Cairns was our final stop along the East Coast and pretty much everyone we met up the coast was in cairns at the same hostel as us. Safe to say it was a bit of a party hostel and we had a fair few send offs for different groups. Now although we had 6 days in cairns and only a couple of tours to do we didn't really have anytime to actually relax and chill as we were rushing to try and sort our Cuban and American visas, and non of the embassy's were answering the phone.! Of course the main thing to do in cairns was go swimming over the Great Barrier Reef. Probably what Australia's most famous for. What I couldn't believe was how far out the reef was, it took about an hour by boat to reach our first diving spot and at part it was less than a metre deep. When we got there there was a massive barracuda just chilling at the back of the boat, almost the length of us, hardly paying any attention to anyone. We were pretty lucky apparently when we went out as we saw two massive parrot fish with big curved heads cruising around the reef. The second spot they took us to was super super choppy, a small sand bank with a load of reefs a short swim away. Fighting against the current was tough, so I ended up just swimming under the waves. A lot easier. Swear I spend more time under the water than on top of it.! We were really lucky again at this site. As we arrived there was 3 turtles just cruising around the sand bank, but like most turtles, if you get too close they just tend to swim off.. And sure enough they were there for a few seconds then b*****ed off.! We also managed to see a shark and a couple of sting rays. One was just chilling under a little coral cave and the other out in the open on the sand, a lovely golden colour, blending in with the sand.! And of course your standard nemos dotted about the reef.! It was a shame to see so much dead and bleached coral. Hopefully people will pull their fingers out and help the reef.! As it's clear how the reefs are slowing starting to die.
So the trip from ozz to the states consisted of a 3 hour flight from cairns to Sydney, 4 hour stop over, 12 hour flight to Beijing, 5 hour stop over because they'd had some freak weather for the past few days, then a 14 hour flight to New York.! Safe to say I was ready to step off the plane by the time we finally landed. At least we were well fed.! Had 4 reasonable meals.. 2 sandwiches and about 9 beers. Felt like I got my money's worth from them. It was weird the trip we took, following on the map on the monitor as we went over the North Pole. Was weird to look out and just see these sheets of ice with a network of rivers through them.