Cairns

After a wonderful Australia-American Thanksgiving I was on my way back to the tropics of northeast Australia: Cairns (pronounced easiest as “cans”) I hopped a flight and was to be picked up by Chantal’s friend, Bill, but he was running late so I decided to head downtown to walk the Esplanade. It’s a touristy town, being the prime port to take tours to the Great Barrier Reef, just an hour catamaran ride out of town, but it’s a town that’s just the right size.  Everything is walkable, and the Esplanade is the road right along the water which has a ton of amenities, including their famous lagoon, which is a basically a huge public infinity pool, free to everyone:

I believe they have this pool, not only because it’s an awesome idea, but also because you can’t really swim in the ocean, since it’s very brown from the river running into it, but more importantly because there are also dangerous jellyfish that wash out down the river too.  There are certain beaches that have “stinger nets” which are basically netted off areas of the beach so the stingers can’t get in, allowing people to swim.  Not the most optimal beach experience, but I’ll take what I can get to be in water 🙂  I didn’t run into many stingers anyways – it was just the beginning of the season when I was there; I think I got it worse when I was in Bali, feeling the stings as I snorkeled through the mini stingers, leaving some scars on my shoulders that are still wearing off.

Another great thing about the Esplanade, and a lot of parks in Australia in general is they have showers, running water and free gas barbecues! Seriously, Australia has gotten their “parks and rec” department figured out.

Before I go on too much about Cairns, let me back up.  I was walking around there at the moment, but was planning on getting picked up by Bill, and he was taking me to his house in Port Douglas, 25 mins North of Cairns.  I had another small(er) town to explore first.  Bill is a Barramundi fisherman by trade – he runs fishing tours by referral only, driving days through the “bush” to the outermost reaches of Northern Australia, where the fishing is good. Lots of people will vacation to Port Douglas just to find Bill, wanting to go fishing for the famous Barramundi with a guy who has the reputation for it. I guess he’s had a few famous customers.

So, Bill pulls up in his beat up truck and hollers for me to hop in. He fit the Aussie bushman/fisherman profile perfectly.  Ol’ Johnny Cash playin’ on the radio, smoker, good stories aplenty, and the accent/drawl tied the knot. Really good to have a change in pace and stay with a family like this for the night.  The fact that I was staying as a guest probably had a bit to do with it, but despite Bill having a really laid back and carefree lifestyle, I really respected his parenting and you could tell he was a wild youngster converted to a respectable adult – his two teenager kids sat and talked with us most the night, curious about the traveling I was doing. When I can tell that a teenager will talk to their parent about anything, I can tell their doing it right. Here’s Bill with his son:

 

Bill told me some stories of his travels to America, when barely anyone was doing it. They barely let him rent a car for fear he wouldn’t drive on the right side of the road.  They finally agreed to rent it to him, and he pulled out the lot, immediately going the wrong way, quickly making a curb-u-turn whilst the rental owners ran after him. 🙂

Bill called around to his friends in Port Douglas and organized me a discounted scuba tour, as well as discounted accommodation at his friend’s hostel. It’s nice to know a local that knows the locals… I went to bed after squashing a few cockroaches – comforting knowing I’m back in the tropics. I then rode with Bill to Port Douglas where we parted ways and I went on the day trip to do 2 dives.  The diving was different than Asia – I would say the topography and life wasn’t as good but the reefs were amazing, teeming with an abundance of coral.  Most of the reefs have are grown to the top of the water, so when you dive, you can go around them, but really snorkeling is just as good. I saw a shark on the first dive:

There is a certain kind of fish that seems to follow you to each dive site you go to – they hang out around the boat (hoping for scraps of something probably) and aren’t afraid to get close to you.  I guess if you put your hand out they sometimes come and kiss it. It was nice to start and end most of my dives with this guy hanging out:

 

After the boat returned, I decided to hike up to a viewpoint Bill recommended me:

If you look closely, you can see the stinger net outline at the bottom of the picture.  I swam at this beach the next day for hours, trying to decide what to do the next day. Ultimately I decided to head back down to Cairns to do some more snorkeling/diving trips out of that port.

