Travel Day - Cairns

After Christchurch (no problem about the rental car, by the way), we flew to Sydney, then to Cairns, where we were met by a car service and taken to the Shangri-La hotel for the night. Not the best impression of Cairns – think spring break town with lots of rowdy bars, less-than-bikini-clad girls, t-shirt shops, casinos. And LOTS of Asian tourists. At breakfast the next morning, the contingency was mostly Chinese. It didn’t look much better by day, but it must have been amazing in its natural state – between the ocean and the rain-forested mountains.