I did it! I got up and was on the beach to see the sunrise by 5:30 am. I was not alone. My new friends from Boston/ Melbourne were there as well as about 10 other people. More kept coming until there was probably about 20 of us to greet the sun. It was not disappointing. The colours as the sun made its way were absolutely amazing. I learned how to use the time lapse feature in my iPad and got the whole thing. Check it out in the pics. Unfortunately there were a ...

It's Good Friday! After 11 hours of uninterrupted sleep we got up and decided to further explore the city. We had the whole day to meander around Cairns before our tour meeting late this arvo (afternoon).We headed back to the Esplanade. That big swimming pool is called a swimming lagoon. It is 4800 square meters of crystal clear water. It has a massive state of the art chlorination and filtration plant that keeps the water perfect for year round swimming at...

We arrived at 3:10 pm local time (12:10 am March 23 in Toronto). We were 2 very knackered (tired) travellers.  At first I thought we'd landed in the wrong place because we were greeted with "Welcome to Kenz" (with a drawn out "e").   Apparently not, however.   We, also, heard the name pronounced "Cans" (with the a sounding like the a sound in baa) as well, very similar to the pronunciation of Cannes in France. The city is also named after Governor Ca...