My goal had been to find a place that would allow someone to volunteer on a boat in trade for some free diving. While I was on the tour in Port Douglas, I was talking to a customer who worked as a dive master at a shop in Cairns and he told me his company did that very thing.  I went to Deep Sea Divers Den and inquired about a live-aboard volunteer position. Of course, I wasn’t the only one with this idea, so they were “booked” a ways out, but I could volunteer on a day boat in a few days, so I signed up. I also signed up for a paid 2 day, 1 night sailboat cruise to the outer GBR, to hold me over until then.

I enjoyed some time in the “lagoon” and hung out on the grass for a bit, when I overheard a group conversing about diving, and realized one of them had Deep Sea Divers volunteer shirt on, so I cut in and asked about how the volunteer experience was.  20 minutes later we were all discussing grabbing some beers and meat for the barbecue for dinner. I love making friends in the park. They became my “Cairns friends” and we hung out until we departed.

I went on the sailboat trip and had an amazing time. It was unforgettable to sleep out on the reef and wake up early to watch the sunrise, shortly after jumping in to have a morning snorkel. It was the first time I went diving without a dive master – I buddied up with the only other diver on-board that was more experienced, but I think I put too much faith in him and I don’t think he’d dove in a while, since, after looking back at the logs, he took us too deep for too long. I did a ton of snorkeling on the trip and the one thing I dislike most about diving is that once you go diving, you shouldn’t go free diving (breath holding and going deep while snorkeling) since it can cause you to get “the bends” when you come up too fast.  I ended up feeling a bit weird after doing too much of this, so I skipped the last dive and took it easy. I went on a night dive and I think it is one of my new favorite ways to dive – it’s so exhilarating just having a torch and your imagination to explore!

I saw lots of sharks, turtles, fish, coal, rays etc. I’d never seen a white tipped reef shark, and when I saw it I freaked out a bit at first, since it was bigger than any I’d seen, and looked like it had a bit more potential to do damage too:

I made a friend onboard, Hilly, and we ended up following each other down the east coast of Australia, running into each other along with all the other people traveling the same direction.

Now I needed to decide what to do next! I was looking into bus trips down the coast, but they all seemed so expensive, and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do.  Everything seemed like it was tourist central, tours being promoted everywhere.  After doing some research I decided to take a break from decision making and head to the lagoon. It’s amazing how all your problems can be solved by not concentrating on them.  I ran into a couple friends from earlier that week, Yohann and Ellen. We got chatting for a bit and then Yohann, who has been living in his car, taking advantage of the Esplanade amenities for the past week, tells me he’s thinking of heading down south, stopping at the sights along the way, and is looking for some people to share gas expenses. He asks me if I’d like to be that guy, and I pretend not to sound too excited too quickly, but hop on that opportunity immediately. We made a plan to leave in a couple days and go around the tablelands (a tour I thought about spending $200 on).  Joining up with Yohann was the best thing that happened to me in Australia – so many things I was able to do with someone that had the same interests.  No-homo, but we became great friends! Here’s a picture of us further down the road:

We had an amazing night of fro-yo before we left with all our friends, and made it a theme of our trip to find fro-yo whenever we could.  I really enjoyed chatting/laughing over fro-yo with a girl from the UK, Ellen, who was leaving the next day also. One of those missed connections sort of things :/

 

 

The volunteer position on the day boat was hard work, and a bit rushed, but it was a fun challenge.  See how fast you could get your dive gear on – the faster you could the longer your dive could be… It was the first time I did the underwater navigation by myself and I got utterly lost. Didn’t have a very good briefing of the reef layout and had my mind on other things… No worries though, they came to get us.  I hear that volunteering on the live-aboard boats are much more relaxed and flexible.  I guess I’ll just have to go back and find out!

Happy to be back in hot humid weather, and made some friends that would stick with me for a while!

See the Cairns photos here