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After our big hike on Friday, Steve and I relaxed with some drinks in our hotel room, danced around to music, and even called our parents and a few of my former co-workers to wish them a "Happy Friday!" when we realized that it was 8am on Friday morning back home. We ended up going out on the town for a bit, meeting Chris from Germany and Sofie from Sweden along the way to a trendy backpackers' bar called The Woolshed. I attempted to impress Sofie with my Norwegian National Anthem recitation that I learned back in middle school. Apparently either my accent or diction was skewed as she couldn't understand a word I said, even though her native language is somewhat similar to that of Norway's. We were tired after the strenuous day in the wilderness, so we headed back home for the night after one round.
On Saturday, we took a 25-minute drive up to Palm Cove - a little coastal town with renouned beaches. It was a very windy day, so the water was rather choppy and murky, but we enjoyed a beautiful walk along the beach, observed a popular local passtime of Surf Life Saving Club races (relay teams swim, paddle, and kayak out into the ocean about 100m and then come back to tag up on the beach), and even did a beach workout (video to come). Steve took a nap on the beach while I journaled and read. We decided to try out some ever-popular Australian cuisine of Fish n Chips at Apres Bar and Restaurant. We headed back to Cairns after driving past Trinity Beach.
We had some drinks in the room and went out to party at Gilligans, a young and hip backpackers' hostel/nightclub where we did lots of dancing, listened to live music, and met a cool couple - Billy and Sam - from England. We've discovered that Cairns is a very popular holiday location for English travellers. What's also interesting is that many of the European travellers that we've met are in their 4th to 16th month of travel. They often work in the places they travel and don't necessarily have a time frame of when they'll return to their home countries, if ever. This seems to signify a rather sharp distinction between the priorities that young Europeans put on travel and experiencing the world vs. those in the U.S.
Sunday is the infamous "Sunday Session" nicknamed Sunday "Sesh". Its a big party day, so we were excited to celebrate with the locals. We spent the early afternoon at our hotel pool, soaking up some rays and relaxing. We headed out to find some fun and as we were on our way to Gilligans and the Esplanade Lagoon, we heard some live music at The Grand Hotel - a musician was singing/playing guitar to some of our favorite songs so it definitely caught our attention. We quickly posted up inside the bar and enjoyed a few bevies. My favorite drink has been 5 Seeds Apple Cider while Steve has been ordering Australian beers - XXXX (pronounced 4X) and VB (Victoria Bitter). Pretty much any place that we've gone has offered cocktails at a price of $14+, so my $6 ciders have been the way to go! We met some locals - Bruce, Darren, and Pauly (who happened to be celebrating his birthday) so we tagged along with them for the rest of the evening. We got to experience The Salthouse - a beautiful outdoor bar on the pier - that also had more incredible live music. We were captivated by the musicians' vocals. While at The Salthouse, we also met some other young travellers - from England, Scotland, Columbia, and Iran (as strange as that is) and even got a chance to meet one of our snorkel guides - Rob - for the following day. Since we hadn't eaten any meals yet (besides our usual peanut butter toast in the morning), we stopped at The Banana Leaf for a late-night supper before callin' 'er a night.
We had to get up early (5:45am) yesterday (Monday) morning to meet down at the marina by 7:15am to board the Ocean Freedom reef cruiser to start out our day of snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef. It was once again an absolutely gorgeous day. It usually starts out a little overcast in the mornings, but each day has been sunny and in the 80's. I still haven't figured out their celsius-to-farhenheit conversion yet. :-) The Ocean Freedom carried 45 of us out to the reef where we got to jump off the back of the boat and do our own exploration around the reef. We saw lots of beautiful fish, darting in and out of the uniquely shaped coral, saw a huge sea turtle, and some giant barracuda. We took a glass-bottom boat over the reef and got an informational lesson about the coral (Steve and I were both surprised to find out that coral is a living animal - not a plant!).
The crew prepared a delicious smogasbord lunch for us before taking us to the next stop on the reef. We were dropped off on a small sand bar and took our time snorkelling back to the Ocean Freedom. It was much shallower here, so we got even closer to the fish and coral...and even got to swim amongst some huge snappers that were being fed by the crew. We met a friendly couple - Derrick and Dorothy - from Vancouver, B.C. who I'd originally thought were from the U.S. due to their American accent. We also met Yindra from Holland and a couple from Austria - who had just completed their travel up from Sydney, camping all along the way. After our day of snorkeling, we went home, Steve took a nice long nap while I did laundry and uploaded photos/videos from our day, and then we went out to eat at Rattle n Hum. Steve got a delicious prime rib (yes, they DO know how to cook meat to rare) and I devoured a scrumptious bowl of Mediterranean pasta. It was lights out when we got back as we knew we were going to be on the road today.
It is Tuesday, October 16th and we are all packed up and ready for our next adventure to Magnetic Island (or "Maggie" Island as the Aussies tend to abbreviate whenever possible! We got a quick workout in (feels so good to keep in shape while we're here) and now we're driving South along the coast to Townsville where we we will catch a ferry to take us over to the island to stay at Bungalow Bay Koala Village. We'll be spending two nights in an A-frame hut and are looking forward to some animal experiences! We'll be uploading more photos and videos as soon as we have better WiFi availability.
Cheers Mates!
- comments
Bernice Applebee So glad to hear about your wonderful adventures! I just read your blog out loud to Mike so we could share it together! Thanks for keeping such good journaling! Love to you both!
Danielle Wonderful! Love it!!!!
Sherri Schaffer Oh We are so happy all is going well. Keep the pics coming...they are Aussium (awesome).