Another day in rainy Cairns!

We had a nice lie in until around 11.30am, before heading to the Lagoon for another day of attempting sunbathing. The sun didn't even bother trying to come out, and after some rain started we headed to a nearby cafe for a cup of tea and to read our books. I had also treated myself to Cosmopolitan magazine in Woolworths so I savoured every page - at over $7 a pop magazines aren't something we can afford every week here!

Whilst at the cafe we saw the police arrest what seemed to be a drunken man, who the police were attempting to bundle into a police van. Whilst they were trying to do this, the man's shorts and pants fell down revealing all! Embarrassing times, although I suspect he was too drunk to realise.

After our cup of tea we headed back to the Lagoon for a bit, where we all got slightly too broody watching a doting dad teaching his little girl to swim whilst the mum watched with their newborn son. Too cute.

The rain returned, of course, so we went back to Corona. We heard that the Greyhound services definitely aren't running until Tuesday for definite, and possibly for longer after that. We decided that we had no option but to look at flights, although we'd heard that the airlines had doubled the price of flights since the floods. When I bought my internet time, the lady at reception told me that some people were thinking of hiring a car and were looking for some people.

We managed to get together a group of eight of us and have booked to rent a car tomorrow for $37.50 each. It would have been free on the Greyhound because we already have a ticket, but $37.50 seemed a small price to pay so that we can get on with our travelling!

The main road to Townsville is flooded with 180cm of rain! So we are going to have to find an alternative route, of which there apparently is one.

We had some dinner with our new road trip friends (we are all English). The boy who is going to drive is 24 and seems very responsible - he found the car and has researched rainfall on all of the roads - so I'm sure we'll be fine tomorrow, and hopefully the other boy can read maps! After dinner we went to Woolworths (our favourite spot) to buy some food for the journey tomorrow. I'm quite excited at the prospect of a little road trip, and to be honest there is no way we could have stayed in Cairns for another week and seen all of the places we wanted to see in Australia. Also Cairns is on cyclone watch so we are pretty keen to get out for that reason as well!

We're back at the hostel now, packing and chilling out. We leave for Townsville at 9.30am tomorrow!

Sorry for all of the rubbish stock photos on my blog by the way - now I'm doing them on the computer I can't take photos on my phone!

xxx