Our last day. We both woke up pretty early – no surprise given we hadn’t really done much the last couple of days! After a shower, we went to the nearest place for breakfast – we had found out that they open from 6 every day, so must be the one to get people before they go on tours, since a lot of other places didn’t open until 7. It started raining for a little bit during breakfast, but again, we were undercover so all good.

After some french toast and an iced chocolate, I was quite full, and we returned to our room to throw everything in to our suitcase and check out. We were about 15 minutes early, and then our bus was about 10 minutes late, so it was a long wait! Eventually he arrived, and after a number of stops, we were on our way back to Cairns.

It was raining as we got to Ellis Beach – which is where I stayed with Pete and Nick some 10.5 months ago. It was raining then, too…but a beautiful area.

We checked in, waited for our flight, which of course was late too. Once we got our bag we went to get the bus to the long term car park, which pulled up just as we arrived, so that was good timing! We also had a fantastic run home – it took < 40 minutes.

So it was a lovely little holiday to get away for a long weekend.

I heard rain during the night. It had stopped by the time we got up though. After a quick shower we found a place for some breakfast. It was then threatening to rain – the clouds were pretty dark – so we returned to the room to get our rain coats and umbrellas in a back pack, and then went to the market.

The market was quite large, and very popular. We slowly walked around it. The most impressive part was seeing somebody glass-blowing some small sculptures. Other than that it was all hippy clothes, crocodile teeth, candles and food. Towards the end it started to rain, and we were thankful we had gone to the hotel first! We made our way back through town, stopping off at the chocolate shop so Kaoru could get a souvenir for work, since another work-colleague had been to Port Douglas a while ago and had bought some (chocolate covered coffee beans), and then back to the room.

After doing our teeth, we had a siesta, and then headed out to lunch a bit after 12. We went to a nearby “cafe and bookshop by day, mexican by night”. Lunch was a quiche and an apple slice, which we shared both of. Then it was time for some serious exercise. So we walked back down to the markets, and the reverse of our walk yesterday. It was amazing how different it looked going the other way!

We were a little more prepared today, and had our own water bottle. I still stopped at the fountain and had a good drink, and we made a detour to another lookout, which unfortunately wasn’t a circuit so we had to walk back down to the track to continue. Once we got to the place where we started yesterday, we kept going down to the beach.

We walked along for a bit – there were lots of crab-holes! We saw a trail go off to the right and wandered up there, to find the surf club. It was about 2.40, and happy hour starts at 3 so we decided to walk up a bit further, and then come back, rather than stop for a drink now. So on we went, and had to decide how we were going to get out. We found another trail off to the right, and ended up on golf course for one of the resorts! We walked through and around it like we belonged, and eventually managed to find the gate to get out. It didn’t have a pedestrian gate, but we pressed the button to open the car gate, and made it out without being noticed.

I had a look at the maps to work out where exactly we were – well, we had come down quite a way! So back in to Port Douglas we walked, recognising a number of the places we saw on our first drive in to town. We turned off to the left and saw the petrol station that had been pointed out to us yesterday, as the one where all the boats fill up. Another 10 minutes or so, and we made it to the Yacht club where we had dinner last night, and finally we were at Hemmingways Brewery for a much deserved beer, about 3.30. Kaoru had the alcoholic ginger beer which was quite nice, and I had a West Coast IPA. It started to rain while we were there, but luckily we had picked a table undercover. Some people who arrived the same time as us weren’t so lucky, so they had to relocate.

Once the rain had subsided we walked back to our hotel, killed 30 minutes or so, and then went back in to town for dinner. We went to the pub tonight, and I just had a simple parma, and Kaoru had a seafood linguini. There was a band but we were far enough away to enjoy it as background music.

We went home via the ice cream shop near us. We had been waiting for the right time to go in there, as they had lots of awards. It was a delicious ice cream cone, and a great way to finish the night. We returned to the hotel, where we watched some TV before going to bed.

We woke up, and then went for a short stroll to find somewhere for breakfast. Over $80 for the two of us! It’s certainly not a cheap town.

