Blue Christmas

  Cairns, Australia
Friday, December 29, 2006

After a week on the south-west of Australia, time to move on again - this time to Cairns, in the north-east corner, for some diving and to meet up with Andy, who's joining me for the next three weeks.

Cairns - for those of you who've never been here, it's a slightly odd place - nothing much other than a stopping off place for thousands of tourists and backpackers going on tours to the various activities and local attractions in and around the place.  

After ten weeks of travelling solo, I'm now joined by Andy. Inevitably, his trip got off to a bad start as his case didn't manage to follow him to Cairns. Probably due to the delay due to the fog in London, by the time we got on the dive-boat, Qantas still hadn't found it, but at least they gave him £150 to buy some clothes, otherwise his time on the boat might not have been so fun! I'm pleased to report that his case had turned up by the time we got back to dry land.

The main purpose of coming to Cairns was to dive the Barrier Reef. Leaving at 6am on Christmas day for three days of  intensive diving, 11 dives in all.  If there are stranger places to enjoy Christmas Day, than on a dive-boat off the coast of Cairns,  I'd be surprised.

Andy and I on Christmas Day!

But enjoy it we did! Three dives, a bit of dressing up and a huge dinner took our minds off the traditional cold, wet English Christmas day - we even watched a Bond film in the evening!  

As for the trip itself, you get on the boat in Cairns and it takes you out to the reef, about three hours away. The advantage of this, is that you can explore different reefs, from those with great marine fish, to fantastic coral to places where shark and turtle

Turtle!

 

sightings are frequent. As an experience it's quite time-consuming - most of the time you're either getting ready to dive, diving or cleaning up after your dive, showering, writing up log books, etc. It's a good opportunity to chat to a variety of different people and we met a number of really nice people. One of the good things about the boat, compared to my previous experience was the limited amount of Germans on board! Additionally the weather was fantastic, sunshine and very calm seas, added to great visibility under the water meant ideal diving conditions. Although the fish life wasn't as good as Bali, the coral was superb

Great Barrier Reef Coral

- all in all a great way to spend three days.

The day after we returned from the boat, we went up to the northern part of the area, the Daintree river and  Cape Tribulation. The rainforest there is the oldest continuous part of the world with multitudes of plant life dating back to the dinosaur era. It's certainly a great sight to see, but somehow lacks the sheer scale and impressiveness of the Amazon. The area also lays claim to natures' greatest practical joke - Cape Tribulation. A beautiful forest lined bay with the most magnificent beach and clear blue water

Nature's best practical joke

- and here's the funny part - you can't swim in it - during the summer months the area is swamped with highly poisonous jelly fish, meaning even sticking your toe in the water will almost certainly lead to a pretty quick and painful death! The tour also provided us with the great comedic moment of the trip so far - amongst those on the bus were a family of Americans - Andy and I had already deduced that neither the husband and wife were the sharpest sticks in the bunch, but after we'd been to a Kangaroo sanctuary

G'Day Skippy

, things went extreme. We'd been referring to one of the kangaroo's as Skippy, and fair enough, the Americans didn't get the reference. So, the guide explained about Skippy and how he'd bounce back to the kids and in kangaroo language explain that Tom had fallen down the mine again and how the kids could interpret what he was saying - silence from the pair of them - and then the woman asked if it was a true story......... At which point I buried my head in my rucksack to stop the howls of laughter being too obvious. I'm fairly certain I heard the woman's six year old daughter explaining to her Mum afterwards that Santa didn't exist either!

As I write this blog, Andy has taken himself off to do a bit of sky-diving - now I know I'm meant to be experiencing a variety of different things on this trip, but I do draw the line at chucking myself out of a perfectly good plane! Hopefully he'll be back in one piece later, though given his track record, I'm not convinced! And tomorrow it's down to Sydney, where we meet up with my parents and also see in the New Year at the Harbour Bridge.

So, as this will be the last blog for 2006, I hope you all have (or have had) a great New Year's Eve and I wish you all the very very best for 2007!

Rob