Part 2, Week 14: April 22-28
- Katie and Webster
- Apr 27, 2019
- 5 min read
This week has been full of adventures! We toured around Sydney a bit more before heading off to the Great Barrier Reef.
On Monday we did a Hop-On-Hop-Off tour. We let Mom and Wayne have a little sleep in before heading off. I think we really tired them out seeing all Sydney had to offer! We got on the HOHO at the Australian Museum before heading all through the city. We saw the icons, Harbour Bridge and the Opera House, Town Hall, the federal police station, the oldest pub in Sydney, the Rocks neighbourhood and of course Bondi Beach. Once at Bondi, we got off the bus and spent some time on the beach. Webster rented a surfboard for a few hours and Mom splashed in the waves. It wasn’t too hot, but it was nice to be on the sand back in one of our favourite places.
On Monday night we headed to Circular Quay to see the Opera House and Harbour Bridge all lit up. We had pizza at the Opera House listening to live music and watching all the boats go by in the harbour.
On Tuesday we left Mom and Wayne to have a quiet day. I took the train out to school for a full day of class. Since we are halfway through the semester, I had a summative class. Webster spent the morning packing and cleaning. Tuesday night we packed into an Uber and headed to the airport! We flew to Cairns, on the east coast of Australia, north of Sydney. We arrived pretty late so we just spent some time in the hotel unpacking and getting a good sleep.
On Wednesday we woke up bright and early to head down for a wonderful hotel breakfast on the water. Our hotel was on the Cairns marina so there was lots of boat traffic passing by. We spent the afternoon shopping in the city centre, getting some groceries and swimming the pool. Cairns had a really cool Night Market with discount souvenirs, Indonesian massages and tons of food. We wandered around looking at all the stalls.
In the evening we went to Bushfire for dinner. Bushfire is a Brazilian restaurant (similar to Moderno on NCL and Brasa in Niagara Falls) where they serve you meat on a skewer from the grill. We had kangaroo, chicken, pork, beef, lamb, seafood, and pineapple to finish off! It was delicious and a really fun experience.
On Thursday we got up early to head out to the Great Barrier Reef! We first took a bus to Port Douglas (north of Carins) where we boarded a huge boat to head out 200km off the coast. Quicksilver has an activity platform on the reef with scuba platforms, kitchens, showers, picnic tables, and everything we could ever need for a day on the reef. Once we arrived at the the activity platform we got all suited up to head in the water. Webster and I first went on the semi-submarine tour. We sat below the water and the captain sat above. We could see all the fish and coral from the windows. It was really neat because they were doing a fish feeding at the same time so tons of fish were in the area.
After the semi-sub Webster and I headed for our scuba dive. This was our first time scuba diving and we loved it! When we first got suited up, and were learning how to breathe with the tank I didn’t think I was going to be able to do it. I was so nervous something would happen and I wouldn’t be able to breathe under the surface. They did a really great job of getting us used to the water, we sat on the platform with our heads about 1ft underwater just breathing with the tank. We then climbed a rope down about 12m into the ocean. Once we were down there I wasn’t even thinking about breathing anymore but just about the fish and coral we were seeing. It was so neat to be so close to it all. After our first dive which lasted about 40 minutes, we decided we loved it too much to be done. We quickly signed up to go for a second dive right away. Webster and I were able to swim on our own and explore a little more freely on the second dive. It was such a great time!
While we were diving Mom and Wayne were snorkelling and ocean walking! They enjoyed a lot more of the activities on the activity platform while we were scuba diving.
Once we arrived back to Cairns it was quite late so we grabbed a few burgers near our hotel and had a long sleep after a hot day on the ocean!
On Friday we had a nice sleep in and then enjoyed a great hotel breakfast. Just before lunchtime we headed into the rainforest on the Skyrail. We rode three gondolas, all stopping at unique sites along the way to Kuranda, a little town beyond the rainforest. Our first stop was a walk through the trees to look for spiders and other wildlife. The rainforest did not disappoint! Our second stop was for a waterfall viewing platform which just opened last week!
Then we arrived in Kuranda. We spent an hour or so wandering around town looking at souvenirs and having a bite to eat. Afterwards we headed on the Kuranda Rail Service back into Cairns. We rode the 100 year old train through the rainforest, over waterfalls, and down hills back into the city. We have never seen such a scenic route!
We spent the evening at the pool and then headed to Cairns #1 restaurant, the Burger Cafe for dinner.
On Saturday Mom and Wayne enjoyed a relaxing day by the pool and some souvenir shopping in the city centre. Webster and I headed back out to the reef for one more day of exploring. This time we took a sailboat from Cairns Marina to Michaelmas Cay about 80km off the coast. We were on a much smaller boat with only about 60 other people. We sailed out to a sand bar in the middle of the ocean where the reef is rapidly growing. We anchored about 100m off the sandbar and took a little tender to the island to relax on shore and snorkel. We spent about 2.5 hours snorkelling off the island. At one point we had to be 500m from shore, it seemed like we swam forever. The fish and coral were so bright. We were lucky to see 2 sharks, a green sea turtle and a stingray. We went on another semi-submarine before heading back to Cairns for 4pm.
We finished our evening with one last dinner on the pier. We had Italian food, lots of pizza and pasta, it was delicious!
On Sunday we woke up to a gross and rainy day, thankful that we didn’t have anything planned. We had one last hotel breakfast and checked out of our hotel. We killed some time in the hotel departure lounge and wandering around town before heading to the airport. We flew direct from Cairns to Sydney and returned back to our AirBnB for a well deserved sleep after a great week!
Tomorrow (Today, 6am Sydney time) we say goodbye to Mom and Wayne. They are headed home after two great weeks in Australia. We have done SO much in their short time here and we are so grateful that they came for a visit. Thank you for everything!! We know it will be very hard to say goodbye for another 16 weeks but we are really looking forward to seeing them for our last leg of our adventure in Alaska, August 2019.
This week we are headed to Fiji to meet Liz and Paisley! We are so excited to see them after 14 weeks of travel and explore a beautiful new country that has been on our list for ages.
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