Cairns and The Great Barrier Reef

Trip Start Dec 09, 2007
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14
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Trip End Jul 07, 2008


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Flag of Australia  , Queensland,
Tuesday, February 19, 2008

   -Cairns: of course for the great barrier reef. I always find myself meandering from the group when snorkeling which sometimes is of little reward, but sometimes like this time I get to be the one telling the stories of what I saw to jealous onlookers. Swam with a school of large trigger fish for a spell as well as two white tipped sharks. Then there's the more obvious schools of squid, puffer fishes, and the plethora of glowing neon colors and shapes of smaller fish. The other amazing things were the nightly mass migration of flying foxes (see video) and the nature preserve atop the casino with all kinds of cool parrots and wallabies, and creatures just hopping or flying around outside of cages. Also a massive crock!

From my journal:

Cairns and the great reef. Upon one of my Burner Aussie travel agent friend's (Jen) recommendation went to this  party hostel. It was just too much of a party. Someone didn't leave my room. Went in to a bunch of young 20 somethings getting an early drunk on. Not good impression. But the only other space available was my own big double on the top floor. Despite this nice upgrade the club's bass still kept me up till 2am. Not cool. Not even the neat pool, island, mega movie screen, waterfall, beach volleyball, tiki bar combo in the back and under my room could make up for the sloppy dirty drunk party vibes in this place.

Other recommendation was Rosie's. Laid back chill space. Nice people, but not a nice hostel. Dirty and clothes, stuff everywhere from long timers, but I slept OK. That is until I woke at 6am to get to my dive boat. Just snorkeled the reef on a day outing and was awed once again by the underwater spectacle of life. The reef is dying and it's sadly evident. It wasn't the most brilliant coral and collection of fish I've seen, but some of the biggest and certainly the biggest reef. Massive Trigerfish in a school of 15 that I swam with. 2 white tip shark, squid, puffer fish, and a plethora of beautiful glowing iridescent coral and fish. Managed to miss an uncovered spot on the back of my knees with lotion so I had a hard time sitting and squatting for a while.

Made it to the nature preserve on top of the casino one last time for pics of the birds, big crock, and wallaby. Nice...
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