Advertisement
Published: November 20th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Sunday, November 18th, 2007 - 8:17 p.m. Crikey...we are beat and it's so early. Leaving Cairns and taking the shuttle to Port Douglas was exactly what I've been waiting for. From the "caution kangaroo crossing" signs to the open fields of wallabies....it was quite Australian. We checked out our new home for the next five days and I immediately fell in love with the room, the pool, the environment, and the 10 minute walk to town. The bugs are pretty bad here and the walk over loads my nose in that in the course of half a block you smell a range from flowers to cake to rotting dead animal (probably a plant, but that's what it smells like) to someone grilling. It's really hot and muggy and several times we had some kind of huge bug dive bombing our heads. My favorite part was looking for a place to eat and a wall having about 7 geckos on the wall eating the bugs swarming the light. I
love lizards. LOVE them. Of course I didn't take my camera so I'll have to go back to get a picture.
Almost all of the businesses were closed except for the restaurants. We ate at Paddy's - an irish pub & restaurant - and played Rummy. On the way back we picked up a bunch of brochures with dive trip options. We went with Haba, a recommendation from the shuttle bus driver from Cairns to Port Douglas.
The shuttle picked us up at 7:55 a.m. today to head to the boat. They don't do a lot of advertising other then their store front and word of mouth, so here is my word of mouth promotion - Haba was an excellent company to dive with. The staff was very helpful and friendly - funny too.
After not being aloud to dive (This entry is now being interrupted to report that at this moment, Alex is flipping channels on tv and came across Australian Idol....that's right
Australian Idol. You can leave America, but you can't leave the Idol.) our appreciation and excitement more then doubled. We did three dives. The first one was more or less a warm up since the other four people we were diving with had pretty much only done their certification dives and nothing more yet. My regulator (mouth piece) was leaking. I didn't want to end the dive early so I just kept my eye on Alex in case there was an emergency that I needed to use his extra regulator (we all have one specifically for this reason). The dive over all wasn't that great...by the end my tongue was raw from the spattering salt water and I had awful boyancy control since when I breathed it usually resulted in gaging. Dive two and three were just awsome. They replaced my regulator and even though the water wasn't super clear like when we snorkeled, it was still fantastic to be down there. We saw the biggest eel I've ever seen. We saw tons and tons of eels in Cocos, but I have never seen one this large. It's head was no joke, probably a foot and a half big. The water is rough, it's raining more frequently, and the visibility is less due to a cyclone (hurricane) in the distance.
There was a very young couple diving with us. They just got married in July and look like they might be my age. When they were hired into their jobs a couple years ago they told them they would need
six months off of work for their honeymoon. They've been dating for the last eight years, just wrapped up six weeks in New Zealand and are off to China after Australia. Yeah, I'd take that honeymoon.
During the first week here I was ready to kill Alex and at times wondered why the heck I thought 7 solid weeks together was a good idea. It's been absolutely great since then though...turned out to just be the PMS and I'm back in full swing of that gag me crazy about being with him feeling.
Tomorrow we might go crocodile hunting and grocery shopping.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.244s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 14; qc: 67; dbt: 0.1253s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Maggie Burke
non-member comment
?!?
'Crocodile hunting and grocery shopping'. Thats is one of the funniest lines I've read..what a contradiction. As always great to read your update, glad you finally got to go diving! As deadlines loom in on me I would give anything to be on either your trip or the honeymooning couple's! Take care and..please be careful of the crocodile :).