We arrived in Cairns tonight but not without a little trouble. The mean little travel goblins are rearing their heads pretty early in the game. Our 14.5 hour flight to Melbourne appeared to be going smoothly until nearly the end. The captain came on the line with a muddy commentary that pretty much explained nothing, but involved something about Melbourne weather and not enough fuel (how many hearts just skipped a beat? Haha). Long story short, we were rerouted through Sydney to fuel up. That of course took longer than originally promised, and then we had to wait an extra 15 minutes because Sydney Airport has some kind of hourly maximum for plane takeoffs. All this added up to us missing our Cairns connection!

Once we arrived in Melbourne, our customs cards were inspected by no less than 4 officials at various points and we even got our bags sniffed by a working dog! It took us a while to navigate the airport, but we finally managed to find the Qantas service desk who informed us we had been re-booked on a Jetstar flight not due to take off for another 6 hours, ay ya! Our backpacks were feeling pretty heavy at this point, so we scoped out a good spot to chill out and eat some lunch while waiting for our next flight. Subway was the winner as it was the only place without horrendous airport prices. I noticed a weird quirk while ordering my sandwich: they don't have regular mustard! Honey mustard, yes, regular mustard, no. I'm curious to see if this is just a one-time occurrence or a strange Australian aversion.

I can't say we were real pleased with the Jetstar flight. Jetstar is a budget airline, so the seats hardly reclined at all and were so close together that even my little legs didn't have enough room. In addition, there was no food or drink without a price tag! All this may have been fine and dandy if we had paid a budget Jetstar price, but we had booked and paid for QANTAS flights, where no doubt we could have enjoyed a movie and a decent meal (complete with wine!). Being hungry and tired, I think we both started to feel a little cranky at this point.

Things got better once we touched down in Cairns. I was able to use a courtesy phone to call our hostel and they drove out right away to pick us up. The young lady at the desk upgraded our room from a 6 person dorm to a 4 person dorm with private bathroom, wahoo! We also arrived in the nick of time to get a free meal at a local restaurant, double wahoo!!

So obviously today's itinerary didn't go as planned. I'm happy to say that Jeff and I took it all in stride (for the most part…). We expect a lot of travel irritations like this in the next 6 months but are determined not to let them distract us. Tomorrow we will wake up in Cairns and it will all be worth it!

P.S. The Sydney photo is only there because I have to post a picture for every blog and we haven't uploaded any of ours yet. It seemed applicable since our little stopover was the closest we will be getting to that city!