The Tropics

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It was good to be back on a plane again, Alice Springs to Cairns in 1 hour 50 mins... phew. You really don't realise just how big Australia is until you've travelled it by road for a while. We were enjoying every minute of this particular plane journey. As it was a clear day you could see most of the land we were covering, 99% of it desert, but as we came into Queensland towards the coast it started to get much greener, then the sea as we turned to land at Cairns airport.

We stayed at a nice hostel call the Bohemia Resort, it was a couple of Km out from the main strip but had a free regular shuttle bus operating all day. The rooms were the cleanest we'd seen so far and our dorm was empty for the first night which is always nice. One problem though, which was evident almost straight away was mosquitios, they like us alot. We sprayed on loads of repellent, booked up a Great Barrier Reef trip for the following day and then headed into town for a look around.

It was very warm here, apparantly in the winter if the temperature drops anything below 10 degrees celcius the locals start panicking about catching colds.. ridiculous really. Town was nice, there is a massive outdoor swimming complex with sand to act as a beach right next to the real beach, it was packed too at 8.30pm. Apparantly the beach isn't too safe to swim in there as there are crocodile's that swim in from the nearby Mangroves, so this mini beach was built up from the beach instead, there are still croc warning signs up though as they have been known to try and get into the pool. After a walk around and some food we headed back for some sleep.

7am start, we're getting quite used to these now. We headed for the Reef Terminal and boarded our Catamaran which was to take us out to the Reef. It was with a company called Passions of Paradise and I would highly recommend them to anyone for a day trip. Beautiful Catamaran, great diving spots and friendly staff. First port of call was a reef called Paradise Reef. We had to wear stinger suits as this was jellyfish season, so we got them on and snorkelled round the reef for about 45 minutes. It was excellent, the reef was beautiful and there was so much sea life- giant and normal size parrot fish, bat fish, giant clams, and an abundance of colourful coral. One of the kids in the group got quite a nasty sting from some jellyfish, across the back of his neck and on both hands - the parts the stinger suit doesn't cover.

After this we sailed to a Cay which is basically a small sand island in the middle of the reef, the one we headed to was called Michealmas Cay, it's a bird nesting sanctuary with part of the beach roped off for us to sit on, most of the island is for the birds and you get fined if you step onto the restricted area. We swam onto the island from the boat which moored about 200 metres away, there was loads of coral gardens on the approach to the island to see too, there seemed to be less fish though, probably because of all the birds. Once on the island it was stunning, all the birds made alot of noise and it was like being on some sort of BBC Wildlife documentary.

After this we made our way back to the mainland and sat out on deck having a few beers with the rest of the group. All in all a very satisfying day trip. We went out for dinner that night with one of the guys we met but were too tired to head into the bars to meet up with some others.

The next day was a catch up and relaxation day. We went to Backpackers World and sorted out our itinery for the East Coast, bought our bus tickets to Sydney, went out for dinner and then a few cold beers in the evening. We decided we were going to head south and not bother heading up to Cape Tribulation or Port Douglas, so next port of call was the Whitsundays...

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Photos

The view from the plane..
..greenery at last

Michealmas Cay..
..taken from the Catamaran

Laura snorkelling...
..strike a pose

Martin snorkelling...
..all ok, no jellyfish stings yet