The last two days, we’ve rented a car and made our own way around Queensland (the tropical, northeastern Australian state). This proved much more pleasant than stuffing ourselves into insulated tour busses and being led like cattle from one local sight to the next.
I mentioned in an earlier entry the odd sensations associated with driving on the left side of the road, using steering wheel mounted, at least from our perspective, on the passenger side of the car. Suffice it to say that, by late yesterday afternoon, I was whizzing along the steep mountain roads with the best of them. After just twenty-four hours, your brain forges new connections and driving becomes automatic again.
Thanks to the freedom of independent travel, we’ve had more to do with the locals than before. When a bus of forty-five Japanese tourists pulls up, it’s normal for the staff to go into mass production mode: route these guys through the system as quickly as possible. But, when we arrive alone, we’ve discovered that almost everyone we encounter dallies with us a bit: “Who are you? Where are you from? Are you actually out driving on our roads by yourself?”
That added greatly to our pleasure at Hartley’s Crocodile Adventures, where the very friendly staff invested a great deal of time talking about their love for their jobs, their joy over conservation, and the best route for us to take into Cairns. We were treated very much like friends — until the bus of Japanese tourists arrived, and everyone had to scatter, route, and filter the incoming traffic.
And on we went: shopping at the malls, stepping into the restaurants, walking the streets, and browsing the markets … on our own. From our morning drive to the SkyRail through to our hand-in-hand walk on a moonlit beach, this is fast becoming one of our best vacations ever.
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