Great Barrier Reef

One of the BIG reason's we chose Cairn's for our trip to Austraila was its proximity to the Great Barrier Reef.  Going there was a bucket list thing for me and I think to dive there was on Matt's list.

Given Jamie's past experiences on the high speed cat's (the motordriven catamarans) we looked for a different option and found the Ocean Free.  She is a beautiful 16m sailboat that takes small numbers of folks to the reef for snorkelling, diving and a wine...

Our day started early with boarding at 8am and check in 30 minutes prior to that.  The boat was not full, so that was cool, and Luke met his new best friend Paulo.  He is a brit who has come to Oz to sail and scuba and generally live the good life.

He then met his 2nd best friend, Captain Scotty (not just an engineer anymore mate) who let him steer the boat... with his feet.

Of course Scotty did practice what he taught as well.

The day was not a perfect day, a bit cool and breezy, but good for sailing.  The water was warmer than the air. This was nice when a wave popped over the bow.

We sailed out to Green Island and while Matt went off to dive.  The rest of us (except Jamie) did some snorkelling.  Jamie absolutely refused to get in the water (even with a neoprene suit and life jacket) sigh...  Luke, Joelle and Adrian, however LOVED it.  I think Luke would have stayed in all day if he didn't get a bit chilled.

Before we went out on our trip, we rented a waterproof camera at one of the shops in Cairns.  They gave us our photos on a DVD and (thankfully) colour adjusted everything too.

The colours are amazing and I am terrible at taking underwater photos.  Matt's are better.

After snorkeling, Captain Scotty took us via the tender (little boat on the back) into Green Island to the beach.  He said not to bring your camera because he could not guarantee it to stay dry.  So I didn't.

Green Island is considered to be part of the reef and therefore is a protected area.  There is a lovely resort on the island that we could not afford to stay at ;o).  One important note about this, is you are NOT allowed to take anything off the island.  No coral bits, no shells etc.  Which makes me now wish I had braved getting my camera wet.  We saw some of the coolest shells and pieces of coral there that I have ever seen.  Oh well, live and learn.  Matt came with us for a short walk on the beach and then went back for his second dive.

The kids and I wandered around the beach oohing and ahhing at the cool bits and then went to go on our semi-submarine ride .   I had originally booked the glass bottom boat.   But, Captain Scotty told me (after he did this - he is a bit of a character) "the glass bottom boat was not worth it and I changed your booking to the semi-submarine."
As it happened that was a great executive decision on his part because we got to see Nemo, Dorey and Crush on our ride.  This was particularily nice for Jamie as he did not snorkel.  He was very excited on the entire trip and did not stop talking for the 30 minute ride.

After our ride Cpt'n Scotty picked us up in the tender to head back out to the boat, and (like all smart sea captains) knew a good spot where we got to see another sea turtle.   It came right up to us in the boat.  If you did not value your fingers much it, would have been possible to reach in and touch it.  Very cool!

We met Matt back on the boat.  He had a great second dive and took some fabulous pictures.

Crush

The "direction fish"

Marlin and his anemone. 

We then had some food and sailed back into Cairns.

It took about 2 hours to sail back.  Jamie and Luke both fell asleep and everyone had a pretty fabulous day.

Except for Matt's hair, the wind and the sea had a rather unusual effect on him...

And that was our day on the reef.

Boats and Birds (and a helicopter)

Matt loves taking pix of wildlife and boats here are a bunch of his pix:

and some boats in Auckland too...

Hanging in Cairns...

The first sound I woke to in Cairns was Luke going through every cupboard in our 3 bedroom apt we rented, to then cry in anguish "there is no food in here!"  I'm not sure when he thought that was magically going to appear.   Rolling out of bed we all got moving (quite slowly, much to Luke's chagrin) and headed to the restaurant for breakfast and COFFEE!

We then went for a stroll down the boardwalk to the Lagoon stopping at everything interesting on the way.  This meant at 20 minute walk took over 2 hours.  Ahhhh the joys of vacation.

The first stop was Muddy's playground where all the kiddies had a good time.

The playground has everything including lots of water stuff, a cafe and restrooms.  We were there for a while and then finally headed down the road to see...

In this area of Australia there are lots and lots of crocodiles and swimming at the beach is a BAD idea.  As you will see in a minute Cairns has taken care of this issue by creating a fabulous salt water lagoon.

Also the Cairns beach is incredibly shallow, there is a canal in the centre that has been dredged for boats to come in and out but this has created a bit of a nasty muddy beach except just at the edges.  Not nice for swimming anyway.

We spent lots and lots of time here,  this was an R&R vacation with a couple of busy touring days.  We went to the pool at the hotel, went to the lagoon,  ate out a bit, ate in a bit and basically just vegged.
It was wonderful!!!
We did go to the Reef (and that will have it's own page) and did a tour of the Rainforest (ditto for it) but most of the time we just hung out.  Matt and I did sneak out one night and had dinner alone at the Hotel Cairns,  I felt like Bogart should be popping out like in Casablanca, it was all white rattan and very romantic.  We ate emu, kangaroo and crocodile!

As I mentioned before I got an attachment that let me down load pix to the ipad, we did not bring the laptop with us.  This was good as halfway through our trip Matt accidentally deleted ALL the photos from his camera! ACK!  But being the anal retentive individual that I am I had been downloading photos every morning so he only lost a few. eek.

Cairns is definitely a tourist town so there were lots of coffee shops,  junk stores and fun places to look at.

Lazy days pix to follow...