East Coast: Cairns and Great Barrier Reef

Finally I´ve got something interesting to write about! I just arrived from our road trip to East Coast. We had great 2 weeks of travelling and I´ve got so much to tell I think it´s gonna take some days to finish my trip report… I´m living in Moy´s room in Gumal (another UTS student accommodation) now and I don´t have internet here. So I´m writing this at home and taking it to the uni to publish it online.

Tuesday 4.12.

My trip began with an early morning flight to Cairns, where I met Juulia who had already done a tour in the outback and the northern territories. We took a cab to our backpackers hostel, which was located in the town centre. The weather was notably warmer and more humid than in Sydney and it put me into holiday mood :) First we walked to a nearby shopping mall where I bought some beach accessories and a pair of shorts, and we also crabbed some bread and fruit from Coles. Then we walked through the town centre, which is rather small and compact with lots of travel agencies and souvenir shops. We went to this big lagoon by the sea. It´s an artificial swimming area isolated from the sea, built so that people can swim without being endangered by sharks and jelly fish. There are lots of trees and grass areas around the pool, and we laid there in the sun – eating our picknic lunch and planning our trip. With the help of Lonely Planet we came up with a pretty detailed travel plan, that we ended up following. After sunbathing we did a return walk on the coastline, and saw a really cool kids playground and some exercise stations. Then we just walked back to our hostel, tested quickly the swimming pool there, and grilled some chicken and veggies for dinner.

The Lagoon

UV-warning

Wednesday 5.12.

I had booked us a sailing & snorkelling tour on the Great Barrier Reef. It is a huge coral area consisting of a lot of the coastline and many islands, and Cairns is one of the main entrances to see it. Our trip departed at 8am from a nearby wharf. First we were given morning coffee with little muffins inside the catamaran, and after that we went outside to the deck to enjoy the sunshine. It took 2 hours to get to our first destination, where we were given a free scuba diving demonstration. We got all the equipment – wetsuit, mask, fins and air bottle – and spent some time just practicing breathing through the mask, holding onto a rope. We were also taught how to empty our mask of water and how to equalise ear pressure when going deeper. Breathing through the mask felt a bit strange to me at first, until I realised I can actually just breath normally. The instructor took us for a little swim and we saw some cool fish and corals. After returning we had to decide whether or not we wanted to pay $70 to do the actual scuba dive. Juulia and I decided not to do it, so we got back to the boat and changed our equipment to snorkelling gear.

The catamaran

Juulia and I sunbathing on the deck

I hadn´t been snorkelling before, but it was really easy to pick it up. I was wearing a vest that made me float so all I had to do was to move my legs a little bit and enjoy watching all the beautiful and colourful tropical fish and corals. I had never done anything like that before! It was amazing being so close to all the fish you could touch them. They really come in all possible colours, and some of the corals are fluorescent making them glow. Unfortunately I couldn´t take any pictures of them, but Juulia hired a digital underwater camera and took heaps of pictures. I´ll post some of them online once I get them from her. After snorkelling it was time for a delicious buffet lunch with many different food courses, and it only took us 15min to get to our next destination. We had around an hour for snorkelling, which was good again. We should´ve sailed back to Cairns, but because there was hardly any wind we had to use the engine instead. It took us 2 hours to get back there, and we just laid on the deck. We returned to Cairns at 5pm and went back to our hostel to take showers and get ready for some walking in the city centre.

First we had to book a tour to go to Whitsunday and Fraser Island, which was easier said than done. We had specific days when we wanted to depart and come back, and most of the tours were sold out already. After asking from several travel agencies we started to get quite worried and decided to split up to go to different agencies. Finally Juulia found this really helpful guy who spent over an hour searching for tours and managed to find 2 cancelled spots for a tour that suited us. We felt happy and relieved, and headed to Night Markets. We both are big fans of markets, so we had a good time wandering around and looking at all the stuff. I bought a silver anklet chain and Juulia found a pretty Chinese style top. From the markets we walked back to our hostel to eat instant noodles for dinner.