Cairns (Jun 26 - Jul 3)

It’s hard to describe how you feel returning from a 3-day-trip with 11 dives. You feel more than knackered and so it took me some days to recover. Basically every muscle in my body hurt and I would never have expected it to be that strenuous.

So I took it easy, relaxed for some days, updated this blog and watched the 8^th season of 24.

After some days Suzi checked in at the YHA and so we brought each other up to speed what we have been up to since Rockhampton. We sat down and the next time I looked at my watch it was 4.5 hours later. She was also on Maggy but stayed at the other side of the island to do the open water course. Unfortunately she left for Asia some days later and I will most likely not see her on this trip again *sob.

The next day we went for a walk on the esplanade and noticed some ukulele players on a stage. It was the 2010 Cairns Ukulele festival. 

Festival banner, look at those sponsors. Accor and KPMG are apparently everywhere ;-)

We watched it for some time and they really put on a good show. All dressed in strange clothes holding a uke performing the most notorious oldies. We heard that there was a world record attempt for most uke players in one spot to take place in a few hours and thought it might be fun to be a part of it. We switched locations to a big courtyard where some pros had a jam session.

Pro's jam session. Guy in white t-shirt allegedly has 5 Grammies

For the fun and to support the world record attempt we bought a uke for $20 each, sat down and tried to figure out how to play “Achey Breaky Heart” (C+F) and “The lion sleeps tonight” (C+F+Dmin).

Trying to get these cords sorted

Unfortunately we didn’t break the world record. There were 670 people trying to play the two tunes and so we were approx 150 players short. Still there was a great atmosphere and everyone had a good time.

Hold up your uke to get registered for the world record attempt

Afterwards two uke clubs from Darwin and Melbourne performed on stage and they also did a good job. It was more about the fun and the show than singing or playing perfectly.