G’Day from OZ

Well after a loooooooooooong day of planes, trains,  and automobiles, we finally arrived in the tropical town of Cairns (pronounced cans by the locals). After 32 hours, 3 planes, and numerous waits in security, including a 2 hour one in customs in Sydney, we are finally here! 

 All the logistics worked as planned, including the latest one about the hotel changing hands (see previous post). A lesson learned here is when planning multiple moving parts including terminal changes, leave PLENTY of times between flights! I have become spoiled with our airport in Atlanta. There were times we had to physically leave our terminal, get on a shuttle, and do the whole security check again just to go to another terminal. So although I thought our lay overs were way too long, often it was just what was required to not be running through the terminal Ala O.J, Simpson, for those old enough to remember!

 Anyway we finally got to Cairns, gateway to the Great Barrier Reef about 4 PM local on Monday (1 AM Atlanta Time). We settled in and took showers (man were they needed!), and in order to acclimate us to the time, we went walking around town to scope things out and go see as much as we could before find a bed for a long nights sleep. Wild parrots flying around and beautiful plants blooming everywhere it was gorgeous. We stopped into what seemed like a popular local spot called Outback Jack’s to get something to eat, mango wings for me, but Jenn and Erin decided to be adventuresome. Jenn ordered a Crocodile burger and Erin ordered Bootllace Spaghetti, yep regular old spaghetti except with a “New” name. They embody the name Adventure Women!

So on the way back to our hotel, we heard what sounded like a lot of birds in a nearby tree and went on to investigate. They were making quite the racket and were drawing a crowd, but as we got closer we saw that the trees were swarming with extremely large bats, hundreds of them, and they were huge, like the size of a big crow!

We marveled at them for a while and then strolled back to our hotel for an early bedtime in order to be ready for tomorrow’s adventure, our snorkeling trip on the Great Barrier Reef. Our real adventure begins!!!!