This is fast turning into the worst part of the trip so far.
On Monday it continued to chuck it down with rain. Today, Tuesday, was an improvement - but it is still mainly overcast and depressing.
As I said in a previous post, Cairns just isn't a place you want to be when the weather is bad. This is a relatively small place from which people arrange to do stuff from. It has virtually nothing to offer itself should the heavens open. Actually, let me re-phrase that - there is nothing. You are quite literally left with a choice of staying in your room, trying to get a computer in a backpacker-rammed internet cafe, or getting pissed.
Now, I grant you, if you've just got back from a hard day at work, you may be wondering what the problem is. But when you're on holiday and have come to a place that markets itself on being hot all year round, it really isn't much fun. In fact, when you're on your own, it's totally depressing.
Guess what the five-day forecast predicts here? Yup, you guessed it. Rain, rain, rain, rain and more rain. And this is the dry season. It is almost unheard of for this to be happening at this time of year.
So, let's get this right. I left Sydney, which had just seen its worst weather for 30 years, to travel to a part of the world where it is summer all year round. And it's raining every day, with absolutely no prospect of letting up.
Should I be eaten by a crocodile during the remainder of my time in Australia, at least it won't come as much of a surprise given the way my luck has been going of late.
I couldn't stomach another day in this town doing nothing but wander around it's extremely average selection of bars, shops and restaurants. So I took myself into a booking agent and asked what could be realistically done in this weather without it being a waste of time.
Tomorrow I'm taking a gondola and train journey into the rainforest. Then I'm going to head further north into the unknown, where I will probably be washed away into a lagoon and raped by an indigenous tribe. At least it will be more interesting than Cairns. Chipping Sodbury is more interesting than Cairns. I asked the booking agent what else could be done during my time here. She replied that as it was forecast to rain for the rest of the week, in the circumstances, I should look to get out after I'd finished my trip into the rainforest. Marvellous. Even the agents who are probably on commission to sell activities advise fucking off...
Am I being over the top? Maybe. It just has been one of those times when if it can go wrong, it has - and then got worse. The picture at the top of this post hopefully gives some kind of indication of what Cairns looks like when the sun forces its way through the clouds. Unfortunately, this has hardly ever happened and you would have no idea from walking around that you were at the foot of an ancient world heritage protected rainforest. It really is a miserable, miserable experience.
Where next? Well, I have absolutely no intention of swapping one rain swept resort for another. If the weather forecast hasn't improved somewhere in this country by the time I'm back from the rainforest, yours truly will be planning an unscheduled trip into south east Asia...
No comments:
Post a Comment