Day 110, 111 - Cairns - Friday 3rd, Saturday 4th February 2012

After checking out and having some breakfast, we caught our last greyhound bus of our East Coast trip. We arrived in Cairns a mere 2 hours later to torrential rain and waited for an hour for our hostel to pick us up - not quite the promising start we'd hoped for…..

Once at the Cairns Beach house we looked around and given that we'd got 3 nights for the price of $90 we were surprisingly impressed. But this was not fated to last it seemed as when we came to check in it seemed that our double room had not been booked. Alas the owner David was there and said not to worry, he'd transfer us to the other hostel called Reef Backpackers and even drive us there himself. It seemed like a good deal too as it was closer to town and he only charged us $80; we were content - well for the time being, I'll come to that bit later.

We sat in the room for a bit and whilst chatting I felt something crawling on me; I looked down to see a little brown beetle thing and as I try not to kill insects (unless they look particularly menacing and that they may hurt me); I took him outside and put him on the pavement. Adam had the motion that it might be a bed bug but I insisted that they were smaller - that was until I looked it up on Google only to see something that looked remarkably similar to the creature I had just well intentionally saved. We didn't think much of it as there was only one and we weren't certain it was a bed bug but for good measure we sprayed our bed bug spray and left the room to make our way to Gilligan's for our free backpacker meal. Once inside soon realised that it was like an East coast reunion - inside were Jess, Brenda and Christina, our free Irish friends from Castaway and Whitsundays, also there was Robyn from our Fraser Island trip, also Jude and Claire from our Castaway trip and finally a German lady from our Whitsundays trip whose name escapes me. It was really good to see everyone again!

Once we had said our hellos, we queued for our free backpacker meal - on the menu tonight was a miniscule dinner of chilli con carne with rice. We decided to upgrade to fish and chips for an extra $4 and was a little disappointed when our 10 chips and 2 tiny fish in batters turned up. On the plus side Jess gave us their dinner vouchers for another backpacker meal down the road so once we'd spent an hour or so catching up with everyone we headed to the Woolpack for our second free meal of the evening - spag bol!

With our 2 dinners done and the rain still coming down in buckets we decided there was only one thing for it - the cinema with lots of sweets!! So we bought our tickets to "The Iron Lady" and loaded up with lots of sweeties. The film was not bad although we both felt that it made Thatcher look a bit weak and mad and we'd hope it would be a bit more factual.

We got back to our room and as I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth, Ad did a quick check of the bed to make sure it was alright. I returned to find Ad looking quite queasy and our bags outside the room. Ad had looked at the seams of the mattress and found hundreds of the little b*****s crawling around just waiting for us to get into bed and suck our blood!! YUCK!!

It was now 12.30pm at night and the reception was closed but we called the sister hostel where we were originally planned to stay, the Cairns Beach house, and explained our predicament. To put it mildly, the lady on the other end of the phone was less than helpful and seemed to like to repeat that she was just about to finish and ask what we wanted to do. Ummm, you tell us came the answer. Anyway after a mind numbing conversation with maybe the thickest and most unhelpful person ever, we finally had the offer of her picking us up and putting us in a room at the beach room. She picked us up and explained that we'd need to speak to the owner tomorrow and plonked us in a room with no air con but thankfully no bedbugs either.

I spent most of the night awake, itching and dreaming of bed bugs. This might just be the lowest of the travelling days to date………………..

We woke up boiling hot (no air con) and looked around at the damp and rather naff looking room. I was not in a good place. We packed up and went down to the reception to speak to the owner and explain what had happened. The lady behind reception got him on the phone and to be fair he was very apologetic and said he'd sort out some free drinks and dinner for us. We explained that we'd rather just get our money back and go elsewhere. The funny moment of the conversation was when Ad said he'd taken some pictures to prove the bed bugs did exist to which the owner responded "no worries mate, our cleaner went in this morning and found a whole bunch of the little b*****s!!"

The Ops Manager gave us our money back and very kindly dropped us into town; we rooted out a coffee shop with free Wi-Fi and set about eating a good breakfast washed down by coffee whilst searching the internet for some accommodation. Trip advisor never fails and top of their list for Cairns was a place called Tropic Days so we called them and alas they had a free double room for only $59 and would come and pick us up straight away - things were looking up!

Ahhhh and Tropic Days was everything we hoped it would be - small, quaint, homely and with lovely staff. We quickly settled in and chilled in our new pad.

Come evening we showered and put on our posh clothes (and even some make up for the first time in ages - me not Ad!) ready for our posh dinner out at the local restaurant Ochre. Since we'd been in Australia we hadn't yet been out for a nice dinner (as it is sooooo expensive) so tonight we had decided we were going to treat ourselves! Ochre is well known in Cairns for specialising in local produce and the best of Australia.

We arrived and ordered a bottle of Blonde Reef Australia beer and a bottle of Australian red wine. After looking at the menu we decided to go out and get the 4 course "taste of Australia" set menu. It sounded amazing and didn't disappoint!

First up we started with a wattle seed Damper (bread) with wild spice dukka and peanut oil; then our Australian antipasto turned up and consisted of kangaroo terrine with kakadu plum jelly, crocodile wonton with red pepper jam, ocean trout gravlax, emu pate with bush tomato chilli sauce and mozzarella and eggplant roulade finished off with salt and native pepper crocodile and prawns with Vietnamese pickles and lemon aspen sambal. It was a taste sensation!! I particularly liked the emu pate and Ad was a fan of the crocodile wonton. Before long our main course turned up; chargrilled kangaroo sirloin with quandong chilli glaze and tempura bok choy and Emu fan fillet slow roasted with a 3 mushroom sauce and preserved lemon mash with leek and pea confit. The kangaroo was amazing and so tender - I did, however, feel a little guilty and kept on thinking of the little kangaroo's we'd fed in Australia zoo……………

For desert we had a wattle seed Pavlova with Davidson plum sorbet and a macadamia biscotti and another pudding with the great name of "Chocolate slut"! Chocolate slut consisted of chocolate and macadamia cake with a lime macaroon with chilli choc moose and Jaffa ice cream followed by 2 flat white coffee's.

The result was utter satisfaction followed by the feeling of being completely stuffed! We wandered home to our hostel to rest our full stomachs…..