The first few days I was in Cairns I woke up with a headache that would kill a dinosaur, but at least that was more or less settling by the time I had been there for a week! I had some swims in the small saline outdoor pool (seems to be 'de rigeur' there) and went for a walk one day along a nearby walking track. This was quite interesting, as a number of different environments have been planted or have grown up along the track. There should be a creek running alongside, but it is very dry and there was no sign of water. At the end there was a lovely lagoon with the ubiquitous native ducks and some gorgeous pink water-lillies. On the way back I was almost hit on the head by a falling mango! It was a pity that it had split on impact - otherwise I would have taken it home. Another interesting thing was two houses (some distance apart) entirely painted purple on the exterior! There are no actual footpaths in this area but apparently it is OK to walk on the nature strips. This reminded me of my visit to Atlanta, Georgia in 2004, when I was forced to walk on the road for my daily constitutional as all the nearby houses had fences down to the edge of the road. This seemed an echo of the American obsession with the car as a mode of transport.
Somewhat ironically, my host had Dengue fever earlier in the year and his house was in the Cairns 'hot spot' for Dengue at the time of my visit. There are signs in the street warning people that they are entering a "Dengue Zone"! I just had to hope that none of the mosquito bites I suffered were from dengue mosquitoes. As apparently the incubation period is 3-14 days, I expected to know soon enough (and fortunately escaped the Dengue but ended up with a bout of Influenza instead!).
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