Australian adventures part III

Our first Saturday in Cairns we went to a local open air market called Rusty’s Market.  We met our friend, Amanda, there.  She was an ALT in Kuma-gun with us last year and is now living and working in Cairns.  She showed us around the market, telling us that we could get much better deals there on fresh produce than at the grocery stores.  I was AMAZED at the amount of fresh fruit that venders were selling—bananas, plums, peaches, pineapples, pears, apples, grapes, watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew, melons of all kinds, mangos, papayas—in addition to the the more exotic fruit that I’ve never tried—coconuts, lychees, dragon fruit, passion fruit, etc.  At several stands the venders had slices of fruit on plates for passerbys to try.  While normally I would consider this unsanitary and walk on by, I couldn’t help but to try slices of the delicious fruit.  Mmmmmm……    At one stand, a guy was serving fresh coconut juice.  He simply whacked off the top of the coconut, slipped a straw in, and gave it to us to drink the juice from.  I’m not going to lie.  It was disappointing.  Fresh coconut tastes NOTHING like the delicious sugary stuff that comes out of the bag.    It’s actually very bland.  (We saved the coconut and cut it up back at the hostel later.  Coconut meat doesn’t taste any better.  It’s like a tasteless, flavorless white substance, and we all wondered how coconut went from THAT to a delicious flavoring……..)  Even if the taste wasn’t what we were expecting, we did look like the ULTIMATE tourists walking down the street sipping from a giant coconut.   

After exploring the market, we walked down a couple of blocks to the lagoon for a lazy afternoon.  We swam for about two hours, and in that time WE.  ALL.  GOT.  VERY.  BURNT.  UUUUGGGGHHHH!!!  The Aussie sun is a SIZZLER!  Amanda told us that there’s a hole in the ozone layer above the Australian continent, so the sun reaches Earth MUCH quicker there than elsewhere in the world.  Also, Ian found out that due to the way the Earth is tilted, the sun is actually MUCH closer to the Earth from Australia in the wintertime than North America in the summertime.  I’ve never used as much sunscreen as I used in Cairns.  Ian and I have the same big bottle of sunscreen that we originally brought with us from the States.  We occasionally use it when we go to the beach, hiking, or know that we’ll be outside for long periods of time during the summer, but in the 1.5 years of being here, we used MAYBE a quarter of the bottle.  After Australia, we barely have ANY left.  While I only got burned a little on my shoulders and scalp, (By the end of the week it looked like I had dandruff!  Ewwww!) Ian a little on his shoulders and hand, poor Melissa’s back was LOBSTER red.       

Amanda did introduce us to our favorite restaurant in Cairns.  It was a meat pie restaurant called Pie Face.  Originally I wrinkled my face in disgust when she suggested a meat pie restaurant.  I was thinking that it would be like minced meat….ugh!  However, the pies were more savory…..kind of like chicken pot pies.  Each of us got individual pies ranging in flavors—mine was bacon, egg, and cheese, Ian’s was beef curry, and Melissa’s was beef and cheese.  Each of them was delicious!    We enjoyed that restaurant so much that we ate there three times while we were in Cairns!

We didn’t do much the next two days except sit around our hostel.  The weather was a little iffy—as soon as it looked like the skies would clear, it started raining again.    Monday was New Year’s Eve, so we planned to have a BBQ at our hostel and invite Mary and Yusuke to join.  We rode our bikes to the grocery store that morning to pick up meat and veggies for grilling.  While we were in town, I also mailed off my post cards to friends and family at home.  Although I suppose I shouldn’t have been shocked by the expense to send postcards, I was.  Each postcard stamp was $1.60, bringing my total of twenty postcards to a healthy price of $32!! UGH! 

That afternoon before our BBQ I was getting a little stir crazy sitting around the hostel, so I went for a bike ride.  I rode down to the lagoon area, through the park and along the waterfront, down the bike trail and hit the main road.  I was pedaling along furiously and happy about the time I was making.  It wasn’t until I turned around that I realized why.    The whole way there, the wind was to my back.  When I turned around, I actually had to PUSH the pedals to get anywhere.  Plus, the wind was carrying a giant rain cloud across the bay.  I could see the misty gray rain falling and getting closer and closer to me.  When it started raining on me, I pulled over in the park and took shelter.  I waited it out for a little while, but it showed no signs of stopping.  While I didn’t have a watch on me and wasn’t exactly sure of the time, I knew that it was getting close to our designated BBQ time—3 PM, so I left the shelter and pedaled home in the rain.  Wasn’t the first time I’ve done that….probably won’t be the last.    By the time I got back, I did indeed look like a drowned rat. 

Ian is a master griller.  Despite limited seasonings and kitchen utensils that we bought/our hostel’s kitchen provided, he still managed to make us a fantastic New Year’s Eve BBQ lunch.  I ate more red meat that day than I probably have in the past year.  He grilled beef an kangaroo steaks along with corn on the cob, (It’s been a looooooooong time since we’ve had that!) peppers, and onions.  Delicious!  For dessert we opened a package of dark chocolate Tim-Tams.  (Those are a very Australian cookie that come in ALL kinds of flavors: dark, milk, and white chocolate, caramel, Turkish delight, mint, etc.  Amanda made fun of us last year because all of us Americans had never heard of Tim-Tams.  They are EVERYWHERE in Australia, and she honestly couldn’t believe that we had never heard of them.)  When the night grew dark, we walked Mary and Yusuke back to their hostel and continued walking to the lagoon area and park where a live band was playing.  It was still raining off and on, so the crowd wasn’t as large as it could have been.  At 9 PM, the first fireworks show went off.  The three of us really weren’t too impressed.  After seeing Japanese fireworks, I feel like all other shows are just so-so.  However, we heard that there was another show at midnight, and those were supposed to be bigger and better.  Ian, Melissa, and I walked back to the hostel so that Ian could get his camera and take NYE pictures.  We returned in plenty of time to get a good spot for the fireworks, and just as promised they were MUCH better than the 9 PM show!    We all celebrated the fact that we had officially rang in the new year on three different continents.  Here’s to making it four!  

I’ll end this blog here.  Slowly but surely I’m catching you all up on my Aussie-time fun-time!  My hope of hopes is that I’ll be finished with Australian stories by the end of the week so that I can get back to talking about my life in Japan.  *fingers crossed*