The Great Barrier Reef

The weather in Cairns is finally what I have been looking for the past few weeks…constant 80 degree weather with a nice breeze. Cairns is lovely tropical city with a scenic boardwalk along the ocean. We took a boat out to the Great Barrier Reef for some snorkeling and diving. It wasn’t the best day for me since I got seasick and threw up on the boat – and my ears wouldn’t adjust as I tried to dive. However, I still got to snorkel twice and let me tell you – this is Discovery Channel live. Some of the coral reefs come up so close to the surface of the water that you could touch it (of course you shouldn’t) and if even you try to tread water; you’d hit a reef. Among the underwater life, there were sea cucumbers, turtles, eels, sharks, and schools of brightly colored fish chasing each other (little sad that I didn’t get to see Nemo). I’ve snorkeled in the Bahamas and that is complete crap compared to this underwater wonder. On our day trip to the reef, I met some interesting globe trekkers from France, the UK, and the US who gave me some great travel trips for France and Thailand.

One surprising fact is that Daintree is the oldest living rainforest on Earth ( I thought it was the Amazon). The drive up to the rainforest included the marvelous beach coast and many sugar cane fields. Cane toads were brought to Australia in order to eat beetles that were damaging the sugar canes. However, since the toads are nocturnal and the beetles lived on top of the sugar cane – that didn’t work out too well and OZ now has tons of cane toads spreading like wildfire. Apparently if you lick the back of one of these toads, it’s a hallucinogen similar to LSD (btw its illegal to possess a cane toad here). And “NO”, I did not get the opportunity to try this. I did however lick a “green ant”. If you lick one of these, you get a burst of lemon lime flavor on your tongue – pretty insane. The aborigines used to mash up green ants to flavor their food.

I thought my adventures ended in NZ, but I was wrong. Jungle Suring (aka zip lining) in Cape Tribulation (part of the rainforest) was awesome. You start off at the highest point in the jungle at 23 meters above the rainforest canopy for a magnificent view of the greenery and ocean. As we made our way through the forest, there were many trees that were millions of years old (ie. Palm and nutmeg trees). The harness for the zipline is basically held up on the tree with wooden blocks and huge metal chains- not one nail bolt in any of the tree– just relying on friction. They even let you zip line upside down which was wild – observing the thick and lush foliage of the rainforest upside down!

P.S. I totally caved and bought a pair of UGG slippers, couldn’t help myself!

I’m heading out of Sydney in a few hours to Singapore…more in a few days.