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Doing the Cairns Cairns
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Cairns is located in the province of Queensland and sits along a beautiful stretch of the Gold Coast. We arrived in this seaside town and checked into a luxurious full size apartment at the Lakes Resort and Spa. For the first time during the trip we had access to a full kitchen and a washer and dryer. We were in domestic heaven. The first order of business, even before the sightseeing, was to do a load of laundry and to go grocery shopping so that we could prepare a home-cooked meal. We made our way to the centre of Cairns, took a look at the Esplanade, the popular beachfront promenade, and then proceeded to shop for our dinner. We decided to make noodles so we gathered our supplies and went "home" for the night. In our excitement we made noodles for 10 and had to serve it in mixing bowls. We made a valiant effort to try and finish our meal. At heart both of us are homebodies and so having a "home" for even a short time meant a lot.
While we were enamored with our apartment, we did make an effort to go and see the rainforest that spread out behind Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef that stretched out in front of the city.
In order to see the rainforest we took a ride on the gondola cableway that stretched over the canopy of the rainforest. The cableway is the world's longest at 7.5 kilometres and each of the towers had been airlifted in place by helicopters to minimize the impact on the rainforest. At several points in the journey the gondola would stop at discovery centres where you could walk through the rainforest on elevated walkways. Excellent guides took us through the dense foliage and showed us a sampling of the thousands of different plant and animal species that inhabited the rainforest. The guides explained that the sole goal of the plants in the rainforest was to reach for the skies in order to escape the dark forest floor. This is critical since only the plants strong enough to win the race would be able to get the sunlight that they need to thrive. One plant that stuck out was the "Black Lawyer"--a long weed like parasitic plant that had sharp barbs that it used to latch onto other plants in order to reach the sun. Very flattering.
The last stop on the cableway was the small town of Kuranda. Kuranda is basically a tourist town whose sole purpose is to cater to the hundreds of tourists who pour out of the cableway everyday. The streets of Kuranda are filled with vendors who sell stereotypical Australian memorabilia such as didgeridoos. After spending some time in Kuranda and walking the trails that are on the outskirts of town, we took the Kuranda scenic railway back to Cairns. The scenic railway winds slowly through the sometimes steep hillside and offers panoramic views of the rainforest, Cairns and the sea.
The Great Barrier Reef was the real reason for coming to Cairns. The Reef is 8,000 years old and stretches for over 2,000 kilometres from Lady Elliot Island to Papua New Guinea. It is the only living structure on earth that can be seen from the moon. The hundreds of islands that are located within the Reef are either continental (i.e. part of the Australian landmass) or cays (i.e. crushed dead coral and sand amassed over time by water action).
We decided to visit Michaelmas Cay. This tiny white sand cay is home to over 27,000 sea birds. We boarded a catamaran for the trip out to the Cay and sat back to enjoy the scenic views of the Reef. We spent the whole day at the Cay and had the chance to ride in a semi-submersible, snorkel in the impossibly clear blue waters and hang out with our sea bird buddies on the Cay itself. We noted that the Cay did smell like 27,000 birds called it home. During our semi-submersible trip and our snorkel we were able to see an unbelievable amount of wildlife. To name a few we saw: bluespotted lagoon rays, whitetip reef sharks, green turtles, giant clams, sea cucumbers, blue seastars, parrot fish, clown anemone fish (i.e. Nemo), black damsels and rabbit fish. We even got a chance to handle some sea cucumbers which are a Chinese delicacy and were told that they are the vacuum cleaners of the sea--hmmm, comforting thought.
Our day on the Reef was over too soon and we enjoyed the sunset cruise back to Cairns. We spread out on the deck of the catamaran and watched the colours of the sky turn from blue to shades of pink and red.
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