A Weekend in Cairns

About two weeks ago two friends and I traveled to Cairns for the weekend. If you look on a map, Cairns is close to the tip top point on the East Coast of the country—about a 3 hour flight from Sydney. Full of excitement we headed to the airport where I flight ended up being delayed. We didn’t arrive in Cairns until midnight but luckily a bus was waiting to pick us up and drive us to our hostel. The hostel we stayed at was called Global Central and although we couldn’t see it when we arrived late at night, it was in the perfect location in Central Cairns. The next morning we had to wake up at 6 am, and knowing me that was not easy! We walked to the harbor and got on a catamaran headed to the Great Barrier Reef. It’s the world’s largest coral reef system, consisting of an area of approximately 133,000 sq miles. There are over 150 species of coral and more than 1,500 fish species, and I was going to be scuba diving in it! I’m not scuba certified but luckily I found a beginner scuba tour group that let’s you dive for 20 minutes while holding hands with an instructor. When we finally arrived at the reef—it’s located about an hour and a half away from shore—we had a quick lesson on diving and then hopped in the water to snorkel. The coral reef is unlike any I’ve seen before. There are so many different kinds of coral: soft, hard, orange, green, etc. We quickly found a few clown fish living in a sea anemone and immediately thought of Nemo who lives at the Great Barrier Reef! 

Finally it was our turn to dive! The instructors put all of our gear on, which made it pretty difficult to walk across the boat and jump into the water, and then we slowly headed deeper and deeper in the water. The instructor showed us different corals we were allowed to touch and picked up a sea cucumber for us to play with. Towards the end of the dive we even saw a barracuda  which I have to say was a bit scary. It was huge and how really big teeth! After what felt like 5 minutes, but was apparently 20, we got back on the boat and were greeted with a huge buffet lunch. 

We spent the rest of the day snorkeling and two different locations on the reef where we saw an octopus and a white tip reef shark! After the dive tour that day we headed to a local bar on the harbor that had a two for one drink special. After about an hour is started down pouring outside so we decided to just stay at the bar for dinner and then run home to our hostel in the rain. That night we went to grab a drink at a pub near our hostel and ended up being convinced to join a pub crawl that took you to five different bars throughout the night and included a free drink at each. Even though we were exhausted from the day, we had tons of fun at each bar and didn’t make it home until 1:30 am which made waking up at 6 am the next morning extra fun! The next day we were picked up in a bus outside our hostel heading to the Daintree Rainforest and Cape Tribulation. The bus ride up north was long but we stopped at a wildlife habitat in Port Douglas on our way up where I got to take a picture hugging a koala bear and feed kangaroos!

 We then stopped at the Daintree River where we boarded a little boat and had a cruise down the river. We saw one crocodile and spent the rest of the tour looking for tree snakes. Lunch was next and then another long bus ride up to a “hike” through the rainforest. The “hike” was about 15 minutes long and on a wooden paneled trail—not exactly what we were expecting. However it was pouring rain like I’ve never seen! It felt like being under a shower head. Everyone else on the tour brought rain jackets and umbrellas but silly us only showed up in our shorts and tank tops. We were soaked by the end of the walk and had learned the lesson that it does rain in the rainforest. After toweling off a bit and hopping back on the bus we arrived at Cape Tribulation Beach. In one of my biology classes I took about a year ago, we spent quite a bit of time learning about the box jellyfish—a deadly jelly fish that lives off the coast of Northern Australia. One of the power point slides we studied featured a picture of a sign in Australia warning the beach goers to stay out of the water. When we arrived at Cape Tribulation Beach I realized that I had found that exact sign. I was so excited I couldn’t help but run to the sign and jump with joy—my friends of course thought I was a complete nerd. 

However, even though seeing the sign in real life pretty much made my day, it also meant that we weren’t allowed in the water. So we walked around the beach a little bit and then hopped back on the bus ready to conk out on the 3 hour bus ride home. When we arrived back at the hostel we all took warm showers which felt amazing after being soaked all day and then went out to a nice fish dinner on the harbor. We went to bed early that night because we were all so exhausted, and then spent the next morning wandering through the shops in Cairns before boarding the airplane back to Sydney. It wasn’t too hard to leave the wonderful town knowing I’d be back in the less than a week with my parents!