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Published: October 24th 2005
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Hot and humid - that's the way it's been for the last week up here in northern Queensland. I guess that's to be expected! We flew up to Cairns from Brisbane and then went directly to a nice two-bedroom apartment in Port Douglas (1 hour further north) for five days. Port Douglas is a beautiful small town with a lot of attractions. The town was built for tourism, but it still has a lot of charm. Thanks so much Sheryl for giving us the advice to stay in Port Douglas instead of Cairns - we did end up staying in Cairns for two nights, and it is not nearly as nice (to put in mildly)!
We arrived in Port Douglas on a Monday and Chris and I both alternated doing a quick 2 hour snorkelling trip the next day (I went on the trip and then ran back to take care of Nathan while Chris went out on the next boat). The snorkelling was amazing - there were as many different and beautiful types of coral as there were fish! Then on the next day, we decided to see how Nathan would do on a tour. We knew he wouldn't
Playing with sand
Four Mile Beach - Port Douglas make it on a full day tour, so we found one from 9am to 1pm that went to the Daintree rainforest. We went on a boat ride to try and spot a 'saltie' (salt water crocodile). We did end up seeing one, although it was nine months old and therefore only around 30cm long (we had hoped to see the 5 meter long one)! Oh well, it ended up being a nice day out and Nathan did very well. Nancy arrived from Vancouver the next day and we just hung around town. Chris was the first to go scuba diving the next day - he went out on a day long tour by himself while Nancy and I stayed with Nathan for the day. The next day was the day we were most worried about - it was the day that Nancy and I were going diving for the day while Chris stayed back with Nathan. The reason we were worried was because I'd never been away from Nathan for a full day since he's still breastfed and he hasn't had a bottle for months. We bought some formula and had brought a bottle from home and hoped for the
best (luckily he does eat baby food, so we knew he wouldn't starve if he didn't take the bottle). Our theory was that if he was hungry enough, he'd eat! We came all the way to Australia, so we definitely wanted to dive the Great Barrier Reef! The day ended up going fine - Nathan did take a good amount of the formula and had a great day with dad. Nancy and I had an excellent day - we did three dives and saw some amazing fish and coral. We even saw 5 foot reef sharks on two of our dives (note that the pictures I posted of us diving and the fish were taken by a photographer who dove with us). Diving is such a freeing thing to do - you're suspended in mid-water and you feel as though you're flying over beautiful coral and fish. It was really nice to know that I could leave for a day and that Nathan wouldn't cry the whole day! Then we all headed to Cairns for two nights - we skimped a bit too much on the accomodations, though - the room we had was pretty dingy and the bottom of
the toilet leaked constantly onto the floor (you can imagine what the rest of the room looked like). We decided to stick it out since we were only going to be there for two nights. Cairns was not a very nice city - I'm sure it used to be a great place to go, but it seems really run down now. Our advice to anyone heading that way is to stay in Port Douglas and skip Cairns all together!
Okay, it had to happen - we had 'one of those days'. We decided that since Nathan did so well on the half day trip to the rainforest, that we'd book another tour to take an old train to a rainforest village (1.5 hours), spend 1 hour looking around the village and then take a Skyrail (cable car) back (40 min). What sounded good in theory, didn't work out so well in practice! Since it was a really old train (1870s or so), there was no A/C. Nathan was fine for the first half hour, and then he got too hot (it was sweltering outside, but there was a bit of a breeze from the open windows of the train).
We stripped him down to his diaper and then poured water on his head to cool him down. It did help, but he was so upset that he wouldn't eat or sleep (which he really needed to do). Let's just say it was a long train ride! We especially felt bad for the couple sitting across from us who are expecting their first baby in January! I guess they got a good taste of what it's like on a bad day with a baby! We got to the rainforest town and immediately tried to find a place with A/C. We did find a few restaurants with it, but they had it running while all of their doors and windows were open which didn't make it that cool after all. We went to one anyway and tried to feed Nathan again (or at least get him to sleep) but he wasn't cool enough. We ended up spending $15 on a small plate of plain nachos (we had to buy something in the restaurant) and then left to catch our Skyrail cable car back. Luckily the cable car was nice and cool inside and Nathan ate and fell asleep so we were
Playing with a grapefruit
In our Port Douglas apartment. able to enjoy the beautiful rainforest views (but we couldn't speak during this trip for fear of waking him). All this excitement on Nancy's fifth day with us - I guess now she knows what she's gotten herself into! Anyway, a day like that was bound to happen sometime, and I guess it's a good sign that we've almost gone halfway through our trip with only one of these episodes.
Traveling with a baby is definitely more challenging than traveling on your own, but it's pretty much what we expected. One positive aspect is that we've met a lot more people than we usually do - Nathan tends to stare at strangers (without blinking) for long periods of time, so that usually breaks the ice! We've also met a lot of other people with babies and struck up conversations.
So far, some of our favourite things in Australia are:
- beautiful beaches
- lush tropical plants everywhere with huge colourful flowers
- tons of colourful birds (birds we have as pets at home are flying wild everywhere here)
- mmmm....ginger beer!
- mmmmmmm....Tim Tam's (a yummy chocolate wafer cookie)!
So far, we've been staying in apartment-style accomodations.
Daintree Rainforest
The oldest rainforest in the world. It's been great, because restaurant food is so expensive here so we're able to make our own meals most of the time (for example a muffin is $3, a bacon and egg breakfast is around $7 and spaghetti bolognaise is around $15). We had planned on camping during the next part of our trip, but we're not sure anymore since the apartments are working out so well. Oh well, I guess we'll see...
We're doing a road trip from Brisbane to Sydney for the next part of our journey - hopefully we'll be able to navigate the many roundabouts while driving on the left hand of the road successfully!
By the way, if you want another perspective on our trip, you can check out Nancy's blog - http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Nancy-in-Australia/.
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Darcy
non-member comment
nancy's blog
Wow, nancy's blog had a different view of what happened than what you have.. haha.. just kidding. Sounds like things are going well - my fav pic is the one where Nathan is contemplating eating the sand. ;) Cya l8r /D