Crazy bats in Cairns

We made it to Cairns this morning! It's so much hotter here than it was in Tasmania. Even at night it's almost 90! There are palm trees everywhere and it feels like a tropical paradise. We're staying at the seaside Double Tree, courtesy of Jack's points! Wooo, points! It's really nice and easy walking distance to everything; Cairns is pretty compact.

View from the room:

We got settled into our room and then we walked to the dive shop with whom I'm diving in a few days to get my paperwork filled out and equipment fitted. We grabbed a light lunch by splitting a sandwich and a smoothie and then we went down to the lagoon which is a really cool area. Since Cairns doesn't really have a beach they've instead put in a huge pool area right along the water. It has shaded areas and water fountains and zero depth entry areas. Also right across the street were a bunch of restaurants and things. So we just hung out there for a couple of hours by soaking up some sun while staying cool in the water.

We met up with Jack in the evening and we all grabbed dinner and then picked up a few groceries. The next few days are going to be really busy so I'm hoping to get a good night's sleep tonight!

Oh, I forgot to explain the title of the post. As we were walking around this afternoon we heard this crazy loud screeching noises coming from some trees. We looked up and saw hundreds of bats! They were huge! The biggest bats I've ever seen in my life by far. And they had little monkey-like faces. It was so bizarre. I have pictures and a video (to capture the noise) but they really don't do it justice. We saw a few of them fly and they had a 4 ft wingspan!! Apparently they are large fruit bats native to the area. We had to look it up. Here's a link to a google image search for the ones we saw.