Cairns and the GBR

Hey All, welcome to Cairns for reals this time. I finally got around to chronicling the first four days in Cairns. The time was completely dominated by adventuring out on the Great Barrier Reef. The days since have been dominated by adventuring around Cairns the actual city but I will get to that soon enough in a later post.

The Lakes Resort and Spa – We checked into the modest Lakes Resort on the 28^th of Feb. Listed as only a dinky 2 star hotel we weren't quite prepared to find something like 7 pools littered about the 100 some odd condo like rooms. We had multiple bedrooms plus a living room plus a full out kitchen and eating area and laundry room. Lap of luxury at this point for me is defined as a functioning washing machine and drier. But wait it gets better! In the kitchen there was a microwave. WOW. I have not used one of those things in months. I was nuking just about anything I could find. Pita bread. Tortillas. Butter. Yoghurt (just for fun). So four nights at The Lakes was a wonderful break from the comparatively cheap accommodations I have grown accustomed to.

Day 1 in Cairns – After dropping my stuff off at the hotel I wandered downtown. I took the boardwalk along the water, and by water I mean miles and miles of mud flats with not much of a beach at all. Cairns doesn't really have beaches because of the Great Barrier Reef which breaks up all the surf so very few waves make it to the shore to break up the turf into fine sandy beaches. But that's ok because it was still a great walk with the ocean and the supergreen rainforesty rolling hills all around, something I hadn't seen too much of in Sydney. I found my way down to the wharf and visited an information centre that overloaded me with diving options. We eventually decided on a full load of day trip adventures for while my mom was in town. Finally I wandered into the cbd (central business district) area. Every other shop is an adventure booking agency or a dive shop or a restaurant or a surf clothing store. Very touristy but not too flashy and annoying. My favorite part about it was the prices of everything are much lower compared to Sydney. There is no such thing as a quick meal in Sydney for under 9 or 10 AUD. So picking up a sandwich for 6 bucks was definitely more exciting for me than it should have been. So after getting acquainted with the city we cooked a little dinner and had a little sudoku war. I got domoed by mama bear at the sudokuing while we were in Sydney. But once we got out to Cairns I reasserted myself as numero uno. I think she just couldn't handle the humidity and it affected her game. Anyways I was feeling great with the puzzle world until I tried a super hard sudoku while on a sailboat which was eventually cruising at 45 degree angle to the water with all the wind in the sails. It really messed me up. I feel a little seasick just writing about it and don't want to look at a sudoku for a while now.

After staying up way too late (this after getting 3 hours of sleep on my last night in Sydney) watching Kiss the Girls which wasn't very good at all we got up nice and early for Day 2 in Cairns to get ourselves down to the docks for an all day diving adventure. We found our way to Finger E at 7am I think where the Tusa5 was docked. The boat felt a bit crowded with about 60 Great Barrier Reef enthusiasts on board even though the skipper claimed the boat could hold 120 passengers. We did three dives during the day. Two before lunch and one after. We visited Saxon Reef and Hastings Reef. The Great Barrier Reef is made up of hundreds of smaller reefs spanning most of the East coast of Oz. During our first four days in Cairns we tried to see different reefs and as many different areas of the GBR as we could. The first day we saw sharks and turtles and rays and many many fish. A couple eels got thrown in every once in a while. I can't remember which day we saw the eels. The days are all blending together now. The first dive or two I was focusing mostly on getting used to diving again. Managing buoyancy. Trying not to destroy any large section of coral. All that stuff. In between the dives we had a huge buffet of chicken and turkey and pasta and just all around goodness. I wasn't about to let a little bit of seasickness hold me back. So overall it was a pretty wonderful day.

Day 3 in Cairns was more of the same. Up unbelievably early to get picked up by a shuttle to take us up to Port Douglas where we boarded the Poseidon for another day of diving. Port Douglas is another touristy waterfront town about an hour up the beach from Cairns. It's more upscale and ritzy than Cairns and was very very beautiful with a few real beaches around to relax on. Alas we had no time to relax. As soon as we got out of the shuttle we got on the boat and went straight out to Agincourt Reef #4. I had heard even from people back in Sydney that Agincourt is supposed to be the best of the best as far as reefs go. While it was really amazing we didn't think it was a step above the other areas we had seen. Just your usual run of the mill best-in-the-world diving site. We saw more of the same. Sharks, turtles, fish, rays, with some giant clams thrown in. The boat was much less packed with only 11 people diving. Unfortunately one of the guys in our dive group was a complete mess underwater.

