbourne. We met up with Scot’s Great Uncle Ward on our third day here, and he
offered us a room to stay in. So we stayed there for four nights and had lovely
meals cooked for us and loads of great information thrown at us. Then we met up
with one of Ward’s daughters, Shannon, who offered us a room in her house,
which is where I am writing this now. We are so thankful for the hospitality of
Ward and Shannon. It really helped us get on our feet again and able to make
new plans because once again, we could not find any work.
Because we couldn’t get any jobs, and because our money is
running quite low, we have decided to rent a vehicle and drive up the east
coast, see the sights, then drive back down to Sydney and then leave back for
Canada on March 1.
It is disappointing that we won’t be able to see the west,
Tasmania, New Zealand, or Asia... But it has been a great trip so far, and it
will be nice to be back home as well. And maybe one day we’ll come back and see
the rest.
Cheers!
