CAIRNS

This is going to be long… I haven’t written in a few days and a LOT has happenedJ. 

Wednesday was a crazy day with class in the morning, a trip to the gym and some last minute packing.  Then I was off to Cairns.  I met two of my friends at the bus stop and we took a bus, train, and taxi to get to the airport.  We met another friend at the airport and boarded our plane.  The three girls I went with are Marisa, Christina and Kaitlyn.  I met and got to know Marisa really well on our beach orientation trip to Lorne before school started.  She’s from Portland and knows some kids I go to school with at Whitworth.  Also, she’s awesome!  She introduced me to Christina (Wisconsin) who is also awesomeJ.  Kaitlyn is from California and goes to school at UC San Diego.  She and Marisa went to school together for the first year and half and were in the same sorority before Marisa transferred to Portland.  Kaitlyn is studying at another university in Melbourne for the semester as well.  It was a SUPER fun group!  Our flight was quick and we made it to Cairns right on time.  We were all starved, as it was 9pm and we hadn’t eaten dinner.  We found a cab to take us to our hostel and went to find food.  We walked down the road about 30 seconds and stumbled upon the best fish and chips place ever!  It was a little, local shop, and they made everything fresh and SO good.  After our dose of grease and salt, we were all craving some sugar so we bought a carton of ice cream and some spoons and did workJ.  It was a fun night just talking and laughing. 

The next morning (Thursday) we were up really early… 5:30am to be exact.  It was still dark when I rolled out of bed, but it was beautiful watching the sunrise and the sky soften.  We got ready quickly and walked down the road a bit to Annabelle’s Bakery for breakfast before our day of rafting.  It was another cute, local shop and SO delicious!  We got picked up by our rafting tour at 6:30am and started the day.  The drive to the river was close to three hours, but flew by, as the view was absolutely gorgeous.  Everything was so tropical, green and alive!  There was field after field of sugar cane and banana plants.  It was really cool!  As we got further south and closer to the river we were going to raft, we started seeing the remnants of the cyclone that hit a couple months ago.  It was insane!  It reminded me of the way a forest looks a couple years after a forest fire goes through… all the buds are back on the branches, but everything is thinned out and bare.  It’s incredible the damage that the storm did.  After the long bus ride, we made it to the river and were assigned to our boats.  Our raft guide was a guy named Rob and he was really fun.  Our boat was our group of four and two 19-year-old Swedish girls that were awesome!  As we got in our rafts, Rob explained to us what to do when we came to the rapids, how to hold on, what to do if we fell out, etc.  I was really scared, but I played it coolJ.  He explained that the scale for rapids was 1-6 and we were rafting a level 4 river (pretty big rapids!)  We started paddling down the river and hit our first set of rapids – SO fun!  I was terrified, but I couldn’t help but enjoy myself in the process.  It was quite the rush.  Kaitlyn was the first one to fall out and she was so funny!  She grabbed hold of the side rope of the boat and was just yelling, “GET ME OUTTA HERE!”  We laughed about it all dayJ.  Everyone else fell out at some point throughout the day… except me.  I wasn’t upsetJ.  We rafted the same section of the river twice because the top half was too high to do safely.  After we made our first trip down, we stopped for the BBQ lunch the tour company made.  It was SO good.  Australians really do know how to do BBQ.  Also, the skies opened while we were eating.  It poured rain for about 20 minutes and then the sun came out again… it was perfect timing.  The second half of the day was even more fun than the morning.  We were all more comfortable and excited to have some fun.  We flipped our boat on purpose, got the people in the other boats wet, “surfed” on the rapids, and went for swims in the calmer pools.  It was so fun!  As we finished our day, we made plans with Rob and the two Swedish girls to meet up later for drinks.  We rode the bus back, showered, got dinner again (fish and chips, round 2J), and then met the rest of our group at Gilligan’s (a hostel in downtown Cairns with a bar).  We also invited a couple boys we met on the bus back who were from Switzerland.  Their names: Lores and Fabio.  Yes, Fabio… it was pretty greatJ.  It was a really fun night, but we didn’t stay out too late as we had another early morning the next day. 

Friday started at 6:30am.  We loaded the bus to go on another tour.  We drove for about an hour to a wildlife sanctuary where I got to hold a koala!  It was SO cute.  My dad already said I can’t have one, but I loved it.  Also, I got to feed the kangaroos!  They are precious.  I know people say they’re mean, but I sure didn’t get that vibeJ.  After the sanctuary, we kept going to Mossman Gorge (a beautiful rainforest walk with a swimming hole).  Of course, as we were driving there, our guide told us about ALL the varieties of spiders that naturally inhabit the rainforest, complete with visual aids.  I couldn’t relax enough to enjoy the beautiful walk, but I survived.  The walk took us out to a beautiful lookout at a river that you’d see in Lord of the Rings or something.  Like, too beautiful and clear to be real.  We got to swim in a little inlet area of it too.  It was incredible!  There were fish in there that came right up to our feet… and I wasn’t even scaredJ.  After we cooled off, we kept driving to the Daintree River and our river cruise.  We ate some lunch and then boarded the boat and took off down the river.  Our driver showed us some of the cool trees that grow along the bank.  There is one that is super common called the Mangrove tree and I really wanted him to call it the Mandrake (the roots look really similarJ).  It was funny.  As we got further down the river, we saw a baby croc and then a mama crocodile named Elizabeth.  She was HUGE.  It was crazy, but SO cool.  She was just gliding through the water, looking like a beast!  We got off the river cruise and our driver took us up to Alexandra Lookout in the Daintree Rainforest where we could look out and see the water Steve Irwin was in when he was killed by the stingray.  It was a beautiful lookout.  Also, I got to lick an ant’s buttJ.  It’s an ancient aboriginal medicinal treatment – the rear of the green ants have an acid in them that tastes like citrus.  It was so strange!  It kind of grossed me out a little, but I figured I could try anything onceJ.  After the lookout, we continued to Cape Tribulation beach.  It was SO beautiful – like off a postcard.  As we got off the bus, our driver pointed out the bathroom and told us that there was a huge spider on the wall of the women’s restroom if we were interested… um NO!  He didn’t get it – I HATE spiders.  Christina went to see it and she was impressed with the size.  She held up her hands in a circle the size of a saucer-type plate.  HUGE.  GROSS.  I chose ignorance and blissJ.  We took some pictures at the beach and then made our way to our hostel to drop our stuff off and go swimming.  You can’t swim in the ocean at Cape Tribulation this time of year because of the crocodiles and jellyfish, but our hostel had a nice pool.  We at dinner at our hostel’s restaurant partly because it was convenient and partly because it was one of two restaurants in the whole town.  Cape Tribulation consists of two hostels and a small grocery store.  Also, there is no cell phone reception.  It’s remote, but it was really nice to be so close to nature and so peaceful.  We all passed out at 8:30pm that night… with the lights on… oopsJ. 

