Squeezing it all in (from the luggage to the adventures)

Shark!!
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Time has flown by since we picked up Ricky (in Cairns, not Melbourne as was feared). Luckily self-preservation (and a concerned parent) kicked in and Ricky managed to make 3 flight changes and arrive at the right destination. Only one airport was forced to put out a missing person announcement to get him to the gate!

Rick’s feet barely touched the ground before we were all swooped off our feet (literally) for the first day of sightseeing in Cairns. We decided to make it a relaxed day but also to get Ricky a look at the rainforest before we leave its hometown. Best way to do all this? Skyrail!

Fishes in the water..
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It’s basically a cable-car system that takes you up from Cairns into the rainforest. The views across the forest and to the coast are spectacular and there are 3 stops on the way up where you can get off and ‘go bush’ for a bit. We stopped for a ranger-guided rainforest board-walk where we joined some American tourists in learning about the nature up there. Should we have to survive in the rainforest without water we can now all find a large piece of bamboo type stuff that should have some stored and ready for us- Bear Grylls eat your heart out!

underwater Tori
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Then we up to Kuranda- a little village at the top where we treated ourselves to lunch in the rainforest restaurant-dine whilst overlooking large trees and big bugs. The trip down was a little more stomach churning and we enjoyed a long discussion about what would happen should the cable break- sadly none of you would get rich as we didn’t renew our life insurance before we left home.

We had plenty of debauchery and wild partying planned for the evening- to celebrate Rick’s first night in Oz. However Ricky fell asleep before we even made it back to the hostel and the other two of us just about made it to the room before collapsing into a coma. Out trusty tummies did wake us up in time for our free food in the pub (I knew there was a reason why we chose this hostel with all the vouchers for free stuff). Ricky must have had monster jet lag though as even free food couldn’t get him up! So, our wild night turned into a quick dash to town to fill the bellies with free food before another early night L

Next stop, the Great Barrier reef...Thinking that Rick might like to see the worlds only organism visible from space (true!) and lots of fishies n stuff we booked us all onto a boat for the next two days. Turns out Ricks doesn’t like fish though and ain’t too keen on the water. Luckily our live-aboard boat also came with a well-stocked bar and some entertaining staff. (And after much persuasion he got to enjoy the fish from under the water on his first dive)

We had a great few days. We had a private cabin (that rocked you to sleep at night- good job we had those few drinks. It kept us from knowing whether it was our heads or the boat that was swimming). Ben & Tori loved the whole experience. We were well fed and had 6 opportunities to dive (although sadly Ben couldn’t take them all as his ears let him down) with all the equipment & stuff taken care of for you (it def beats our training course where we did all the lugging and cleaning of gear). We did our first night dive- VERY scary (although at least you can’t see the sharks as they come to attack you). We saw sleeping turtles and different coloured coral by night- although by the end of it seeing by torchlight begins to make you a bit dizzy. Then in our early morning dive we got to see reef sharks before they headed off to bed- awesome! In the end we all really enjoyed ourselves-it was relaxing being looked after all the time and for once the wildlife showed up on time.