Our next leg of the trip was an easy drive from Shute
Harbour to Cairns. Though it was a
somewhat long, about 8 hours, it was easy and daylight the entire time. We pulled into Cairns city center, found our
hostel and settled into our rooms. Jared
was heading out for a five day diving cruise the next morning, so he packed all
of his essential stuff, and stashed everything else under my bed. The hostel had a dinner special with a bar
down the street; Jared wasn’t interested but came with me to check it out, and
I think got a bit of dinner envy. I
ordered the meat pie with mashed potatoes and veggies, and it was
MASSIVE!!! I could see poor Jared
salivating through his eyeballs, so I feigned being full and let him have some,
then we both topped off dinner with a Clif Bar.
We were pretty tired, so we called it a night early.
The next morning, Jared was up at some obscene hour to work
out, then set out for his diving cruise while I set out for my work out. I saw a lot of the photos from the trip, when
he came back, and he told me the highlights were either all the sharks at North
Horn or a dive at Ribbon reef with so much life and color, where he could swim
thru small schools of fish getting really close and gliding thru without them swimming
away. Occasionally, Jared would have
wifi on his supped up vessel, and tell me he was having a great time, and doing
a massive amounts of dives. Bear in mind
at this point in my description, that getting said information at of him, Lord,
sometimes is like pulling teeth!!
Anyway, my time in Cairns was uber relaxing. I would casually walk around town getting a
few last minute things together, oh I bought a Kmart tent for three people for
$32!!!!!!!!!!!!! That is unheard
of!! Our four man tent we bought in the
US was like $260 or something!! Anyway,
that was a great find. Most mornings I
would do a little workout along the water.
This was the first city that had wifi everywhere, so I got to FaceTime a
bit, and was generally happy to just lounge around. There was a really big pool that was built
right on the boardwalk overlooking the ocean.
A great place to get in some writing and catching up. I was still trying to run off of the food
that Jared brought, so breakfast and lunch was leftover stuff from him, and at
night I would get the dinner special at the bar down the street with a few
roomies from the hostel.
The day after Jared left, I went out on a snorkel cruise of
two reefs in the Great Barrier Reef, Saxon and North Hastings. I woke up early that morning and was picked
up by a bus and shuttled over to the port.
I found my boat, and along with a big group of people, rode out for the
day. The first reef was Saxon, then we
had a buffet lunch and headed out to North Hastings. Both reefs were really wonderful, but they
saved the best for last. North Hastings
was a lagoon, and the life under the water was just breathtaking. There was so much to see, such large areas of
coral and sea life, and right at the surface of the water, so the colors were
SO vibrant. I was really amazing to see
neon colors in nature. My favorite fish
was the Parrot fish; not sure if you’ve ever heard of it, but they are the most
bright neon colors, magenta, teal, lime green, orange etc and all neon, really
really beautiful. I got to see where
Nemo lives, which is a cool floating bubbly jelly-looking thing with soft tendrils
sticking out, and you could see the little fish swimming in and out. Apparently, it is very poisonous, but the
fish that are born and bred inside are immune to the poison. You know how when you see coral pieces on
land, they are so rough and calloused, well in the water it all just looks so
fluffy and welcoming, all I wanted to do was snuggle into the soft coral
flowers and little fish cities, though I’d probably die from something. Apparently, quite often, the prettier it is
the more deadly, so opted against it.
Also, I’ve heard that just touching the coral can kill it and these
massive sea life reef take hundreds of years to form. At one point, I saw some JackA actually
standing on the coral bed!!! He got
yelled at by the crew members, but I was just about ready to leave him out
there Open Water style (the movie).
Anyway, it was a really amazing experience. At the end, I rode in a “semi-submergable”
boat, where the bottom of the was glass, so I could attempt to take some photos
underwater (basically unsuccessfully).
THEN!!!! The most exciting part!! I opted to ride in a helicopter back to
Cairns, and I lucked out! I was riding
back with two other people, one of whom was old high school friends with the
pilot, so we got a few extras on the ride.
We all jumped into a small boat that took us to the floating helipad,
where we boarded the helicopter. The
pilot flew us over a few different reefs and even landed on a sand island. The ride was soooooo much fun and definitely
one of the coolest things I ever done!
Most people don’t opt for the helicopter ride over the reef, because it
is a bit more expensive, but I would highly recommend just splurging a bit and
getting the flight!
The rest of the time was passed as I mentioned earlier,
morning workouts, afternoon chatting and playing on the internet, and evening
dinners. Every night was pretty
sedate. I did go out in Friday night
with some of the people from the hostel, little bit of dancing and drinking
which was nice. But for the most part it was nice to relax and
tie up the few loose ends from leaving Sydney.
Jared came back on the 1st early in the morning,
having had an amazing time, but happy be to off a boat and dived out. We finished up a bit of packing and picked up
a rental car to drive to Cape Tribulation up north. We haphazardly threw everything into the
teeniest car rentable, and drove north along the coast. As we left Cairns pretty early and the drive
was short, we were able to make the drive leisurely, stopping occasionally for
photo ops and a few hiking trails through the Daintree Rainforest. The big predator in the region are salt water
crocodiles, so basically going near any water source can technically be
incredibly dangerous. Just to preface
you on salt water crocodiles, according to an Australian crocodile researcher
they are the most dangerous predator, because they see hunting more as a sport
than a survival instinct. I guess most
other animals will attach you if they either feel threatened or need food. Salt water crocodiles however, will stalk
prey for weeks if they like. When
researching different locations in northern Australia, warning advise to just
stay away from water sources, but also things like not returning to the same
spots for several days in a row, making sure to change walking routes and again,
just maybe staying away from all water. We
thought about taking a cruise down the river to check out the crocs, but opted
against it in the end. We arrived at our
camp site in Cape Tribulation early evening, set up our tent, and explored a
bit. I was a bit nervous about the
“exploring” part, because we were staying very close to the beach and river
inlet, but Jared assured me he would run slower than me if we saw a croc
;). We actually stubbled upon a man
fishing who asked if we had seen the croc that had been lingering in that area
recently, awesome. When our adventure
hike was done, we had a bit of time before dinner, so we walked some tv on
Jared’s computer, then jumped in the car for a super quick drive down the road
to a roadside restaurant. Yes guys, we
went to an actual restaurant, well like really small town style
restaurant. We had seen on our way in
that this restaurant served crocodile, so we ended up ordering a surprisingly
really good dinner of crocodile, emu and kangaroo miniburgers, accompanied by a
fruit called taro that had been fried up like French fries and another fruit
called choko that was served with a pinch of salt; the sides were a really
great surprise as neither of us had heard of them and they were both very
tasty. Also, the burgers were good, and
crocodile tastes like chicken! After we
finished dinner, it was very dark out, which meant (when camping) it was
bedtime. The next day we had to drive
back to Cairns to make our flight really really early in the morning, so an
early bedtime was necessary.
Usual rocking sleep, until 4:30 am when the alarm went off, ug. We quickly packed up our stuff, Jared made us
coffee and we started the drive back to Cairns.
Apparently, I was pretty tired at that hour because when I pulled out
onto the main road, I drove the first several 100 meters, on the wrong side of
the road…right for you guys, wrong for us, before Jared brought it my
attention. We caught the first ferry
back across the river, and actually arrived in Cairns a little over an hour
before we had to return the car, so we decided to park it in the center of town
and take advantage of the free wifi before heading to the airport.
Once at the airport we had another several hours before we
could even check in. A big shout out to
Luca and Erin for the Scopa card game, that kept us occupied for a while before
heading out to Darwin!
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