DARWIN
After our short flight (nothing to write home about – so I shan’t) we landed at Darwin airport in the early hours of the morning and were reunited with the baggage we checked in at the other end (thank you to Jetstar). With a 5 hour wait in front of us before our connecting flight on to Cairns, we occupied ourselves by heading out to the car park, then catching a few z’s on the arrival hall floor (apparently Ana woke a little earlier than me to capture the flattering shot below).
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| G'day Australia. Darwin Airport Carpark before dawn...beautiful! |
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Counting Wallabies before the next flight.
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After our power nap, we dragged ourselves through security a few hours later and groggily examined the breakfast on offer, after scouring the menus of the 3 outlets to choose from I had snapped awake a little, food prices in Australia are a little higher than expected!
Refuelled on what I think must have been swan eggs and caviar fed bacon Ana examined the Aussie currency in the change – they have the old UK 50p’s (or a coin very similar)! It bodes well that we were amused by the small coin we got as change as it was the only change we got!
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Looks good, tasted better, Savoy prices
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An old 50p! (Well, it looks like it from a distance anyway)
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Off to the gate for our next short stint and after another smooth Jetstar experience we landed in sunny Cairns and piled into the bus waiting at the airport to take us on to our hostel for the next couple of nights.
Note the use of the word ‘hostel’ now we are out of South East Asia and things are a little more pricey we are hitting the backpacker lifestyle for a month or two and will be cooking meals ourselves (The horror!) and staying in places with youngsters and party animals who just want to get drunk (although dorms aren’t necessary just yet though, so we can still get some sleep and I still get to be a little bit anti-social ;)
CAIRNS
The bus dropped us at the door to our hostel for the next few days, ‘Tropic Days’ backpackers hostel, a very well recommended place with a relaxed vibe and great facilities. We checked ourselves in as no-one was around and settled into the place. Good room with a TV and fridge and a couple of very large, well equipped communal kitchens to share – oh, and a huge barbeque! We crashed out for a little and watched some junk TV before pulling on the walking boots again to explore town.
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| Ana recovering from the cold turkey of Asian TV with a spot of Gok Wan rehab. |
Using the maps provided and the handy hints form the staff, we headed out to find our local shopping centre for supplies about a 20 min walk away and had a look around town to orientate ourselves. We picked up lunch from a local food court – and Ana experienced some bizarre reverse culture shock where she couldn't decide what to eat because there was too much choice! Oh the hardship!
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| Argh, too much choice - Ana doesn't know what to have! |
After lunch it was onto the esplanade to see Cairns seafront and we wandered from the harbour at one end with the fancy yachts, past the communal gym equipment – obviously made idiots of ourselves trying it out, saw the public water park and got a really great feel from the place, everyone was outside enjoying themselves and making the most of the great public facilities on offer. I can see why people might want to live here (don’t worry, we’re coming back!) En route back to the hostel we scoped out where the dive shops were to book our diving and snorkelling trip on the Great Barrier Reef. Getting excited!
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| Whats that noise? Bloody hell! |
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| I want to suck your blood...or blood oranges more like! |
Back to the pad and we had a chat with the other residents (the young 'uns) whilst preparing a quick pasta dinner.
The following day, a little later than usual (we slept in from the long journey) we headed back out for a stroll along the esplanade and to the botanical gardens to have a walk around, some interesting plants, trees and birds to be seen. Feeling thoroughly walked, we headed back into town and into Cairns Diving Centre to book our trip for the next day – disaster! Their boat was out of commission and would not be likely to be fixed for a week unless they could get a specific part. We were to check in with them again the next morning to make sure but it didn’t look likely they were heading out so we needed to investigate an alternative. A little uncertain about the next day we stopped into Coles supermarket and picked up something for dinner.
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| Anyone know which way to the botanical gardens? |
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| A flower - there were lots of these at the botanical gardens... |
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| ...and there were some trees too... |
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| Believe it or not, we were given a map to find our way. Can you guess which way the path goes? |
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| Fat pelican, there are a lot of them in Queensland |
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| Nice spot for a rest |
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| I thought an Ibis was a hotel, apparently these guys are too. |
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| Another rest stop |
Got back and spoke with the hostel staff about the dive trip,on their reccomendation we ended up booking with Tusa 6, a slightly more expensive but well reviewed company and decided to head out the next morning with me diving and Ana snorkelling off the outer reefs, just us and the big blue ocean.
With the diving sorted, we cooked,
me manning the inferno of a barbeque (making a big deal of cooking a slab of meat) and Ana doing pretty much everything else but it was a good slap up dinner! After a quick attempt at making some noise, let alone a tune with the didgeridoo in the kitchen (epic fail) it was time for bed.
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| This is the 'something for dinner'. A slab of cow to show to the bbq for a few seconds. Hmmmm....cow! |
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| Hmmmmm....cow, and some garnish! |
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| Should be called a digeri-don't |
At the quay the next morning we began to realise that we’d had quite a lucky change of plan to Tusa 6, the boat was large and looked pretty new and well cared for. The staff were mainly quite young with a good sense of humour and the boat which was built to hold over a hundred people must have had only 40 or 50 of us on board. Good food and drinks on board and good dive / snorkelling briefings. I would certainly recommend them!
We headed out to 2 of the outer reef sites, ‘Turtle Bonnie’ on Saxons reef for 2 dives, very shallow at about 12 m but the visibility was spectacular, you could see the reef bottom from above the water and diving in water that clear was brilliant, surrounded by incredible sea-life and coral reefs, perhaps the most impressive were the giant groupers that were hanging around in the shade, maybe 2/3 as big as me, they made quite a startling sight when you suddenly spotted them next to you!
After the mornings exploits and a great buffet lunch we headed on to Hastings reef to a site named ‘canyons’ again, great visibility and spectacular marine life. It was slightly surreal looking up at the surface and being able to see and wave to the snorkelers on the surface. The visibility was great!
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| Our chariot for the day |
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| Luxury - all set up for you, not used to this sort of service! |
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| See ya later Cairns |
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| Guess the name of our boat |
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| The big blue |
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| All A-OK for now |
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| Ah - I think this bit goes in my mouth |
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| Like a shoal of fish... |
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| Does my nose look big in this? |
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| Ana Snorkelling (I think!) |
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| Still not sure - I have a lot of photos of other women, Ana was not pleased.... |
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| GBR Selfie! |
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| Off to the next site... |
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| Happy and not at all seasick. |
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| See that light blue patch? We're going there! |
Bucket list
item well and truly ticked off! We headed back to shore mid-afternoon and relaxed, sorted out our admin ready for tomorrows onward journey down the coast to Airlee Beach on the Greyhound. See you again Cairns!
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