We woke up at 5:30am the next morning (Saturday) to try and catch the sunrise over the ocean.  We found an entrance to the beach… kind of.  We forced our way through some pretty hefty mud puddles and rugged jungle terrain, but we made it.  It was beautiful morning, but there were clouds on the horizon and we never saw the actual sun.  We tried to find an alternate route back, around the big puddles and ended up walking on the “rainforest walk” for about a mile.  It was a beautiful mistake.  We went back to the hostel so that Christina could get ready to go horseback riding.  After she left, Kaitlyn, Marisa and I went to the other hostel’s restaurant for breakfast.  It was delicious.  Right when we got back, it started pouring and it rained ALL day.  And this wasn’t normal rain – this was sheets of water!  The skies opened… for 6 hours!  The pool area flooded and the roof of our hostel leaked.  It was a bummer that we couldn’t spend time at the beach like we had planned, but I spent the day in the lounge of the hostel, sprawled on a sofa, reading and listening to the rainfall.  It was pretty perfect.  I had no phone, no internet and nowhere to be.  Small blessingsJ.  We ventured to the other hostel for lunch, after borrowing some big umbrellas from the front desk.  We came back and everyone napped for the afternoon before our ride came to take us back in to Cairns.  The bus ride back was ROWDY (a lot of young backpackers looking to have a good time), but we made it back safely and had a delicious dinner.  It was at a restaurant that did discounts for our hostel, so it was even cheaper than normal, proJ.  We explored the night markets afterwards and then went back to go to bed. 

On Sunday, we woke up, got ready, made our normal trip to Annabelle’s Bakery and then boarded our bus to the pier.  We got on our boat and made the one-hour trip to Green Island and the Great Barrier Reef.  It was incredible!  The sky was a little overcast, but the sun shone through at times and it was so beautiful.  When we got to the island, we found a nice spot on the beach, donned our stinger suits (super cute, full body lycra suits complete with a hood and mittens that protect you from jellyfish stings) and started snorkeling.  We explored some shallow areas of the reef, but couldn’t find anything like we were anticipating.  We decided to take a break for lunch on the boat (so good!) and then came back out and explored a different part of the reef.  It was exactly what we had expected!  It was SO beautiful and colorful and incredible!  It was a little chilly, but I had goosebumps from the experience, not the temperature.  I couldn’t believe all that I was seeing.  I saw a NemoJ, and the most amazing lime green, purple, and bright blue fish, some bright blue coral, the wavy kind of sea plant that attaches to the coral and starfishJ.  We snorkeled all afternoon and then went back to the boat for the ride home.  As we were walking along the pier looking down into the water that we’d just finished snorkeling in, Kaitlyn yelled, “oh my gosh, is that a shark?”… Sure enough, it was!  A couple behind us explained that it was a reef shark and they weren’t harmful, but still, it was a shark!  It was cool, but I was so thankful that we weren’t in the water when it decided to swim by.  I would have been really scared if I’d seen it face-to-face.  We had a nice trip back Cairns, except for the fact that Marisa and I discovered we’d been pretty badly burntL  Oops.  It had been so overcast, we’d forgotten about sunscreen… not our finest moment.  Marisa struggled the rest of the night and as I tired as I was, it was all funny.   I was certifiably slaphappyJ.  When we got back, we walked along the Cairns Esplanade for a little while before getting dinner at the same place as the night before.  After we finished we got gelato (SO good) and then met Rob again and walked to Gilligan’s to try and find the Swedish girls to say goodbye.  After we said goodbye to Rob, we caught a cab to the airport and waited for our flight.  It didn’t leave until 1am and by then I was tired!  I slept for a couple hours on the flight, but that was it for the night.  Once we landed we took a cab and the tram home.  I made it back at about 7am, showered and started the dayJ.  I did some homework, which I had neglected all weekend, went to my classes and came home.  Staying awake was hard today.  It’s only 8pm as I write this and I was ready for bed about 4 hours agoJ.  I’m exhausted, but it was SUCH a fun trip!  I had an amazing time and did some incredible one-in-a-lifetime type things.  I can’t believe how blessed I am that I get to be here and experience all of this.  Life is so good.