Uluru to Cairns

Sunday October 24th

We spent our last morning in Uluru saying goodbye to our balcony and to the pool and to the views. If it sounds sad, it's meant to. We've really loved it here - the colours and sounds of the desert will be a hard act to follow.

We've seen so many birds, some of which were hard to identify - like the spiny cheeked honey eater ( thanks Mike ), and weird creatures like the horny devil - which a motorist was shooing off the road as we passed - and this lizard in the photo below with a tail 3 times the length of his body. It's an amazing place and we think we'll return!

The flight to Cairns is not much more than 2 hours and was uneventful, though being met by our own chauffeur and driven to the hotel in a limo was a first for us.

We were given a complimentary upgrade to a "de-luxe marina view" room, which actually we were not delighted about, as we thought the view of the lagoon would have been better - until we walked round there! It was obviously THE place to be on a Sunday night. Really noisy. Our peaceful room will do very nicely thank you!

Still, we saw an amazing sight on the way out - hundreds, if not thousands of giant fruit bats, swirling above our heads before heading off into the mountains to feed.

On the way back to the hotel, ghostly white shapes could be made out in the distance on the bay. We tried to take pictures of the pelicans but it was just too dark.

Monday October 25th

Shared breakfast time with numerous birds today as the restaurant is partly open to the elements. This sounds really cute until they land and do their business on the furniture!

Marg got up at 5 this morning ( yes you did read that correctly! ) and watched not only the sunrise over the marina, but the thousands of bats coming home to the city to sleep. We have great video of this ( the bats - not Marg being awake at 5 a.m. ) but the file size is too large to put on the blog sorry.
After breakfast we made our way to the pool and that was that for the day - it's a stunning pool surrounded by palm trees and with the most comfortable sunbeds you can imagine.

An early night because we leave here early for an all day trip to Kuranda - a village high up in the rainforest tomorrow. A journey one way on an old train and back on a skyrail/cable car.