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Published: March 27th 2009
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March 23-24h, 2009
Whitsunday Islands and Cairns
Yesterday the weather was overcast, blustery and generally awful. We chose not to go on for a 2 hr catamaran ride for an hour and a half dive over the Great Barrier Reef(198.00$ US) pity, everybody was seasick and most were afraid to get in the water because it was so rough! Instead we tendered into Hamilton Island, I rode the free shuttle around the island, saw THE site and then joined Terry at a resort where we walked the dirty beach and again chose not to swim with the dangerous stinging jelly fish, we did a circle of the doughnut shaped pool and changed into our street clothes. We walked THE main street, bought a meat pie and an Australian rum and coke and shared our snack on a lovely picnic table looking over the marina (because we don’t eat enough on the ship). It started pouring, we came home and read: lovely. Some of our mates rented a golf cart and rode around for an hour and got drenched, sorry we missed that treat
Today, we met up with bloggers from Cruise Critic (Terry’s blog!) and with them, not with the ship
excursion, we went touring. We met at the Cairns Casino, gambling seems big in Australia and NZ, and met up with Larry and Ellen (Naomi2), Lois and Ken (SlotL and TabK), Yvonne (doggie lady) and a Peter. We boarded a bus which picked up many other passengers from many different hotels in town; we called it a scenic tour of the city! We arrived at Freshwater Railway Station and waited for the Kuranda Scenic Rail train which brought us up to an altitude of 394 m above sea level on steep cliffs to the town where we could have shopped (always same made in China tourist stuff, or butterfly sanctuary or wildlife park or koala gardens or bird world- we have seen all that at Bruce and Vicky’s already. So we toured the town on the free shuttle, and made our way to the Skyrail, which is a Rainforest Cableway above and along a few peaks covered in mostly (rainforest) flora, very few birds, no animals to be seen, taking us to the third attraction: lovely Tjapukai Cultural Park. At the park, a team of Aboriginals entertained and educated us on their Creation Beliefs, their musical instruments (Didgeridoo) and their
weapons ( Spear and Boomerang); we also were told about their Bush Foods and Remedies. The grand finale was at the Tjapukai Dance Theatre where we saw a show summarizing everything we had learned, very nice. Then Home James at 3(took an hour) for a sail away at 6. We had a lovely day, saw 3 attractions for about half the price of the ship organized excursion where our friend Benoit from World Cruise 2006 fame works.
Sail away was lovely, we invited Ron and wife-Jean ( FreddieH-Cruise Critic)) to join us at dinner and he produced a 20 glasses of wine card for 67.50$ +15% which I had been asking our wine stewart about for the last 8 days! Surprise, it is available!!! So now I finally have my card and my wine at dinner, lovely!
Hi to all of you who are contacting us with news from home and thank you, also
Terry is not really in blogging mode, he thinks about it, grabs the ukulele and hours go by before he comes out of his musical trance and it is time to do something, so no blog yet but he is planning to work on it tomorrow!
Love to all and keep the news coming
We are ending our cruise in the Great Barrier Reef, soon to be in Darwin
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