Cairns!

Photos!

Cairns is the tropical region of Australia. It reminded me of Florida in that it's a place where Mother Nature has made it more than clear that humans should not be living... and yet we stubbornly move in anyways. Let's see, besides the usual Aussie potpourri of snakes, spiders, massive sharks, poisonous fish, and vicious UV rays, Cairns boasts the further benefit of enormous crocodiles (7 metres?!!), and jellyfish that spend all summer washing up all over their beaches. So yes, throughout the hottest, most humid half of the year (and believe me, it is very humid), the water is deadly. Brilliant.

So then, you ask, why were we dumb enough to go to Cairns? Well, the main attractions are the Great Barrier Reef and tropical rainforests the edge the city. And as much as I've failed to pitch it, Cairns is a perfectly decent place to vacation, although I would never ever want to live there.

Saturday morning we walked into Cairns' downtown district, perused the shops (all rather touristy, though we did get some tasty gelato), and then walked up and down the waterfront. The city looks out over a beautiful bay, although of course you can't go in for a quick wade unless you want to chance being eaten by a giant crocodile (there are warning signs all along the path). Still, it's a very pretty waterfront with nice parks and a saltwater swimming pool for the kiddies. The afternoon we spent hanging out at the hostel and planning the next few days' activities. The hostel was very nice, and despite being basically the same price as the others we had stayed at, had nicer rooms, its own small swimming pool, and a free nightly movie. Over dinner we talked with a nice old couple from Melbourne vacationing for the week. They came down every night to have a beer and watch the movie, so we compared notes with them each following evening.

The next day was rainforest day. We go a package that took us up to the town of Kuranda via a Skyrail through the rainforest (built to minimize the environmental impact). There were intermediate stops to walk around and look at the rainforest, and at one of those stops we got a guided tour from a park ranger who was quite possibly insane. Good times. Kuranda itself was overly touristy, but we had a good time wandering around and browsing all the shops (also we enjoyed a delicious chocolate milkshake). The trip back down was by a scenic train, originally built to get supplies to some foolish inland colony (once again, I really don't get why anyone thought "hey, let's settle here!"). It was built entirely by hand, and seven men died during its construction. These days it takes tourists, still traveling the original route, which was very pretty, sometimes tunneling straight through the mountain when they couldn't get over or around.

The next day we set off on our chartered boat for snorkeling on the Barrier Reef. Somehow we got very lucky on our choice of touring companies. Most reef charters are big electric, air conditioned catamarans (boooring). Ours was the Falla, an old wooden number that looked a little like a pirate ship and traveled most of the hour and a half journey to or from the reef under sail power alone. Way cooler.

On the way out, in the middle of the safety presentation, a peg that the foremost sail was roped to broke in half, leaving the sail flapping in the wind with the rope whipping around viciously at the end. So our crew had to interrupt the talk to pull the sail back in, then two of them threw their weight into holding it in place while the third pried out the splintered bits of peg with a screwdriver and replaced it with one from the other side of the boat. Was anyone steering while this was going on? Possibly the thirteen year old tourist, who they let steer for most of the return trip.

Later in the day, the crew related the story of the Falla's origins, which are as follows. It was built originally to harvest mother of pearl from the giant clams. Next it got a license for profitable lobster harvesting. When it got too old and outdated for commercial work, it was bought and used in a reenactment of the First Fleet (Captain Cook's expedition) and sailed to Sydney. That owner lost it in a game of cards (no seriously) to two Italian brothers, who sailed it as far as the Cairns area, ran out of money, and then realized they could turn a profit by chartering it out to tourists. It stayed in the charter business until 2002, when it hit a reef and sank to the bottom of the ocean(!!). It was hauled in and probably would have gone to scrap had a former crew member not bought it and rebuilt it, becoming the new captain. So yeah, we sailed out to the reef on a boat that had spent time on the sea floor.

Anyways, the reason we were on the boat, seeing the reef, was fantastic. We spent quite a few hours snorkeling, and got to see a ton of cool stuff. We saw sea turtles, and eel, an octopus, rays, sea slugs, and giant clams. Oh, and Katherine "found Nemo" (i.e. a tiny clownfish). The guides found a rather large "gummy shark" hiding in a cave near where we had anchored, but it was too deep to see without scuba gear. Also, on the trip out we happened across a school of tuna under attack by a shark. The tuna were leaping out of the water all over the place, and for some reason had attracted a flock of gulls who were circling and swooping. Katherine and I decided we were really okay with not actually seeing a shark while we were swimming around (Katherine: "I would have peed in the water"). All in all, it was a most excellent outing. I think my favorite part was the giant clams. To be honest, I never realized they actually existed in real life. And they are huge. I mean, those things could swallow me alive if they were so inclined.

Tuesday we took a bus up to a beach north of the city. Beaches are where Cairns residents happily congregate to enjoy all of the deadly things the area has to offer, all in one convenient location (don't worry, even the crocodiles are known to go for swims in open sea when they feel like it). If you go in the water, you run the risk of getting plastered by the box jellyfish, which is by all accounts indescribably painful, not to mention possibly deadly. There are nets strung around the popular beaches to prevent this, but don't worry! There's another jellyfish, the Irukandji, which is small enough to get through the holes in the net, and is also horribly venomous. But yeah, we had a good time at the beach, by which I mean we didn't die or contract skin cancer (hopefully).

The next day Katherine had an earlier flight back to Adelaide (via Melbourne), and then home, while I was continuing on to Tasmania. We split a cab, I checked my luggage early for my evening flight, and I saw Katherine off. Then, too cheap to pay for another cab (no public transit runs to the airport), I hoisted my backpack and set off walking on the road out of the airport. Turns out it's a very long walk out. Still, I was glad I had walked, because halfway out I stumbled across a boardwalk into the mangrove swamp that surrounds the airport. I had never been in a mangrove swamp before, so it was a very new experience. The mangrove trees themselves are very crazy-looking, and there are little creatures all over. Mostly I saw tiny crabs that eat decomposing leaves, but there were also a massive white bird, and mysterious conical shells that didn't seem to have anything living in them, and yet moved slowly across the ground.

After that I continued my hike along the road until I made it to the Mount Whitfield conservation park. The area is ecologically isolated, making it home to lots of weird species of animals and such, like the cassowary. It's a bird, and yet it's dangerous and unpredictable, and sometimes attacks humans. What is wrong with this country? Highlights from the warning sign about cassowary attacks at the beginning of the trail included "Do not run away, this will expose vulnerable areas of your body to the bird's attacks" and "If you have a backpack or jacket, use it as a shield." I had a pleasant hike up part of Mount Whitfield, got some nice views, saw a ton of ugly turkey-things and less ugly quail-things. Then I grabbed some dinner and hiked back to the airport for Tasmania!