The Bears Down Under: We've arrived!

We've arrived! What a long day it was getting here, though. Three flights and all sorts of airport waiting time added up to 30 hours of travel. Thankfully we slept for a few hours between Vancouver and our Cairns connecting flight in Aukland, NZ. We arrived in Cairns at 9 am, which was really 4 pm BC time. We had planned three days just north of Cairns in Trinity Beach to get adjusted and purchase things like a SIM card for the phone, a mobile Wi-fi hotspot, a GPS for the various vehicles we'll be renting, some groceries and (very important) some Aussie beer. All went well with our shopping excursion yesterday and we're fully stocked. Today is a rest day and final planning before we pick up our RV tomorrow. Since they drive on the left down here, it's going to take a few days of careful navigating to get used to it all. Right hand turns become the tricky ones.

We're very impressed with the friendliness of the Australians we've encountered so far. We've had a helping hand from a number of people, not just sales staff who have gone above and beyond the call of duty. We've also seen some really thoughtful interactions between strangers on the street and on the bus. We're feeling very comfortable.

There are some really wicked fires burning in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. We've just heard on the news that they're expecting a hot day tomorrow with winds up to 100 km per hour! Thank goodness we're nowhere near that area right now. We're due to return the RV to Sydney in just over a month, so by then we're thinking the fires will be out. We had planned to visit some of the locations that are currently on fire, but I expect we may change our route a bit to avoid that area.

In the next few days we're planning on doing the typical tourist thing. We'll try to get some good photos for posting.