First stop - Cairns, Australia

After a very long flight (13 hours to Hong Kong + 7 hours to Cairns), we finally made it! We flew Cathay Pacific which was really nice...individual TVs with tons of movies, video games, music and TV shows, packages with comfy socks and toothbrushes, and lots of food! Arrived in Cairns, Australia at 9 am in the morning on March 4. Fortunately we were able to sleep a fair bit on our flight, so we had the energy to look around Cairns.

First day (March 5)...

We took a bus from the airport straight to our hostel, and fortunately we were the only two on it, so the friendly driver took us on a quick tour of Cairns! Cairns isn't all that exciting, although the Australians that we've met so far have been super friendly. Cairns is definitely a tourist town full of young people, and it has a great night life (although unfortunately so far we've been too tired to take advantage of it! Hopefully tonight!) There are no beaches but there's a “lagoon,” which is basically a big, free outdoor pool. We swam in that our first day and looked around. Cairns basically reminds us of Waikiki, Hawaii, for a younger target group (hostels instead of hotels) and without the beaches. There's a nice waterfront walkway and grassy area and a strip of little cafes and souvenir shops along the street. While we were exploring our first day, we came across a strip of huge trees with some sort of very loud animal noises coming from it. We looked up and realized that it was filled with bats!!! Apparently they were actually flying foxes. There were hundreds! Very cool to see.

Our hostel is very cute and cheap. It has a nice shady area with palm trees and gardens in the back, with a pool, lawn chairs and a pool table. It also comes with a free meal at a local pub, which is pretty good!

The second day (March 6)...

We rented a car (very cheap! Only $50 including insurance!) and drove up to Cape Tribulation. We had to take a cable ferry, followed by a VERY EXCITING windy, narrow drive through the rainforest. I (Sandra) drove, and had a GREAT time doing so. Driving on left side of road was a bit scary at first and took some getting used to. Good thing we didn't go for the standard. We stopped at a few beach lookouts and walks in Cape Tribulation,

and then went on a couple of boardwalks through Daintree National Park. We saw a couple spiders that were almost the size of Sandra's hand, some cassowaries (birds), a lizard, very cool trees and rainforest plants. We really loved exploring the tropical rainforest here!

On the way back we stopped at Mossman Gorge. Unfortunately the suspension bridge was closed for repair, but we were able to swim in a river swimming hole very similar to Lynn Canyon, but warmer!

It was perfect because it is HOT here, 30 degrees by 9 am!! We stopped in Port Douglas for dinner and thought it was a very cute town (too bad we had already booked our hostel in Cairns for another night!!) But WOW is dinner expensive here! Even a pasta dish is $25! Guess we'll be using our free meals and eating in the hostel as often as possible...

Today (March 7)...

We went on a reef tour today and it was AMAZING!!!! We went snorkelling at 2 outer reef locations. At the first one, we found (all by ourselves!) a reef shark, moray eel (it poked its head out for a while and opened its mouth...not sure if it was eating, getting its teeth cleaned by a little fish that hovered around it, or trying to scare us off), tons of colourful fish and a shark-looking fish about 3 feet long with spots that was hiding in the coral...going to have to figure out what that one was! At the second spot we saw a ray of some sort (with spots), a school of spotted squid, a crocodile ga? Ma? I can't remember what and couldn't quite decipher the Aussie accent, but it is a long, thin fish with big teeth; a school of huge fish (about a metre long) with humps on their heads, and lots of sea cucumbers!! This place was FULL of little white jellyfish, and at first we were really scared they were poisonous (although we were wearing stinger suits), but we soon found out they were harmless. Thank god, because you pretty much had to paddle them out of your way to get around!!

Heading out for our free meal...last night in Cairns, next stop – Townsville stopover and then Magnetic Island for 2 days! Will post pictures next chance we get!