Oh, Happy Day

Made it to Cairns safely from Airlie Beach. Ten hours on a bus is... a lot of time on a bus.

Without making things too out-of-chronological order here, I wish to state my great excitement that I will be away on an overnight sail-snorkel-scuba-dive deal on the Great Barrier Reef (!) on Tuesday/Wednesday. Also, tomorrow is Australia Day (commemorating the day the first fleet from England arrived in Sydney, like Independence Day in the US), and I will be spending it on the Cairns Esplanade with my host and about 10 of her friends. No, we will not be throwing any shrimp on the barbie (especially because there aren't "shrimp" here, only "prawns") but there will be sausages. Australians love sausages.

In case you were wondering, Cairns is INCREDIBLY humid. Like, I thought Brisbane and Bundaberg were humid. I thought Boston in August was humid. I thought the Costa Rican rainforest was humid. But this is humid on an entirely new level. I was soaked to the skin by the time I arrived, so I went for a swim with my host in a lovely little pool in her apartment complex. The reason this is important is to explain to you that we had to creep through some dark gardeny parts to get to the pool, and all I could think about was that one picture I saw on the internet, basically one of the most terrifying things I've ever seen, which was a spider eating a bird--Yes, you read that right--right here in lovely Cairns. I'm betting you could google "spider eating a bird" and find the photo in question if you felt the need.

So hopefully I won't step on one of those?

Happy Australia Day!