N'Joy

Our new hostel was called N'Joy and was bright and most importantly…cheap. For four nights' accommodation in a double room it was costing the equivalent of ten pounds each for every night we stayed.

The hostel had bright yellow exterior, a big courtyard with benches and a BBQ. We were also blessed with a lagoon style swimming pool that was quite chilly. Our room was massive with a large bed, a wardrobe and the all-important air conditioning. Our window was open when we had arrived. Maybe we had some smelly people in the room before us. This meant we had some very unwelcome mosquitos in the room but Rich was quick to remove them. We were secretly disappointed that the room didn't include the table and chairs with flowers on the table that had been advertised on the website!

We were happy to find out that this also included a free evening meal at a pub in town called 'The Woolshed'. There were also free transfers each hour to the N'Joy's sister hostel which then went into town and free return transfers if you didn't feel like walking. One of the members of staff from the hostel just walks through reception shouting 'bus to town' before hopping straight in the bus and waiting for everyone to pile in. It wasn't far to town so we walked on most occasions but if we were there at the right time we would just pop on and save our legs.

We desperately tried to stay awake as we unpacked our backpacks. Although we were tired, we knew we had to somehow stay awake so we decided to explore and try to find our campervan depot that we would have to walk to on Friday. We were happy to see that the depot was on the road of our hostel so we embarked on a walk that we thought would take a few minutes. A good 45 minutes later we were still walking so we headed back to the hostel via Subway to pick up a drink to cool us down.

After a nice sit down in the hostel courtyard we got ready for dinner and picked up our free meal voucher. We weren't sure what the food was going to be like considering it was free but we thought if it could save money we would give it a try. We had heard a lot about 'The Woolshed' from various people. At night it's a popular backpackers bar/club that does events every night ranging from hula parties to goldfish racing!

We couldn't get our dinner until 6pm so we walked to explore round Cairns city centre. It's a lot smaller than Melbourne so we were glad we were only staying a few days. The beaches around Cairns aren't safe to swim in (croc and stingers alerts!) so they have a large outdoor pool for people to swim in safely. Around the outside are free BBQs and benches (similar to Melbourne) which attract groups of families and friends. The BBQs are cleaned every morning and people generally clean up after themselves.

Past the swimming pool is a nice marina where Rich found a nice boat for sale. Even if we put our money together, we probably wouldn't even be able to afford the steering wheel! It was very posh.

There are also quite a few parks in Cairns which had lots of people exercising. There was a 'boxercise' class on in the park when we walked past. At first we just thought people were fighting with boxing gloves on. Health seems to be really important in Australia and in all cities we have been to; there have been fitness circuits along the beach where people are given different exercises to do for a fixed period of time. We spotted quite a few personal trainers as well which puts us to shame - no minibus rides for us!

We arrived at 'The Woolshed' and were given the list of the food we could have for free. The choices were spaghetti bolognaise, chilli con carne and spaghetti napolitana. These stayed the same each night to encourage people to upgrade to a meal off the menu. You could upgrade to these meals for either $5 (chilli nachos, chicken breast etc), $7 (burritos with chips and salad) or $8 for steaks. This is still really good as we had looked at the prices of some eateries here and they are charging $18.50 for fish and chips. We both opted for spaghetti bolognaise so were directed to the first window hatch where we could pick up our food straight away.

We sat down on the sofas to eat but later found out we could have sat upstairs in booths so we knew that for the next day. There was a large mix of people here. Many other hostels must give out these vouchers too. The food was really nice actually so we were really happy as it saves us money.

If you order off the upgrade menu you have to wait for your food so you get a number which is called when it is ready. By the time we were leaving, there was a queue for dinner outside so we must have got there at the right time. On the way out Rich eyed up a huge bowl of chilli nachos that looked delicious which he decided he would get one night.

Before heading back we wandered round the Cairns night markets. Numerous people bombarded us with questions about massages so we made a swift exit and found an ice cream parlour to sit in instead. Rich got scoops of Marsbar, passionfruit and butterscotch ice cream whereas Rach got a cone filled with Kinder egg, Marsbar and White Choc ice cream ready for our walk back to the hostel.

Back at the hostel we picked up some leaflets about different trips to visit the Great Barrier Reef to try and decide which trip we wanted to do. There were so many options so we decided to sleep on it.
Having been up for a good sixteen hours, we headed to bed and turned off our alarms so we could have a lie in the next morning.