We landed at Cairns, a touristic city on the north east of Australia, at about 4:30 in the morning, didn’t sleep much on the plane since it was not a long enough flight for sleeping pills so it was going to be one of those days.
For those of you who have not visited Australia, Cairns is the base for many activities you can do, cheif of which is snorkling/diving the great coral reef.
As we were waiting for our room to be available (Private room with ensuite bath in a backpackers hotel – $86AUD per night) we went and strolled the town. We saw a very nice little town slowly waking up and getting more and more lively.
As the great barrier reef is the main attraction you can book from here, most places offered exactly that, to be honest, it was pretty much every place, including a camping gear store we went into to pass the time.
We looked around, found a shopping mall, a supermarket, bought a data sim for our phone, some extremely overpriced (and spicy) indian food and did some comparison shopping for the GBR snorkling tour, until we ended booking from our YHA hostel a fast boat that should take us out to the outer great barrier reef the next day with 3 separate diving locations (around $200AUD ~$180USD per person)
We went to our room which was on the 3rd floor (no elevator – yes 2 suitcases weighing 50 lbs each and two backpacks – good times). The room was very basic but after lugging up the luggage and not sleeping for what felt like 3 weeks, it was exactly what we needed. We took a “quick” 4 hour nap and started planning our next few days. A frustrating activity that will be the bane of our existence for the duration of the trip. But, we made some decisions, met a couple of brits who turned out to be brother and sister and who we would talk to pretty much every night in Cairns and compare experiences and swap ideas about where to go next (and also complain about the prices of evrything and how it stinks to have to plan your next days) went to bed after talking to them until 1am only to wake up the next day at the unreasonable hour of 7am to catch our boat.
We fought our way out of bed and walked to the wharf where we will catch our boat to the Great Barrier Reef, when we arrived, we were told to go stand in a line inside of a building where they took about $30AUD more for some reason and we were off!
The boat was actually quite nice but the ride to the outer reef was long and after a small brekky* we entertained ourselves with looking at a little baggy that they sold on board claiming you can put your phone in it and take pictures (We didn’t take the big camera with us since it’s not waterproof). I suggested sivan use her phone, she suggested I use mine and since we were both too scared to destroy the phones, neither of us bought it (and we both regretted it afterwards). If you go to Australia, do yourself a favor and buy a waterproof camera for $100 in the states before you leave – you will seriously regret it if you don’t.
When we arrived at the first dive site, we were told to put on our stinger suits – what are those you ask? Well, in Australia, most of the living organisms really want to kill humans, stingers are one such organism.
| Marine Stingers – Yet another thing that wants to kill you. These vicious little creatures, also known as box jellyfish are probably the most poisonouns creatures in the ocean, they are extremely small – about an inch in diameter and are transparent so you won’t know you’re near them until you’re stung. After you’re stung you will develop slight redness in the area, some localized sweating and later, neural symptoms and death, and indeed, every year a few unlucky people die from stinger bites. We were fortunate enough to be in Australia in the height of what they call “stinger season” – it’s also called summer since it’s about 6 months out of the year |
We wore the silly Lycra suits and jumped into the warm inviting waters of the pacific ocean. It was really amazing. We had done snorkling in the past in Hawaii and while we thought that was incredible, it did not prepare us for the GBR. Imagine floating motionless over a ocean filled with life, with nothing to obstruct your view, extremely clear waters all the way down to the reef where you see hundreds if not thousands of fish of many colors, shapes and sizes, just swimming around you and ignoring you completely, going about their fishy business. It’s quite an exprerience.
We did that for the first half of the day, two more stops, a seafood lunch (was weird eating the fish we just saw but whatever) and back to Cairns.
When we arrived, we were pumped up with energy and decided to go get some pool time at the beatiful artifical lagoon they put in the town since they don’t really have a beach, but not before we had Tim-Tam and Bubblegum ice-cream.
After that, headed back to the hostel, where we met our friends again, drank a bit and went to sleep, tomorrow we’re driving for the first time in Australia (on the wrong side of the road…)
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