July 2, Cairns

July 2, 2011

Where: Cairns, week 3

        It's been a while and once we arrived in Cairns I journal writing habits bit the dust. I will tell you about our final day with the van after we stayed our last night parked at a hostel in Cairns. It took us well over an hour to pack up all our clothes into our back packs, organize all the random objects we had in the van, and then clear it all out. It really was a mess and there was about two cups of salt underneath everything that we spilled a week ago. Kindof gross. Another couple was clearing out their van next to us at the hostel and they had had their van for just a month. It's always funny to see people's reactions when we tell them we traveled in a van for 7 weeks. It seems that most people can't even imagine doing that and I guess when I arrived in Australia I probably couldn't have imagined it either. Even with all the money we spent on the trip (I'll elaborate a bit more on that later), I certainly wouldn't have changed anything. People ask if we would do it again and I know would, probably on the west coast. Someday when I have earned a lot more money that I can afford to blow!

        So were scheduled to check into our share house at 2, which was the same time we were suppose to return the van. Luckily, when we stopped the by share house office at 11 they had our apartment ready. We had around 10 bags of stuff with us that we really didn't want to have to carry around town. We dropped everything off quickly at the house and met one of the room mates and then we realized we needed to get lunch before vacuuming out the van. We went into town for a quick Vietnamese lunch (yum!) and with only an hour left we went to fill up the van with gas. This would not have been a problem except that we also needed to vacuum out the van and we were told that there was a vacuum at the gas station which ended up being wrong. So we spent out last hour with the van rushing around trying to find a car wash and in the end we just swept out the van with a little broom. We pulled up to return it a few minutes late but we were stoked because we had gone the whole 7 weeks without leaving so much as a mark on the van! Besides a million dead bugs on the front of it. We were careful but we were also lucky. Hooray! After one last photo with the van we said goodbye to our temporary home and walked back to the share house. It was a bit sad to end the trip because it really was a wonderful, incredibly freeing way to travel, but we're also happy to have our own room now with a bathroom and living room and kitchen.