Cairns & Skydiving
As outlined in my last blog-post about Townsville and Magnetic Island, I’m now in Cairns. Actually I just have 1.5days here in Cairns, so how to enjoy it best??
Accommodation in Cairns
– To be honest, I’m kinda sick of staying in hostels. Though there were really nice ones and I met a lot of nice people, I felt like having more privacy and also a little more comfort at the end of my journey. So once again, I checked booking.com for some good reasonable hotels. This time even 1day in advance :D. And indeed I found a beautiful hotel for a really good price!
After arriving at the Cairns Railway Station, I caught a cab to Palm Royale. I checked in, opened the door of my room and finally could breathe deeply again :). I felt at home right the way and was really really glad I decided to book a hotel instead of a hostel! While I’m writing this, I’m just chilling on the balcony and enjoying the view and the fresh air.
Skydiving Cairns
Woooooooooow – what an amazing experience!!! I’m still really euphoric :). Well, let’s start from the beginning: I’ve already wanted to go skydiving for a couple years but actually never done it. So at the beginning of my journey I thought I’ll try it in Australia. During the last couple days I wasn’t sure anymore if I really want to go skydiving here. I just felt like relaxing and doing nothing…
Though when I woke up this morning, I felt quite powerful and wanted to do something exciting! After enjoying a coffee on my balcony I directly called the booking-center if there was any skydive for today available. And guess what – there was!!! :) I even got a special rate as it is winter right now (yeah, 30°C hahaha). Pam (the lady of the booking-center) told me I had to get to the city-center at noon as they only have a pick-up service in the morning. My hotel is a little bit out of the city in a more quiet area, so I had to arrange that somehow. I knew the Palm Royale has a shuttle-service running a couple times per day, but when I looked up the timetable I saw that my only opportunity was to take the next shuttle in 10minutes. Of course I hurried up a little bit, caught the shuttle and arrived in town about 3hours prior to my jump.
I took the time to walk a little bit through the city and along the coast, to at least see a little bit of Cairns. Wasn’t too bad! Thousands of restaurants, pubs, bars, clubs, shops, travel agencies and whatever – a city full of stuff for tourists. There was also a huuuge food-market with mainly fruits and vegetables and a lot of smaller takeaways. I had some lunch there and then walked to the pick-up point for the skydiving experience.
About 50-60 seconds of free-fall, followed by about 10minutes gliding through the sky… – What a fantastic, phenomenal, absolutely amazing experience!! It is so awesome, that I’d love to do that over and over again :). We landed safely in our drop-zone, drove about 20minutes back to the airport and picked up our personal stuff. The driver then brought everybody back to his accommodation. I’m sure that’s an experience that nobody will ever forget and that I’ll for sure do a couple times again!!
What’s next?
Unfortunately I have to leave Cairns already tomorrow to fly back to Darwin. But I’m also really looking forward to meet Judy&Mike (you remember them?) again. Aaaand I’ll also meet my dear brother with whom I’ll be flying back home to Germany on Tuesday :). So yeah, a couple things to look forward to and definitely with a big smile on my face of this awesome experience at the end of this journey!
Enjoy :).
You got a great ending!!
Yes, thank you lemon. It definitely was the best ending of this trip I could imagine.
It must be thrilling! I feel anyone who wants to sky dive, there’s not better place than Cairns. The perfect place for adventure freaks to get a pure adrenalin rush! Thanks for sharing the post.