Cairns was great, a much more holiday/traveller feel to it than Sydney and Darwin, suppose that comes from not being out with the locals, who know the places to avoid. Seen a couple of hostels that look questionable to say the least, glad we chose to book alternative accommodation. Saturday was spent exploring, though we didn't venture much further than the esplanade and the beach lagoon, trying to improve the tan, but when you're constantly covered in factor 30 not much chance of that happening.
We had our first trip out to the great barrier reef on Sunday, the journey, about 90 minutes was quite rough and lots of people were sea sick, not the party many were expecting. I did a 10 minute introductory dive but bottled going any deeper than a couple of metres, something not right about having all that water above your head. Managed a bit of snorkelling though, more than can be said for Steph! The marine live is amazing, hard to describe really, I even managed to spot a turtle chilling out on the reef. We stopped at Michaelmas Cay, a strip of coral/sand 20 miles off the coast strange being able to walk on land when so far out at sea.
We picked up our camper van yesterday and now the real adventure has begun. We started by heading north to Port Douglas, a small seaside town with only 2000 permanent residents, but more than 4 times that during the tourist season, which has just begun. Lots of very expensive looking hotels and home to 4 mile beach. We found our first camp site, Pandanus, which had surprisingly good facilities and settled in to our new home for the next 6 weeks.
Today we wandered round town and looked at properties we fancied living in, before going out on a sail boat, a trip organised by the local yacht club who offer free trips out, on a Wednesday, in return for staying in the club after for dinner and a few schooners of beer. Our skipper, Peter told us all about his 20+ years of travelling and working all around Australia and we discussed our plans for the next few weeks, months and maybe years.
Next stop Mission Beach.