calling up from down under: can you meet me in Cairns?

Cairns + good times = snorkelling + touring + falling out of the sky + partying with people I never thought I'd see again

After our one night in Darwin that included a jug of cider, a free chicken burger each and about five drinks all for $10 between the two of us... we were off to Cairns.

A standard northern Australian city; summer all the time, beach town without a beach, tourist souvenir shops, markets, numerous ice cream shops, and a gateway to heaps of fun activities.

You only really need a day to see the whole city, so we did that the day we arrived and then it was time for the fun to begin! First on my list was to fall 14,000 feet out of a plane. No big deal. I can't say that I even believed that this would happen... but it did! I also didn't believe that I would ever see Danny, the Irish goofball we met on our tour to Uluru ever again, let alone jump out of a plane with him. But after scattered messaging from the guest computer at the Daly Waters Pub in the middle of the desert... there he was waiting for me at 6am for our drive to Mission Beach!

To celebrate our safe landing we congregated a group of four more people I thought I might never see again! Neil, another Irish bloke who was Danny's "tweedle-dee" and Sarah my Uluru bus buddy from Israel who loved horses and missed her dog more than anything. Also to my surprise the goodbye I said to Sin when I left Melbourne meant nothing because I got to party and hang with her twice while in Cairns along with another friend CJ! Here's to those nights...

The next two days we spent exploring two more of these so-called "World Heritage Sites": The Daintree Rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef. Yet again, another 6 a.m wake-up... to George. The last person you want around you at such an hour. Constant speaking. Non-stop stories, information, explanation, verbal diarrhea for ten hours. His monotone flow of knowledge droned on literally the entire tour except for during lunch when he mysteriously disappeared (thank goodness). As quickly as we got excited to have an informative and knowledgeable tour guide to take us through the rainforest... we wished Vincent Van Gough or Mike Tyson were there to provide a solution for shutting the sound of this man's voice out.

You'd reckon that having information poured at you for ten hours straight would leave you with lots of cool facts and stuff... but I must admit that quite the opposite occurred. We don't actually know much about the Daintree Rainforest other than that it is really beautiful, full of mozzies, its the only place in the world where two "World Heritage Sites" meet (the Rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef), there is an island that is shaped like Homer Simpson lying down, and the camouflage pattern used for the army was designed from the bark of the trees there. It is also home to one huge friggen crocodile named Scarface who weighs 400kg, a very large, strange, and anti-social endangered species of bird called the cassowary that live there and encourage plant growth by spreading seeds and fruits around, and an ice-cream shop that provides you with very exotic flavours!

This ice cream was from the Daintree Ice Cream Company... wattleseed (light brown) which had an espresso/coffee-like flavour, raspberry (pink), soursop (yellow) which had a caramel-like fruity flavour, and macadamia nut (white) filled with nut chunks... mmmmmm

Next up was our eating... I mean snorkelling trip to the Great Barrier Reef! We definitely weren't blessed by the weather on this day although we were lucky that the sun decided to shine as soon as we got our snorkels out! ...but it was a tad windy and cool so we didn't last to long in the water... plus there was the most amazing smorgasbord buffet lunch awaiting us back on the sailboat! As well as getting up close and personal with the reef we had a chance to see it a little deeper on a warm, dry semi-submarine boat tour! Turtles :)