The drive to Cairns was a beautiful surprise. The road wove around the edge of the coast through small, pretty beachside towns. The ocean literally sparkled on our left and the mountains were lush and green on our right. We checked out a possible place to stay called Palm Cove which is now on the list of places to come back to, it was absolutely glorious. However, we decided to push on to be in Cairns itself. We decided on the Coconut Cairns Big 4, which was huge and pricey! It had a whole "Kid's strip" including two pools (with slides and spas), an indoor games room, outdoor games area, two jumping pillows, a splashpark, a playground, and an outdoor movie screen with movies on every night. The kids enjoyed giving everything a whirl! After lunch we headed into the city to check it out. As the tide was really far out the waterfront didn't look especially gorgeous and the boys actually hated the 'lagoon' swimming area. So we went walking right along the 'water'front where there were all sorts of parks and playgrounds. The boys did enjoy these! We'd certainly worked up a thirst so we thought we'd better have an afternoon drink and kill two birds by visiting Jade Smith's favourite pub, Rattle and Hum. It was a pretty awesome bar, overlooking the lagoon, and we especially loved the names of the kids meals;

"I don't know", "I don't want that", "I'm not hungry" and "I want to go home" J

The next day we ventured up the mountain to the rainforest village of Kuranda. It was a short, pretty, windy drive with fantastic views back over Cairns. Firstly we went to Barron Falls, which was such an enormously deep gorge and long falls that our eyes couldn't really grasp the distance and messed with the perspective.

We then went into the village to the famous "Kuranda markets" which wove all around the town. I had been looking very forward to them as I'd planned to buy some gifts, but we were all bitterly disappointed. The stalls and shops were all pretty much junky souvenir shops geared towards international tourists. There were very few handmade or eclectic and affordable shops.

We had lunch at a decent pub and headed back down the hill to do the groceries. We enjoyed the afternoon back at the park.