#$@! it's HOT!
I got off the plane in Cairns, Australia at 11:30pm and was hit with a wall of heat.
I've spent the past week traveling into the bush and out to the Great Barrier Reef and it's quite apparent I'm out of the Antarctic and into the wet tropics.
I had seven days to spend around Cairns before my flight took off for Hawaii. I spent the first taking advantage of the cheapest internet I've seen since I got back to the "real world" (AU$1/hour) and meeting up with a couple of people from the Ice.
The next day (Thursday) I took a day trip out to the Great Barrier Reef to get a couple of SCUBA dives in. With some Ice people. On friday we went up to Cape Tribulation which is where the Rainforrest meets up with the Great Barrier Reef. Both are listed as World Heritage Areas and seeing Jungle and Ocean reminded me of my time in Belize. On the way up we took a boat ride to see some salt water crocidiles and took a swim in a different stream (no crocks in that one). We paused to see where Steve Irwin (The Crock Hunter) was killed by a stingray and made it back late in the day.
By Saturday my Ice friends had left so I took a long bus ride out to Undara to see some gian caves formed by lava cooling under the earth. On the way I traveled through Rainforrest, High-Altitude Rainforrest, the impossible-sounding "Dry Rainforrest" and the Australian savanahlands. The one lane road crossing the Savanah was built for "Road Trains" carrying minerals from the mines to the coast in trucks pulling four trailers. They were scary to see bearing down on the bus and we pulled off the road to let them pass.
I spent Sunday, Monday, and Today out on the Great Barrier Reef on a "live-aboard" dive trip which was amazing! The site I went to on Thursday was good but had been over-visited. I found out this time of year is the raniest with the worst visability and most of the people we were diving with were VERY inexperienced. Undeterred I went out in a diffrent direction with my buddy and still had some good dives while the dive instructors kept handling tourists that couldn't keep from popping to the surface or slamming into the bottom. But the three-day trip was in a completely different leauge.
While the visability wasn't as crystal clear as the Carribean, the variety of fish was bigger than I had ever seen. We did 3 dives during each of the days and a night dive on both of the first two days. In each of those dives I saw something noteworthy, whether it was a 2-meter long sea turtle, stingrays and sharks (I kept my distance) or schools of fish the size of busses. I'm exhausted now but it was an amazing experience and was worth the extra time to come here and see it.
It's dinner time now so I'm off to meet some friends from the SCUBA trip. Tomorrow morning I head to Sydney and then on to Hawaii, 13 hours of flying will get me to Hawaii before I leave on the 28th. Then for the first time in over 7 months, I will be living in the same day as everyone back home.
I've spent the past week traveling into the bush and out to the Great Barrier Reef and it's quite apparent I'm out of the Antarctic and into the wet tropics.
I had seven days to spend around Cairns before my flight took off for Hawaii. I spent the first taking advantage of the cheapest internet I've seen since I got back to the "real world" (AU$1/hour) and meeting up with a couple of people from the Ice.
The next day (Thursday) I took a day trip out to the Great Barrier Reef to get a couple of SCUBA dives in. With some Ice people. On friday we went up to Cape Tribulation which is where the Rainforrest meets up with the Great Barrier Reef. Both are listed as World Heritage Areas and seeing Jungle and Ocean reminded me of my time in Belize. On the way up we took a boat ride to see some salt water crocidiles and took a swim in a different stream (no crocks in that one). We paused to see where Steve Irwin (The Crock Hunter) was killed by a stingray and made it back late in the day.
By Saturday my Ice friends had left so I took a long bus ride out to Undara to see some gian caves formed by lava cooling under the earth. On the way I traveled through Rainforrest, High-Altitude Rainforrest, the impossible-sounding "Dry Rainforrest" and the Australian savanahlands. The one lane road crossing the Savanah was built for "Road Trains" carrying minerals from the mines to the coast in trucks pulling four trailers. They were scary to see bearing down on the bus and we pulled off the road to let them pass.
I spent Sunday, Monday, and Today out on the Great Barrier Reef on a "live-aboard" dive trip which was amazing! The site I went to on Thursday was good but had been over-visited. I found out this time of year is the raniest with the worst visability and most of the people we were diving with were VERY inexperienced. Undeterred I went out in a diffrent direction with my buddy and still had some good dives while the dive instructors kept handling tourists that couldn't keep from popping to the surface or slamming into the bottom. But the three-day trip was in a completely different leauge.
While the visability wasn't as crystal clear as the Carribean, the variety of fish was bigger than I had ever seen. We did 3 dives during each of the days and a night dive on both of the first two days. In each of those dives I saw something noteworthy, whether it was a 2-meter long sea turtle, stingrays and sharks (I kept my distance) or schools of fish the size of busses. I'm exhausted now but it was an amazing experience and was worth the extra time to come here and see it.
It's dinner time now so I'm off to meet some friends from the SCUBA trip. Tomorrow morning I head to Sydney and then on to Hawaii, 13 hours of flying will get me to Hawaii before I leave on the 28th. Then for the first time in over 7 months, I will be living in the same day as everyone back home.
posted by Adam at 2:06 AM
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