Friday 2/8/2008- Monday 2/11/2008:
Day 180-183: Cairns, Australia
We arrived to Cairns three hours after Matt and Sandra, and we picked up our “East Coast” Car Rental- which was a whopping $16/per day. With tax and insurance (as no credit cards cover Australia), it ended up being $25/per day—not too shabby. We headed up to Palm Cove for our beach holiday house rental. We hung out at the house and had Matt’s infamous enchiladas for dinner.
We decided to tackle Cairns with one day of waterfalls and hiking and one day on the Great Barrier Reef. We headed south to Babina Bolders, where we were caught in a downpour—but didn’t seem to mind, since we were hiking around the wet rainforest. The highlight was to Paranella Park, where we took a ‘student discounted tour with an additional 10% off’ to see “the most incredible discovery in the past 10 years.” We all agreed the park was very interesting, as it’s castles were built by a Spanish man, completely out of concrete. Somehow, not to bore you with the details, the park got lost and over grown, and this ‘very energetic couple’ stumbled upon it about 10-15 years ago, on their visit to Cairns.
On our final day in Queensland, we took a tour out to the Great Barrier Reef. Luckily, the Dramamine worked wonders, and Jill, Matt, Dermot and Katie enjoyed diving on two spots on Hastings Reef. Our skipper’s last name was Hastings, and of course, his forefathers found and named the reef—which he claims is the best on the Great Barrier. We got to see turtles, all types of tropical fish—including “Nemos.” The reef is a good 20kms out from the land, so it was very intimidating to jump into the ocean without any land in sight. The water was incredibly warm, and besides Dermot leaving a little Irish momento (that slipped off his hand), the day was just spectacular.
Back in Palm Cover, we enjoyed our last dinner at a tasty Italian restaurant on the main street in town. We played one round of Poker before hitting the hay— where Katie found her bed covered in small bugs. Needless to say, she slept very …very poorly that night, and the ‘ichy’ feeling remained all over her body for a good 2 days.
Before catching our flight back on Monday, we visited the Cairns Casino, where we all made nice ‘donations.’ All five of us enjoyed the quick 2.5 hour flight back to Sydney, where stellar Qantas fed us tasty food and ice cream popsicles. Heavenly!