A little story to illustrate his ineptitude: we started our dive with around 200 bar of air in our tanks (loads and loads of compressed air) and we make sure to end the dive with at least 50 or 60 bar left in the tank just in case. That means depending on how deep you are diving you should be down in the water for 30 to 50 minutes. About fifteen minutes into the dive everyone signaled to the guide how much air they had. I was doing pretty well with still 160 bar left in the tank. Usually I find that I suck air a lot quicker than most people so I was pleased to be conserving my air. The other guy signaled he had 80 left. I couldn't believe it. At first I just assumed he meant 180 and was doing really well with his air. I couldn't suck that much that quickly if I tried. I wondered if he was just releasing huge amounts of his air straight out into the water without breathing it when everyone wasn't watching. After being in the water for only 20 minutes or so the rest of the group had to sit around and wait for the guide to help the guy surface while everyone else had at least half their tanks left. While this bothered me at the time, later I wished he would surface early again rather than flounder around on the sandy bottom kicking up dust everywhere he went. We found a little ray resting on the bottom underneath a rock overhang and as soon as the guy came over to take a look he kicked up half of the sand on the bottom and scared the ray away (even if the ray didn't run away we wouldn't have been able to see it anymore with all the sand/dust in the water). Anyways besides the low visibility and the guy that caused the low visibility, the three dives were absolutely amazing. My favorite was the giant clams. Clams bigger than me. Clams that didn't look like they could close up all the way if they wanted to.

There was no rest for the weary on day 4, the final day before my mom flew off to Adelaide and Kangaroo Island. Because she would be flying in less than 24 hours we elected to do a day of snorkeling. Flying after diving can be dangerous as your body doesn't like experiencing that extreme change in pressure from 20 meters underwater to high in the sky. We were up bright and early again to be out on a sailboat by 8 or 9am. The sailboat was much smaller than the larger Tusa5 or Poseidon from the previous days and it was nice to go out with only 15 people or so total. We made our way out to Green Island and spent the day relaxing on the boat and exploring the reefs around Green Island. It was great to be able to wander off on my own snorkeling rather than have to be following a guide whenever we were diving. Plus I got to stay out for as long as I wanted which I think was around an hour and a half a couple times. The water was around 28 Celsius (around 80 Fahrenheit I believe?) everyday out on the reef so you could stay out snorkeling for as long as you wanted (which for me was until lunch was ready). Where we were exploring the bottom was around 15-20 feet deep but little chunks of rock and coral would jump up in your face and only be 3 or 4 feet under the water. Prime snorkeling territory. We didn't see as many of the big ticket items on the snorkel trip. No sharks. The mom spotted a turtle but I missed it. But lots of fun fish and much of the bottom was covered in spaghetti coral. It was mesmerizing to float and stair at the field of soft coral waving back and forth in the current.

So thats the long and short of the first few days in Cairns. The mom is now gone adventuring down in South Australia. I am wandering around Cairns overwhelmed by all the possibilities for what to do next. I checked into a nice little grimy hostel a short walk from downtown. It seems to have a nice atmosphere so I am excited for the next couple days there. A freak downpour just started here outside the hostel so I am off. Cairns is very prone to freak out of nowhere its completely sunny and then all of a sudden pouring rain pockets of weather. I love it. I hear weather in the states is just as nice? Happy square root day (3/3/09 the first square root day since 2/2/04 and there won't be another until 4/4/16) to all of you who forgot to celebrate.

Finally one other little tidbit from something I saw on tv yesterday. Oz is notoriously laid back but yesterday I loved seeing a commercial claim that “9 out of 10 aussies experience stress” (the ad went on to push some sort of stress relief pill). So there you have it. Whereas in the rest of the world we all experience stress and it is just part of everyday life, here in Australia that number is reduced by 10%. 1 in 10 people here do not experience stress! That's pretty incredible and another reason to come visit me because if you are the lucky 10% you might be completely and utterly free of stress!

- BL