23rd March - 31st March Cairns and Great Barrier Reef

Days spent:
Cairns: 9

As we only had a few days left with the Hippie Camper, we tried to make the most of the area around Cairns, these being Kuranda, SkyRail, Palm Cove, the Atherton Tablelands, and Mossman Gorge again.

The first thing we did, was go to AJ Hacketts to watch people bungy jump, as we thought this would be great entertainment. Unfortunately, we only saw one person and she didn't make a sound or flap when she fell - very dull! Obviously if we had the money, we would have done it, honest! Well, Vik had done it before and really didn't have any intention of doing it again.

On the way back to the campervan we saw the largest Monitor Lizard we'd seen. He was huge! About 3 metres long, like a dinosaur walking around freely in the carpark. Shame we didn't have our cameras with us.

We drove up the Atherton Tablelands through the rainforest towards Moreeba, and spontaneously stopped off at Jaques Coffee Plantation Café on the way. It had become apparent that this area was Australia's Coffee capital, and it was interesting to see coffee bean plants, as we'd never seen them before. The café was situated in the plantation estate, which took at least 10mins to get to off the main road. Here we saw Kookaburras and giant termite mounds, aptly named Termite Avenue, by the plantation owners. Of course we had to try the coffee, and with coffee, you have to have cake...mmmm. 'T was delicious.

We tried to do a route around the Barron river and loop back, but as with most Australian roads, the roads just run out and turn into dusty road tracks, so we ended up having to go back the way we came which had taken us a couple of hours. We did see a Blue-Winged Kookaburra, (see pic "Kookaburra") which made it worth while, as these can only be found in New Guinea and Northern Australia.

The next day we decided it the weather was good and clear enough to take the SkyRail (oddly named, as it was a cable car rather than anything on rail). The SkyRail climbs up the side of a rainforest covered mountain just above the canopy, offering great views of Cairns and the surrounding area. It would be have been pointless going in low cloud.

The first stop was "Red Peak" where we got off for a short boardwalk in the rainforest before getting back on for the next section. This took us up over the top of the mountain and into a huge valley covered with thick rainforest as far as the eye could see.

The second stop took us to a view point of the Barron Falls, then on to the tourist hotspot, Kuranda where we spent about 3 hours wandering around. Vik had previously decided to buy an opal on her visit to Oz, and as there were bargains here, she bought herself a small crystal opal necklace.

That evening we had the sad task of cleaning and packing up the campervan for its return the next day. Luckily, we didn't have to give it back until 4:30pm the next day, so we had enough time (as the weather was sunny and hot), to see Palm Cove, and go to Mossman Gorge again for a swim in the fresh cold water.

After our lunch of homemade sandwiches, we made our way back to Cairns and dropped our bags of at an old Queenslander Pub that had recently become a Backpackers.

We dropped off the van, and tried to retrieve our money back from the toaster and kettle we had to buy on our first night (as they didn't work). They were very grieved to give us money, as we had lost the original receipt from 50 days ago. Even though we'd spent over $3500 and were willing to use them in NZ too, they didn't have the good will to accept the hand written receipt for $46. We were extremely peed at their level of customer service, so we haughtily took back the kettle to spite them (later sold to a second-hand store). Well, they did get one free toaster out of us, and it was on principle rather than cost we acted this way.

There are many bargain deals to get in Cairns, such as great offers for trips to the Barrier Reef for diving, and even meal offers, which we took full advantage of. We spent a couple of nights eating at a local Irish Pub that had offers for steak and chips for only $5 (that's 2.30 GBP!), although you did have to buy a drink.

We spent one morning, swimming in the lagoon before leisurely taking breakfast. Afterwards, we sat with a travel agent to get advice on the best deals for snorkeling and diving. We first book our snorkelling trip with the (secret)knowledge that we'd get offered 20% on the day, if we booked another trip with them, so we then booked our diving trip at that time, making it a bit of a bargain.

Once we booked our first trip, and had in mind the diving trip for the next day, we hired an under-water camera for the two days, as it would be nice to have some pictures of us diving, and of the little (and huge) fishes we would see.

Both trips the reefs were fantastic, and would recommend Silver Series for diving and snorkeling, as they treated us very well with lots nice cakes, fruit and hot and cold buffet. Our first snorkeling trip was to some small outer reefs called Flynn Reef and Milln Reef.
We saw many fish that we'd seen in Thailand, and more, including Puffer Fish, Blue Spotted Stingray, Sweetlips, and Anemone Fish.

It was another early get up the next morning, which was helped by the smoke alarm going off with our alarm at 6am. What didn't help was the previous night's entertainment (of shouting to an imaginary Wembley Stadium audience) down stairs in the pub. The heavy rock band had gone on all night till 1am, so we were particularly groggy for catching our bus to Port Douglas at 6:45am.

The weather was pretty bleak on the way out to the Ribbon Reefs which were right on the Continental Shelf of Australia, so were suppose to some of the best pristine coral of the whole of the Barrier Reef.

We arrived at the Agincourt Reefs and did our first dive with a group of 9 other recently certified divers. Our guide casually took us around "The Point" of the reef, and we saw our first ever shark! There were 3 reef sharks, 2 small White-Tipped Reef Sharks, and one large one that was big enough to eat us. It was amazing seeing them, if not a little surreal, like we were watching a T.V programme.

At the end of the dive, below the boat, we found the big friendly Maori Wrasse that had come to say hello to everyone and get fed. His was lovely to stroke and so docile that you could even hug him if you wanted. His name was Wally and was a regular to the reef.

We'd only paid for 2 dives, but we couldn't resist doing a 3rd dive at an extra cost of only $15 each. We were glad we did because we got to go in deeper water (but kept at 12 metres), so we could see bigger schools of fish such as Barracuda. We also saw a rare Scorpion fish (that was heavily camouflaged) and a Lion Fish.

By this time the weather had taken a turn for the worse and the visibility had deteriorated underwater. On the way back the boat was bumping about all over the place and many people were sick.

We gave ourselves 2 days (as you cannot fly for 24 hours after multiple dives) before catching a flight back to Brisbane. In those 2 days, we caught up with our blog, did our washing and chilled.