Patchouli, bananas & bats

I know we have been back for a week now, but I still have one more vacation post. After this it will be back to regular programming.

On day 5 of our vacation, we decided we should probably take it easy. We got a decently early start to the day and headed out towards the Kuranda markets, a little hippie market just north of Cairns. You know how every town has at least one of those vintage-y hippie stores? The ones that smell super strongly of incense and sell flowy clothes, crystals, candles, and various types of hemp hats? This was a whole market of those kinds of stores. We actually looked it up – the Kuranda market used to be a commune in the 1960s, and it still very much had that vibe. There were booths with fairy clothing, herbs and tinctures, work by local artists, freshly baked bread, etc. The market bulletin board had posters about ‘how to dreadlock’ courses, tarot readings, bodily alignments and all kinds of other crunchy-granola hippie things. Pretty much everything was decorated with Tibetan prayer flags, and all of the shops and booths had murals and pictures painted on doors and sides.

We got some coffee, tried a sourdough cinnamon roll (or cinnamon scroll as they say here), bought some hippie clothing, saw a gecko just walking on a wall, and got some art for our apartment. Then we were off to Port Douglas, a swanky resort town about an hour north. The drive there was another winding road through a rainforest. This time, not only was it not raining, but the road was dry, making it a very fun drive. We stopped off at some scenic look outs along the way, and enjoyed our first day of actually sunny weather (don’t worry, it still rained. Just not until later).

Port Douglas is located at the end of a peninsula, and is full of high end resorts and golf courses. We walked the main drag through town, got some burgers for lunch, and looked at all the expensive beachwear and beige home décor that we couldn’t afford. Then we headed to 4 mile beach to see what all the hype was about it. We thought about going in the water, but it was quite windy, and after 4 days of being wet pretty much all day, every day, we opted against it. Instead we read the daily marine stinger alert (it was a low risk day for stingers), walked along the beach, and checked out a beach look out. By this point, the week was starting to catch up with us, so we decided to head back to Cairns.

When we started the day, I told Justin that the only thing I wanted to for sure do that day was visit a banana stand so I could try some local bananas. We had passed so many banana fields, I wanted to see if fresh local bananas taste different than the ones I have had in Canada. On the way out to Port Douglas, we weren’t really paying attention to where the banana stands where, so we missed a bunch. But as we headed back to Cairns, we both had our eyes peeled for a banana stand (pun intended). We made it almost all the way back without seeing one. Just as we were starting to think we had missed our chance, there was a hand painted sign about bananas in 300m. I was so excited! I paid the $2 for a kilo of fresh bananas, and immediately tried one. As soon as I started eating it, I realized that I hadn't actually eaten a banana in Canada for years. It was a tasty banana though. I ended up bringing the rest home on the plane with me and eating them over the next few days. I'm going to go out on a limb and say they were in fact better than the imported bananas you get in Canada.

On our last night in Cairns, we went out to a local brewery for a final night of drinks. It was a great end to a fantastic week. The next day we headed to the airport and made it home without incident. As soon as we got home we ran out to get some grocery staples, and emptied our suitcase (because everything was still damp and starting to get a smell). And for the rest of the weekend, we did nothing. Literally nothing. We didn't leave the house on Sunday. Hell, I barely left the couch. Neither of us had the energy or will to do anything other than veg and recover.

Okay, here are some closing thoughts about our Cairns vacation that didn't make it into specific posts.

- We didn't have any beach towels, so we bought some on our first night in Cairns. Of course, we found the most ridiculous, touristy towel we could find. So Justin's has a boxing kangaroo on it, while mine has a koala holding an Australian flag on it

- This one is a little NSFW, so prepare yourself. Justin & I play a roadtrip game with RVs whenever we see one. We add 'anal' to the beginning of the RV name, and then giggle about it to ourselves (so a Cougar becomes the Anal cougar. A Cruiser becomes the anal cruiser, etc. Its not particularly intellectual or complicated game, but its surprisingly funny). Turns out this game is just as fun when you play it with fancy boats and catamarans.

- On one of our first days in Cairns, we saw a guy who was an absolute doppelganger to Jerry Springer. The resemblance was so uncanny we had a full on discussion about whether Jerry Springer faked his own death and moved to Australia

- When Justin gets excited, he gets even more Canadian. This means he calls everyone 'bud'. I think he had called everyone on the snorkel tour 'bud' before we even got to the first dive site

- Many, many weeks ago one of my Queenslander friends made an offhand comment about how the palm trees in Melbourne weren't real. As in, they only grow there because someone planted them, not because they occur naturally. I thought this was kind of weird, but didn't think much of it. Until I got to Queensland, and there were clearly native palm trees everywhere. Suddenly I too was making the distinction between the 'real' palm trees of Queensland and the 'fake' palm trees of Melbourne

- There have been a couple of times I have posted about how the trees in Melbourne are massive. It makes them look old and wise. Turns out the ones in Queensland are even bigger, and look even older and wiser. There was this one kind that essentially looked like a giant cluster of trunks, but then with additional pieces of ivy like vines hanging down.

- Flooding is so common in the wet season that lots of the buildings we saw were actually up on stilts. I'm not talking about coastal or beach houses. I mean in the middle of towns. Similarly, all the roads in Cairns were extra sloped on the sides so the water would run towards the curbs. The curbs were extra deep to accommodate flood waters, they were like big gutter moats. There were even points where there would be little bridges over the gutter-moats that connect the sidewalks to the roads at pedestrian crossings.

- There were multiple roads we traversed that had flood markers on the sides. Basically giant vertical meter sticks with measures marked on them. They were there so drivers could see how deep the floodwaters were on the road so you would know if it was okay to drive through.

- Those of you who follow me on instagram may remember the picture of the dead bat I saw on the side of the road one day. It was so massive, I wasn't sure if it was real, or a very realistic halloween decoration. I wasn't willing to get close enough to check as bats are known repositories of diseases that can transmit to humans. On our last night in Cairns, we were walking along the board walk in the early evening. We started to hear squeaking above us. We looked up to see the outlines of bats. Not the small little things you sometimes see in rural NS. Big, giant bats! And lots of them, easily 10 or 20+. Flying around, landing in trees, hanging upside down - the whole deal. Turns out despite my immense respect for them as a species, bats flying above my head completely freaks me out. I immediately texted my Australian friends. They responded super casually about the whole thing (it was like the crocodile saga all over again). Apparently, Australia is home to a species of 'megabat' (not kidding, that's what they are called) called Flying foxes, or more commonly, fruit bats. In an unexpected twist, when I was a kid my parents would often called me 'fruit bat' because of my desire to subsist entirely on fruit. The irony is not lost on me. And the bats aren't just a tropical thing. There is a flying fox colony in one of the larger parks in Melbourne that apparently numbers in the 30,000 during the summer. Horrifying. But good for the environment.

Stay tuned for my next terrifying Australian wildlife discovery. I'm sure there's another one right around the corner.