We said to goodbye to townsville early and headed off to cairns. The weather was great and we were aiming for ingham for the obligatory fuel, coffee and muffins, all of which we found. the fuel was fuel but the coffee was great and so was the feta and spinach thingy that i had.
From there it was on the road again until we got to cardwell where we got crabs.
wal has a nasty, yet unobtrusive, case of crabsSure enogh it's a crap joke but it had to be done.
We were leaving the arid tropics and entering the wet tropics and the landscape was changing accordingly, gone were the wide flat expanses of tree studded grassland, replaced by incredibly thick, lush green vegetation. The weather was also changing, the skys were heavy with very dark, menacing clouds, like huge wool packs, heaped up in picturesque disorder. sure enough just outside innesvail it started to rain, the first time on the tour so we have don all right. It did howerver make the roads very slippery so headway was slowed a little.
Even so we still made cairns in good time, found our hotel and checked and again the service was brilliant and they couldn't do enough for us. From there it was off the the bmw dealer for a new set of boots for the bikes and yet more outstanding service. after tooling around for a while at the bike shop next door, getting goggles and extremely useful advice about the cape, the lovely people from bmw drove us back to our hotel.
Our exact location: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=-16.9391,145.7426&ll=-16.9391,145.7426&ie=UTF8&z=12&om=1
We picked the bikes up a few hours later and i have to say i was not impressed with riding with nobbies after my lovely anakees. However the nobbies are necessary so needs will as needs must. When we returned to the hotel we both removed the driving light sfrom the bikes as the hang out and are just begging to be ripped off if the bike gets put down and lets face it, they will get put down.
After that it was time for dinner and a reassesment of the gear we were carrying. We both decided we were carrying too much so we jetesoned what we wern't going to use on the cape, put it in a large bag which the hotel has kindly allowed us to store until we return.
Tomorrow sees us going from cairns to the lions den pub via cape tribulation and the bloomfield track.