From Airlie Beach, I took the overnight Greyhound bus to Cairns. This particular Greyhound service proved to be more of an experience than I had expected. The driver stepped out, wearing an Akubra hat (a traditional Crocodile Dundee-type Australian cowboy hat), something that, on the East Coast, you usually only every seen on the heads of tourists, in particular American tourists. Guess what, it turns out the driver actually was American...and had an incredibly weird sense of humour. I don't know whether it was part of his standard jokes, but he made a point, both verbally and demonstrably, that he was a rather bad driver. More over, he proclaimed the bad news that there was not going to be a DVD on the 10 hr trip AND managed to set off a beeping alarm that drove us all slowly crazy. At 3 AM, fortunately, there was a driver change and the second driver turned out to be a better one and got us all safely to Cairns at 6 AM. Knackered, I sleepwalked into McDonalds across the road for a coffee and some breakfast, because my hostels reception wasn't going to open for another hour and a half, so plenty of time and nothing to do, with heavy luggage...
At first sight, Cairns doesn't seem as bad as its reputation of a tourist town. Well, i guess not at 7 AM in the morning anyway. At the waterfront, right next to the sea, is the beautifully designed saltwater lagoon, which shimmered peacefully in the morning light, like a flat piece of glass. At 7.30 AM, i ventured to the Cairns Girls Hostel, where I was going to stay for the next 2 nights. I had chosen this hostel on purpose, because frankly, I was neither in the mood for partying, men or mess on this first part of my journey where I was going to be travelling alone. It turned out to be a really good choice and, even though I was probably the oldest "girl" staying there, I immediately felt at home. This was also thanks to Dawn, the manager, who was really like your mother, in a good way(every second word was "alright darling?" and she even reminded you to put on your sun screen).
I had a little snooze and woke up at 12.30, ready to make some plans. Nothing major could be planned for that day, so I declared it as a chill out day. But I booked a reef cruise for the next day, with 2 snorkeling sessions and a dive at 2 outer reef locations - and got very excited about going out again!
After a couple of "lenghts" at the Cairns lagoon and the sunset on the marina, I met an old family friend who lived with his wife in Cairns for 30 years for a drink. Matz and Felicity, even though slightly surprised by my phone call, were spontaneously happy to meet me for a drink. They were extremely nice and the ice was quickly broken, particularly by Felicity, who was very keen on hearing all the gossip from back home. We went for a glass of champagne at the beachfront and talked about life in Cairns, Australia, Luxembourg and London and I had a very nice evening! (thank you Nelly for providing their number!).
The next day, I had to wake up early to go on my day trip to the reef. At first, when I arrived at the boat terminal, I was very disappointed because there was a long queue of passengers travelling on the same boat. And Dawn had promised me "small nr", like 30. But there were clearly more.Nevermind I thought, determined to make the most out of my day (and money). Once on the boat and into the cruise, it seemed after all like the tour wasn't going to be so bad. We had a 45 min briefing about our introdive (this is the kind of assisted dive that you can do without the need of a licence) and the guy giving the talk was genuinily funny (if a tad overexcited, like many of these tour operators seem to be). Soon, we arrived at our first reef locations, Saxons reef and everyone quickly got ready for snorkeling or diving. Since i was in dive group 9, I had plenty of time to get a sneak preview of the reef.
As soon as I put my head under water, all my doubts about this trip disappeared in one go. Because before my eyes, an underwater paradise, 100x more beautiful and clear than what i'd seen in the Whitsundays displayed itself. There was a huge diversity of fish and corals, most still brightly coloured. I had lots of fun and was high on adrenaline until they called out dive group 7, and I was 9.
I had done a so-called introdive before (a short - 25 min - and not very deep - 10 m assisted dive) and so was relatively relaxed about going underwater, just really looking forward to it really.And it really was so great to be underwater again, after a long time. There is this certain peacefulness and silence underwater, where the only sound you hear is that of the air bubbles you make. And I love it that you move so slowly, like a spaceman (or spacewoman). And then I finally found him: Nemo!!! There he was, with his cute little brothers and sisters, hiding in the protective arms of a sea anemone. As we moved along the floor of the reef, watching out left and right for beautiful creatures, we reached another "sightseeing" highlight, a giant clam. But all too soon, dive time was up and as usual, I didn't want to leave the water ;-).
I felt really good after that and had a delicious bbq lunch on deck, feeling very lucky to have seen this creatures alive! Because there is of course a massive tourist industry here, and this is not good for the fish and the corals, but there are (apparently) also a lot of conservation projects going on here and only a small part of the great barrier reef is actually made accessible for tourism.
After a short boatride, we arrived to our second snorkel site and I was overexcited to get back in the water. But i quickly got out again, to get an underwater camera, because this site was even better than the first. The platform of the reef was really close to the water surface and you could see all the fish very clearly and close-up, you just had to be really careful not to damage the reef with your fins. I spent all the time we had in the water admiring this amazing underwater world until the boat called us back.
On the return trip on the boat, i got chatting to a guy from Munich and a girl from Holland, and we agreed to meet up the next morning to go to Kuranda together, to visit the Heritage markets and waterfalls of this picturesque village in the rainforest.Unfortunately, neither of us knew when and where the bus to Kuranda was leaving from, and by the time we had figured it out, the 8.30 AM bus had departed and the next one wasn't until midday and since i already had to be back by 4 to go to the airport, we ditched the plan and went to the botanical gardens instead. There I learned something about how Aborigines controlled and used the toxicity of some plants for medicinal purposes, with applications from a single plant including extremes as using them as a treatment for headaches as well as contraception!
