I’m in Cairns at the moment soaking up the nice weather and being a tourist as this is one of THE places to go touristing in Australia. My dad flew over from LAX to Australia for a mini-two week vacation as congratulatory prize for me graduating university with a Masters degree. Whoo!
We’ve been here in Cairns for almost a week now and have done a decent amount of touristing from snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef to visiting Kuranda and Rainforestation as well as having pictures snapped holding a koala and petting kangaroos. So far so good!
Today was the best day for me so far! I found an amazing little café near our hotel called The Lillipad Café which had amazing vegetarian food (and also some meat options for the meat-eaters out there). Great place to go if you’re veggie and/or want healthy and delicious food. Highly recommended!
After that, my dad and I were picked up at our hotel and went on a half-day white water rafting river experience with R&R Rafting. We went down the Barron River which is a rapids level 3 (ie a moderate to medium grade rapid) with our guide and another couple of people (8 in total) and had a lot of fun maneuvering with our paddles and holding on tight when falling down some of the rapids. The people in our group were super friendly, I got to talk in Japanese to the three Japanese tourists behind me, and our guide was awesome as well!
Don’t be worried about the river being a grade 3 though; a grade 3 isn’t all that bad. Even my dad (who doesn’t like rollercoasters or anything very adventurous) had a lovely time. Be forwarned, however, that there is a possibility that you could fall out of the boat for a brief minute or two before being rescued and hauled back in; it happened to the girl in front of me, but it was no big deal as it seems to happen a lot so all the guides were well prepared for that inevitability. No worries.
They offered photos afterward that we could look through while having free chips and tea/coffee or buy happy hour beers at a pub. Pictures bought, off home we went a little tired but quite content with the day’s adventures.
Now, if I can only convince my dad to come on the full-day grade 4 (ie a little rougher) Tully River rafting experience on our only free day here – Sunday. Wish me luck. Haha.
Happy rafting!!