After breakfast we went for a stroll around a different area, and found some banana trees:

We then walked around the pier and Hemingway brewery, looking at all the boats, before returning to our room to do our teeth. We put on proper walking shoes and prepared ourselves for a real walk. We went up the hill, to one of the lookouts, and then strolled along the northern point of the Port Douglas, eventually finishing at the park. We had some fantastic views of the ocean, and luckily there was even a water fountain halfway, since I hadn’t brought any water with me!

We were pretty tired afterwards, and decided to get some lunch. We went to one of the restaurants we had checked out for dinner, and was maybe 20% full. We asked if we could get a table for lunch, and they said we have one at 1.30!!!! We weren’t waiting 90 minutes when they were so empty right now. So we ended up at a small cafe, where I had a ham, cheese, tomato and onion toastie and Kaoru had a caeser salad, which I helped her with. The water we drank was well needed, and we probably had too much, too quickly, so struggled to eat all the food.

We returned to our hotel and had a siesta for a while. We made it back to the wharf around 4.00 and booked on a 4.30 sunset river crocodile cruise.

No crocodiles. No sunset as it was too cloudy. Just a python. Oh, and it included a complimentary drink on arrival, and a snack. Well, it was a nice ride on a paddle steamer anyway.

We walked up to the yacht club for dinner tonight, for another simple meal. I had fish and chips, and Kaoru had a barra burger. The yacht club was completely open – no “room” per se. We saw a couple of mice outside on the floor, and there was a chip on the floor near us, which they wanted to come and take, but I kept moving my feet and they changed their mind pretty quickly.

We walked back to the hotel, had a bath, and an early night.

5.00 alarm!!! The things we do for a holiday. I had a usual morning – shower, breakfast, check email. And we left for Melbourne airport about 6.10. Everything was smooth and we were sitting down looking at the planes from around 7.15, with 45 minutes to spare before boarding.

Unfortunately in amongst my emails, I found there was malware on the new Inflatable World website. Having just spoken to Mof and gotten him on board as Inflatable World’s new Word Press guru (of which he’s barely touched), I spent pre-flight, and the majority of the flight (until the laptop battery went dead) messaging him, and trying to work out how to fix things.

We landed in Cairns a little early – just after 11. The flight was so quick as I was so focused on work the whole way. There was a hold up at the gate though, and we spent about 15 minutes sitting on the end of the runway waiting for another plane to leave before we could go to the gate and get off. We collected our bag and waited for our transfer to Port Douglas.

I spent most of the drive trying to work from my phone. I can’t believe people use phones for so much. It took me so much longer to do everything, but my laptop was flat so that was my only option. I pointed out Ellis Beach to Kaoru (where I stayed about a year ago with Nick and Pete), and lost connection several times along the way, but we arrived at the Regal in Port Douglas around 2.15. Checkin opened at 2.00, so perfect!

We went to our room – it was modest, but had a beautiful bathroom with hot tub! And was right in town – not like a lot of the resorts further out which would need a car to go anywhere. I fired up the laptop and kept working on these problems, until about 3.30 when we went to get a bit of food. Unfortunately there wasn’t really anywhere open – we did see a few places (pubs) which had food listed, but they don’t start until 5. We ended up at Coles and got a pizza roll to keep us going, and then wandered around for a while.

A bit more walking around, and we found 4 mile beach.

We returned to our hotel for a while to work some more, and then went out for dinner. Late lunches were hard to find somewhere…dinner was impossible! All the places that looked nice, even though they had seats available, said they’re booked out! So, mental note for Port Douglas – if you want to eat somewhere, you best decide where and when a day before hand. One place said they’re even booked out for tomorrow, and nearly fully booked for Sunday already!

Eventually we found the Tin Shed, which was basically an RSL-y type place. We didn’t have to sign in for just eating. We had a basic pub meal, and I finished it off with a coral bay iced tea – their take on a long island iced tea, but blue.

After a relaxing meal, we walked back through town and admired the street lit up, before returning to our room for the night.