Cairns

I just got back from my day boat trip out to the Great Barrier Reef in Cairns and it was AMAZING!!!! Before I go on about that though, I'll backtrack to yesterday's interesting travels aboard the Tilt Train.

At 7:10 yesterday morning a shuttle bus picked me up in Airlie beach just down the road from the hostel I was staying at and took me out to the Proserpine train station for my trip up to Cairns. The day before I was scrambling to figure out a way to Proserpine since it's a 30 min drive from Airlie and ended up submitting a request for a shuttle with the details of my train departure the following day at 8:30. They replied back confirming my bus and telling me a pickup time of 7:10 which made me wonder how many stops we were doing on the way since that's kind of early for an 8:30 train. So how many stops did we make you ask..... Zero!!! My driver seemed to be on a mission as he sped the whole way and got me to the station at around 7:35. I wasn't exactly pleased when I found out that the Proserpine terminal is simply a small office with a concrete platform and small overhanging roof. Anyways, I waited, and waited, and waited and was wondering if the train was even going to show, until it showed up at 10:00 with a simple apology for "delays on the tracks". Well it turns out that delays are common on our route as we stopped 3 more times in random locations for about 30 minutes at a time and in turn didn't get to Cairns until very late last night. The scenery was neat at times but for the most part we just passed through farming fields or forests.

This morning was another early one as I had to be on our boat for 7:30 and had booked my hostel online not realizing its a good 20 minute walk from the harbour here in town. Our boat, the "Ocean Free," was a 3 level motor boat that took us straight out into the ocean and got us to our first snorkeling point in a random mooring site. The coral was unbelievable and the fish much bigger than those in the Whitsundays which made this trip a more visual pleasing underwater experience. We next hopped onto a neighbouring boat moored in the middle of nowhere which I found kind of funny, and went on a short ride in what turned out to be a glass-bottom boat. It was very similar to scuba diving, only we saw a lot more things in a shorter amount of time. My favourite on the boat tour was this massive clam that had to have been at least 3 feet wide, it almost looked fake when we first went overtop of it.

Next we hopped back onto the Ocean Free and went out to a caye, once again in the middle of nowhere and lounged around/snorkeled for another couple hours. The caye was really neat, basically a 50 ft x 50 ft white sand beach about 20 km away from shore which only appears when the tide is low in the afternoon. I got some cool pics but will have to find a computer where I can upload them, I have trouble finding computers that read memory cards here. I did my final snorkel of my trip and ended up finding a sea turtle sitting in a bed of coral, which it turns out noone else was able to find. The turtle was pretty deep and dove a few times to get pictures but the combo of strong current and deep, darker water made it hard to get good ones. After jumping back on the boat we went straight back to the harbour and reached the docks around 4:30. This gave me enough time to walk around Cairns, which is not as big a town as I thought it was but is picturesquely placed between a set of huge mountains and borders a river that runs inland. When I first realized that I had only planned a single full day here I was a little disappointed but now realize it worked out well since I've seen everything I wanted to and am ready to move on to other sights.

Tomorrow morning I have a very early flight to Ayers Rock and need to catch a 4:50 shuttle to the airport. This will be my 3rd early morning and I'm slowly starting to see my body catching up to the lack of sleep since it's hard to get yourself to bed early when you're in a country with so many things to see. Either way I'm excited for the next 2 days at Ayers rock since all the tour books I read made the point of claiming it to be a must-see on the list of places to visit in Australia. After my 2 days at the rock I head down to Melbourne for my longest stay in a single city and then I rent a car to drive the Great Ocean Road (the thing I've most been looking forward too). I've been keeping tabs on driving here since I'm going to be behind a wheel in a week and will need to adjust to the fact that they drive on the left side of the road. Should be interesting!!!!