After our fiasco at the airport we successfully made it to Cairns for a week of rainforests, beaches, and of course the Great Barrier Reef. However, before any of these things could be explored we had to find the movie theater to see the latest episode of the Twilight saga, New Moon, for Jenny’s b-day present. It turned out to be a pretty expensive movie costing almost USD$14, and we thought movies back home were expensive!
We made our way north towards Port Douglas and the Daintree National Park. Port Douglas is a coastal resort town north of Cairns providing easy access to the Daintree NP and the Cape Tribulation. Cape Tribulation is where the rainforest meets the reef, which is one of the few places in the world where two Unesco World Heritage sites merge. There were numerous pristine beaches and walks through the forest. We didn’t get to see any crocs, perhaps in southern Australia.
Our main draw for this area of Australia is of course the Great Barrier Reef. We opted for a three tank boat dive with Poseidon Cruises out to the northern barrier reefs. The boat was spectacular, perhaps the nicest dive boat we have been on. Our expectations were not set very high for to fear that the reef had been damaged by so many divers; however, it turned out to be very healthy with a lot of marine life and corals.
With an extra day on our hands and nothing else to do, we opted for a low level flight over the northern beaches of Cairns and parts of the reef. We were the only two passengers on the flight and they even let Jason fly (luckily we didn’t crash). We saw turtles, dolphins, and even a manta ray from the plane.
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