Liane here for a change.
We left our hotel in Keflavik at 8:30 am local time to start an over forty-hour trip to Cairns, Australia. British Airways does not seem to have joined the 21st century. Regardless of whether you obtained a boarding pass on line or not, everyone had to line up in the same understaffed lineup. However, we eventually got through that process and security and flew to London Heathrow.
We had a lovely dinner though my meal order had to be taken by a manager because of my food allergies. We got the sense that the manager accompanied the order to the kitchen, watched the chefs prepare it and brought it right back out again. I finished my meal before David even got his because of this process.
The other curious thing about Heathrow is that gate announcements for your flight are only made 50 minutes before the flight departure. They seem to do this to avoid crowding at the actual gates. However, they did announce that we would be in the “C” gate area about 1.5 hours before the flight. After seeing the number of people lined up for the transit system over to those gates, David and I proceeded to the sub-sub basement (floor -4) and walked over. The cement underground tunnels were long though there were automated carpets that sped up when you stepped on them. We were literally the only people in the echoing tunnel which would have made the perfect setting for a horror movie if it wasn’t so well lit.
Our flight to Sidney with a stopover in Singapore was long and boring though we did get some sleep and four meals. In Singapore, even though we were remaining on the same plane with a different flight crew, we had to take all our belongings, disembark, walk around the enclosed waiting room, and go through security again before re-boarding. Anyone who had walked off the plane with some water left in their water bottles had to throw it out.
With the e-passport, immigration was all automated in Sydney. However, I stood forever in the machine which compared my face to my passport because I had to remove my glasses for this process. David finally figured out that I could not see the ticket that popped out that I was supposed to take for the doors to open! We were stopped as expected by Customs because we had been hiking in BC and Iceland during the last thirty days. My boots were deemed ok but David’s needed to be washed to remove the mud on them.
After an uneventful flight, we landed in Cairns where we were handed a pamphlet labelled “North Queensland Beach Safe Information Map” which warns you about crocodiles, marine stingers and the biggest danger of all: the sun! We were met by our driver who took us to our resort north of Cairns. We stayed in this cabin which is elevated off the ground due to the danger of flooding.
It’s great to stay in cabins when recovering from jet lag as you can have extended conversations at 4 am without waking up your neighbours. Though our neighbours were mainly locally wildlife including many birds and the occasional wallaby.
We then moved to downtown Cairns for a couple of days before renting a car for two weeks; next stop Port Douglas!