Cowboy Jake Down Under

Finally, I’m going on the wine tour that I have been anticipating for weeks. Our day begins at 9:00am when our tour guide Peter picks us up in front of Nick’s place. There are two young English people already in the van and with the addition of Nick and I; we had our group for the day. It is always nice to have a small group because you get more personalized service at the wineries…and we got just that. As we headed for the sub-tropical hills of Tamborine Mountain Peter explained how he and his wife had started their wine tour service and informed us that he was in the Australian Navy for 20 years before changing professions. He had an hour to feed us information about the region we would be visiting and the history ... read more

Okay, so I’m a little behind on my blogging but I’m going to make up for it right now. I might not go into excruciating detail about everything we’ve done since my last post, but I’ll make sure to highlight the salient points. Fishing in Cairns was a really interesting experience. We went river fishing with our, shall I say… rustic looking guide? His name was Darryl and he had more pornography on his mobile phone than any human being should ever have. He actually ran out of memory and was complaining about it on the boat. The name of the charter service was: Fish Tales and Nick and I certainly took a few home with us. The day started out by making our trip into the muddy looking river to catch some bait. Darryl would ... read more

“The Great Barrier Reef” It has long been a dream of mine to visit the Great Barrier Reef. Watching programs on the discovery channel and various documentaries has sparked a deep interest in this underwater city of biological diversity. November 19th, 2008 will forever be etched in my memory as the day that I dove below the surface of the Ocean and swam alongside this ancient and sacred Mecca for marine enthusiasts. At 8:00am Nick and I boarded the ‘Tusa T5’ which is an ultra modern, 24meter catamaran. It takes a maximum of 60 passengers and features a sun deck, freshwater showers, air conditioned lounge, sunken dive platform and several LCD televisions. It was very impressive and travelled at about 20 nauts as we made our way out to the outer barrier reef. Along the way ... read more

Nick and I arrived in Cairns yesterday at 9:00am on a Qantas flight. Getting off of the aircraft we immediately noticed the intense humidity, Cairns is known as one of the most humid places in Australia. At 9:00am it was already 30C and we drenched with sweat before we could even take our shirts off. We were picked up from the airport and shuttled to our hostel which is called NJoy. It is pretty nice and has a swimming pool and pool table among other things. At $35.00 dollars a night for a room with a fridge, air conditioning (everything in Australia has air conditioning), two beds and a shower...pretty good deal considering we only spend time in the room when we sleep. At 12:00pm we were picked up from the hostel by Cairns Sky Diving ... read more

I guess you were expecting to hear about my fishing trip but unfortunately it was cancelled due to high winds. This is the second time that I have had a trip cancelled for this reason. I was a little disappointed but did not let it ruin my day. Instead of fishing, I went to one of the local noodle bars and ordered the Mee Gee Seafood box which was incredibly delicious. It had prawns, tofu, squid, scallops and peppers with a very unique and tangy sauce covering the thick hokkien noodles. There was a wine store not too far away so I decided to pair the seafood dish with a nice Australian white, a Semillon-sauvignon blanc (Yalumba 2007). The wine had very crisp flavors and went quite well with the seafood and the tangy sauce. It ... read more