So we got to Australia about 6 days ago.. We flew into Cairns the morning of the 11th (after spending the night in the Auckland airport, not as uncomfortable as you'd think!) and it was hot, sunny, and VERY humid by 8am. The next day we did an awesome boat trip out to the Great Barrier Reef to snorkel, and saw a sea turtle, manta ray, giant clam, and a big ugly eel, as well as lots of fish, of course. There's really colourful, big parrotfish out there that eat coral and poop out sand, it's pretty funny to see.
The next day we did a day trip up to Cape Tribulation and the Daintree Rainforest. It was a great trip as well, we did a crocodile boat tour and saw a couple of them (a big one and a baby - not really that small or cute), millions of bats (kinda cool, kinda creepy), a few snakes, a cassowary (this big colourful endangered bird), as well as a good number of big spiders (as big as your palm, ick).
After Cairns our plan was to head down to Airlie Beach for a couple days and do a sailing trip through the Whitsundays, but there's been lots of storms and flooding around there the past couple weeks, and the roads both north and south of Airlie were closed, pretty disappointing. They definitely weren't closing the roads without reason though, even then ones we drove on were ankle deep in water, and completely flooded on either side. We ended up flying from Townsville down to Brisbane, and then heading back up north to do Fraser Island from Hervey Bay. Fraser Island was very cool, lots of sand, and we got the first sunny day out there in a couple of weeks.
After that we headed down to Noosa Heads, which is where we are now. We have 3 days to do nothing but tan on the beach, sleep in, and maybe go surfing again, which is nice after a few weeks of being busy with tours and travelling. Tomorrow we're heading to the Australia Zoo to cuddle koalas and all that before going down to Surfers' Paradise for another couple of beach days.
steph and danae
