Day 21 - Georgetown to Cairns - 430 kms

I woke up this morning earlier than Jason as usual and noticed a large pile of beer cans surrounding his tent. Some sort of strange wind and beer magnetism effect had all the previous nights beers blown off the picnic table and attracted to the top end of Jason's swag. I had to kick a few strays over in the morning for the picture but it was a true scene of debauchery.
We were packed and ready to go in record time and when we were about to head off my bikes ignition system was completely dead. Jason went off to pick up the mornings breakfast while I dismantled the bike and found the problem. After much wrenching and dismantling I discover a circuit that wasn't connected that needed to be connected and the bike roared to life. Jason was back with breakfast and we were ready to go when we noticed he had hit a thorn and his front tire was flat. Again we unpacked the bikes, changed the tire and packed up again. By then our early start had been delayed by 1 1/2 hours and we were off at our usual starting time.
The ride was much of the same for the first half but then we got into the hills outside Cairns and the terrain changed drastically every 40 kms. We went from flat desert scrub brush, rocky hills and gorges, misty green meadows like I expect Ireland to be, rain forests on curvy roads in steep mountains to a tropical beach paradise which was Cairns.
We spent some time on the town and after accepting that the average age was 18 and we were slightly older than that we took our party drinks and headed back to the camp ground.

Jason's Comments: Absolutely gorgeous ride this afternoon. We rode through a full rainforest on freshly paved bitumen up and over I think 2 mountain ranges all the while trying to spot some tree kangaroos that the roadway signs warned may be near. The city of Cairns is amazing and well worth a deeper look. Chris and I walked somewhere's near 7 kms round trip from downtown to see what the locals were up to. Most were standard tourists as we but found some cool pubs and eateries along the way. Definitely a great day and amazing spot to wrap up the kms the prior days had required. Way cool and a very sweet spot to wrap the journey. Can't wait to dive the Great Barrier Reef day after tomorrow. In the meantime I need to make sure the Orb spider that was attaching to my swag prior to the evenings stagger to the city hasn't nestled into my sleeping quarters.

P.S. The mysterious electrical anomaly that Chris happened to miss was a the on/ off switch on the handlebar that he neglected flip back to the "on" mode before trying to fire the scoot. Cheers to a solution requiring less intellectual cognisance than the potato pie I devoured during the troubleshooting process.