Cairns

I arrived in Carins, Australia at 10 pm. I saw an ad in the airport for JJ Backpackers and caught a shuttle there to spend the night.
It was pouring rain the next day. Absolutely miserable!! Everything was flooding and people were soaked right through. Thank goodness it's warm here. One thing I do like about the tropics, difficult to get cold. I spent the day seeing the town and planning my activities for the next couple days. Cairns is definitely a backpacker town. Full of them everywhere! And they drink a lot! Lots of night life, a place where many young travellers go to just party, and uncontrollably at that. Not really my thing. I just want to do the activities.
My had 2 bunk mates, Veronica from Brazil and Jamie from England, and we went out to dinner together. Our hostel have free meal vouchers for a pub in town called "The Woolshed" so we ate there. The upgrade meals were good, but the free backpacker meal was pretty bland. No different than making pasta and putting the sauce from the jar on top of it yourself. But it was free...
Then we chatted in our room until bedtime. The hostel was run by really friendly people and had a shuttle running into town almost every hour so that was nice. What I didn't like was that it was pretty dirty and had no soap in the bathrooms. It was kind of like a swimming pool, you know, how wet the tile floor is, with all the hair and dirt... ya, nice. I'm so used to New Zealand's hostels that it'll be an adjustment to Australia's. Apparently, Oz has low standards when it comes to hostels. Well, boo to that! I'll just have to suck it up and make the best of it!
In the morning, I took the city bus to the Skyrail. It's a cable car ride that goes over top the rainforest canopy and has 2 stop offs before ending in the town Kuranda. My first stop was Red Peak Station where you have a guided walking tour along a boardwalk to learn a little about the plants. It was neat learning about how the plants compete for sunlight. They have to reach the top of the trees to get the sun so some have spikes to attach to other plants or coiled ends of leaves to attach to itself once wrapped around a tree, like a hug. Of course, you have different ones like the Stranger Fig that germinates on top of the tree and have the roots grow down to the ground. These plants get enough water from the rain, oxygen form the air and nutrients from the hosts tree bark (there's always moss growing on the trees). So that's how they survive till they meet the earth and then strangle the host tree till it dies. Sad, but looks really cool :)
The second stop was at Barron Falls Station where there was a large rushing waterfall. My last stop was the market town of Kuranda. Just shops and exhibits here. I went to the Kuranda Koala Gardens first, where there were sleeping wombats, wallabies you can pet and feed, reptiles and of course koalas. I did the photo shot with one so I could hold her. She was 6 years old and super cuddly. She really holds on and liked to be close to your body. I was sad to let her go :( I want one, lol.
Then I headed over to Birdworld where they let all of their colourful birds fly free (except the cassowary, those can be dangerous. Very large birds, kinda like emu but colourful). I had a Blue and Yellow Macaw land on my day pack as soon as I walked in and he started chewing at my water bottle lid. A bit of environmental enrichment I guess. While he was doing that, I looked around and was petting this sweet Rainbow Lorikeet when he got the lid off. All I could here was "watch your earring!" but it was too late. He managed to get my stud out in 2 seconds, and gently may I add. Cheeky bugger that one, lol! No problem, it was a plastic gem anyway so easily replaced. I just told the workers so they new he ate it. He'll have a sparkly poo eventually ;)
My last exhibit was the Australian Butterfly Sanctuary. It was my favorite. The butterflies fly freely and there were free guided aviary tours to learn there cycle and behaviour. They had a breeding laboratory where they clean the collected eggs to free them of any disease, then placed in nurseries for the caterpillars to hatch, grow and eat. Once a pupae, they go into another enclosure so their wings can dry before going into the sanctuary with all the others to breed, fly and eat. Really cool. My favorite was the male Birdwing with the brilliant green and yellow colours. I caught the bus home from there and had a quiet free dinner and went to bed.
The next day I did a day tour up to Cape Tribulation. The girl who sat beside me was Louise from England, and we hit it off from the start. Such a nice girl. Our guide, George, told us "man eating" crocodiles stories all the way up to our first stop at Mossman Gorge where we had a walk to see the river and forest. Unfortunately, with all the rain, the current was a bit too strong for swimming.
We had our morning tea, did a quick stop at the Alexandra Range lookout (couldn't see much with the rainclouds) and had a guided walk along the Marrdja Boardwalk. We saw 2 Dragon lizards on the walk.
From there we stopped at Cape Tribulation main beach for a short while. But with the rain, everyone just hopped onto the bus quickly. Couldn't swim in the water there anyway because of the Box Jellyfish. Apparently, they come close to the shore to fresh water for spawning, then the rainfall washes them back to sea.
From there we made a pit stop at the Daintree ice-cream company where they make ice cream from the fruit they grow in their orchard. It was organic and the flavors were banana, blueberry, wattle seed (mocha tasting) and my favorite, soursop (lemon/lime taste). From there we hopped onto the boat for our Daintree River Croc cruise. We saw 2 young crocodiles and a tree snake. So that was good. Also some nice birds.
After we did a quick drive tour through Port Douglas on the way back to Cairns. Louise and I made plans to meet up for diner. We met up at a place called Tequila where they had $2 backpacker meals and we socialized for the evening before turning in.
We met up the next day and spent the day lounging by the lagoon in town where we had a swim, then ate a late lunch at a cafe. It was a lovely day. We said our goodbyes and hoped to catch up again down the road.
I had a quiet dinner and planned my dive for the next day and went to bed early.
I booked my dive with Silverswift. It included 3 dives on the outer reef (which is the best part of the GBR, also the northern parts), morning and afternoon tea and coffee with either biscuits/muffins or cake and a nice buffet style lunch for around A$260. We set out for the 2 hr ride at 8:30 am and I was glad the water was calmer than it had been during the week. It was rough even for us on a calm day. 3 people ended up using their vomit bags and the other half of the group were sucking on ice cubes watching the horizon outside to help with the seasickness. Even I was nauseous at the last 15 mins of the ride. It was pretty funny.
Our first dive was Coral Gardens at Flynn Reef. My buddy for the day was a nice young man my brother's age named Jack, from Finland. We saw 1 White Tip shark, 3 Kuhl sting rays, giant clams, of course loads of tropical fish and a Notodoris (yellow nudibranch or sea slug). Not often you see those.
On our second dive along Gordons on Flynn Reef, our highlights were: a sleeping White Tip shark lying on the sand under a reef, 2 Hawsbill sea turtles, 2 Green sea turtles brass drummers and boxer shrimp.
We went out to Milln Reef for our last dive at Pools. The current was a little stronger here. What was neat here was a Lionfish! I'm glad they keep to themselves as they're quite poisonous. No touchy!! Also saw a puffer fish and spaghetti worms.
I was happy that I rented a camera for the day from Cairns digital. I managed to get some descent photos, but I still have a long way to learn with underwater photography. The company burned all my photos on a DVD for me, all for A$45. It was worth it. When I got back, I had a nice shower and booked my flight to Darwin.
Today I'm heading to the airport at 10:30 am and it takes 3 hours to get to Darwin. It supposed to be even warmer there. Around 32 C and with high humidity... It'll be sticky!!