Cairns - Day 32 & 33

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We woke up dark and ealry to catch our plane taking us from Alice Springs to Cairns. Alice Springs is a 5 hour drive from Uluru - we thought the drive would further our knowlege of the Red Center. Aside from a Kangaroo that was crossing the road in front of our car, it pretty much confirmed that there really is not much out there! It was Easter Sunday in Alice Springs so there really wasn't much happening. We spent a few hours walking along the main streets and decided to head to the airport.

Landing in Cairns was like arriving in Hawaii. Upon deboarding the plane via stairs down to the tarmack and we were instantly hit with the tropical, humid air. We checked into our hostel and booked a snorkel trip to the great barrier reef the next day. Our boat trip was on the "Passions of Paradise" (oooohhh....). The boat ride took 2 hours trip to get out to the outer reef. The weather was not great when we left but the downpour really started about 20 minutes off shore and the waves started getting rough. There was plenty of room inside the cabin for all 80 of us passengers, but not the place you want to be when you are tossing about on the ocean. We decided to hang out on the back of the boat in the open air - that also put us right in the middle of the all the seasick passengers (not us!). : ( We got really lucky, the weather cleared just as we arrived at our snorkel spot. They shuttled us to a small sand bar/bird refuge called Michaelmas Cay. From there we entered the water. It was amazing. The coral was so diverse and colorful. There were not as many fish as we thought there would be, probably because of the rough ocean. We did swim with several turtles and Molly even saw a reef shark! Yessss! It was great!

The trip back was more calm. The crew was really great on the whole trip and definitely made our experience more fun. When we arrived back in Cairns we sat down and planned the rest of our Aussie East Coast route. Not much time and A LOT of ground to cover...off we go!

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