It’s pronounced CANS

Our accommodations at Dougie's, our hostile home.

But it is spelled like Cairns. Strange, I know. And you know what else? It is humid as hell here. This would be the last place I would recommend for my dad. It was only 80 degrees Fahrenheit, but it was so muggy and sticky it felt like 180.

I guess you can’t have a tropical rainforest without the rain aspect of it. It rained a little bit when we first arrived, but nothing too serious. Even the little rain couldn’t take away the beauty of this Queensland beach town.

After touching down in Cairns, the girls and I caught a shuttle to Port Douglas where we would be saying. (When I say shuttle think of a public taxi, but in short bus size.) It was just us, the driver, and a man from New Zealand but now lives in England. He had the strangest accent, but he definitely had the George Clooney allure to him.

The ride was too bad. Just a little long, but we did learn some interesting facts. Young koalas eat their mother’s poop to get enzymes that help the break down eucalyptus leaves, and without those enzymes the leaves would poison the koalas. Also the number one killer and injury caused to humans from any animal is the horse, in Australia. The car right was very informative, but it was nice to be dropped off at Dougie’s.

If you don’t know Dougie’s is a hostile. If you don’t know what a hostile is think of summer camp with three people to a room, or you could sleep in a tent, or actual camp style. Then add in community bathrooms and cheap alcohol. That’s a hostile. Ours is actually pretty nice. It’s only a ten-minute walk to the main area of town. It’s one minute from the beach, and it has its own pool. That being said the room is pretty small; it was a huge adjustment for us after leaving our swanky hotel in Sydney. At least now we have our own beds.

That has come in handy because I have recently contracted a cold, and I was sleeping in the middle.

After unpacking we headed to town to get food and medication, which hasn’t been helping much. Just my luck; I would get sick during the hottest week here and right as we are about to go scuba diving. Well, that didn’t stop us. We got a delicious lunch at a local grill and then made our way to the pharmacy.

We then headed to the market. It was sad because many of the shops had already closed down for the day, but we still managed to get some good finds. It was also nice, because the market wasn’t far from this cute church on the ocean. Liana’s mom wanted to get married in that church, and I can see why. The view is gorgeous; it looks out into the ocean and is completely picturesque. It looked perfect. It would be a great place to renew vows. That is, if they do that in Australia.

The girls and I bummed around town a bit and then headed home to shower and decide what we wanted to do while we were here. We had already signed up for our scuba excursion, but we still wanted to get an idea of what else we could do out here. So we grabbed a few brochures, a glass of wine, and headed into the general living area at Dougie’s to plan the rest of our week.

We narrowed down our options to a crocodile hunt and parasailing, if we can work it all out. We then sat down and enjoyed Happy Hour, which was surprisingly cheap and we were very happy about that.

Then we headed back to town for the toad races. I kind you not, they race toads down here. Cain toads are an invasive species that came over from America. They have no natural predators, and there are over 3 million of them in Australia. So this one guy decided to make some money off them and races them. You can bet on frogs to win prizes, but we just watched. You have to kiss the frog before the race if it’s your frog. It was really entertaining to watch, but when it was finally over we were famished.

We all sat down to eat, and thankfully our food came soon. I tried a bit of Liana’s calamari, and it was spectacular one more exotic food I could cross off my list. We headed back to the hostile after. On our way we saw a few examples of wildlife that Cairns had to offer. There were birds and frogs, but my favorite was the ever so shy male Cairnsian. We encountered three of them, and they tired to hit on us, but it was awkward. By awkward I mean they ‘hollered’ at us under their breath after we had already past. Confidence is key people! Now I just think you are a weirdo who has never talked to a girl before. Well, it’s probably for the best. I’m pretty sure they were short anyway.

Cheers, mate.