Cairns & Port Douglas Day Two - A special sunrise and a magic sunset

Emma

Dec 27, 20203 min read

Today was our actual anniversary and we had a pretty special day planned! We were up VERY early for our sunrise hot air balloon adventure. These happen out on the Atherton Tablelands, which was about a 90-minute drive from where we were staying so we needed to get going very early. We had chosen the package that includes a private transfer, so we did get a little bit more sleep than those on the shared bus.

We arrived at the launch site as they were just about to inflate the balloon! It was huge and watching it get inflated was really cool! There were about 20ish people and once the balloon was inflated we were loaded into the basket. We were loaded first and got a great spot. The rest of the people were loaded and the pilot gave us some instructions and then we were off!

The surprising thing about ballooning is that it is very smooth, you don’t feel the takeoff and before you know it you are up pretty high. We floated about for an hour and even got above the clouds at one point which was cool before touching back down in a farmers paddock. After the mammoth task of packing away the balloon, we were back on our private transfer to be taken to a romantic champagne breakfast at Nunu in Palm Cove.

When we arrived at Nunu, there was a special table set up for us in what we think was the best spot in the whole place. We were served champagne and a two-course breakfast of our choosing. After enjoying the view and the food for an hour our driver arrived to take us back to our hotel in Port Douglas.

There is a Sunday market held in Port Douglas and we decided to check it out. We were super impressed by both the size of the market for such a small town and the quality of the things being sold there. If you are going to be in Port Douglas on a Sunday it is definitely worth spending an hour or two at the markets.

We grabbed some picnic supplies from the local Coles and headed to four-mile beach for a picnic lunch.

Since we had such an early start we were a bit tired, so we headed back to our hotel for a nap.

We set an alarm so we didn’t forget to wake up as we weren’t done with the awesome experiences for today just yet. I had booked us in for a Sunset Sail tour on the Shaolin boat, which is an authentic Chinese junk boat. We headed to the marina and quickly found our boat (it sticks out like a sore thumb among all the white yachts). We were given champagne upon boarding and found a great spot to sit out on the deck. For the next 90 minutes we enjoyed bobbing around on the water, eating the delicious nibblies that were served to us and watching a beautiful sunset.

You might think that I had another fancy dinner in store, seeing that it was our anniversary. I didn’t. We served burgers at our wedding, so we went to the local burger bar N17 Burger co for burgers and milkshakes to round out the day in style. It was delicious and the service was really friendly. It was a perfect end to an awesome day.