The Holy Trail: First Stop in Australia

The minute we landed in Cairns we could tell we are no longer in New Zealand. We got off the plane and to the runway and were hit with 34 degrees and over 70% humidity (a few days later it was 93%). Welcome to the tropics... Our first day was dedicated to running around (more like walking slowly) around town, sorting out plans for the next few days and applying loads of sun protection.

One of the surprising highlights of our day was a coffee and tea museum. At first we were not sure if we would even stop there at all, but we ended up spending over 2.5 hours inside!
They had the winning strategy: coffee, tea and chocolate tastings combined with nice explanations and an eclectic collection of coffee and tea equipment. We rotated between the stations: coffee, coffee, chocolate, chocolate, museum, coffee, chocolate, museum...After 2.5 hours we knew a lot about coffee and had a great chocolate hangover.

Back in town we saw a brilliant presentation about the Great Barrier Reef. The first half was all about what wonderful creatures we would see under water and how we would be able to recognize them and play with them. Everyone in the room was excited as we took a short break. The second half made us reconsider our diving/snorkeling plans. It was all about the creatures that can bite, sting, eat and hurt you. Since this is Australia they have many of them here...

The next day we went up the coast to Cape Tribulation, were we spent the night in a small cabin surrounded by natural forest (and spiders!).

At a small private zoo we saw our first kangaroos (not in cages!) and crocodiles. In the evening, as we were sitting on the beach waiting for the sunset we saw a shark in the water, 10 meters from the beach, trying to hunt something. There were a few other people next to us on the sand and everyone jumped to their feet. Luckily we had no plans of swimming there anyway. At night we went to the bush to look for animals. Our guide was sad he didn't find us any snakes (we were quite happy with that), but we saw other things, mainly insects, but also found a few frogs including the sugar cane toad. This one is a pest in the country, kills everything it touches, is pretty venomous, and must be executed when captured.

Finally, we reached the peak of our 'coastal' experience. Three days on a ship, exploring the Great Barrier Reef. Oren underwater and Anita above it. It was a diving boot-camp - 11 dives in 3 days. It felt like dive-eat-dive-eat-dive-eat-night dive-eat-sleep everyday. Anita took it a bit easier especially after the first day in which she had to fight the currents and waves (as well as the shock of having seen that many jelly fish) just to get back to the boat. There were cool people on board and it was great to hang out and chat in between dives. When we were picked up on the first day Anita suspected she knew the driver/dive master - Murat. It turned out that he is from Braunschweig and they exchanged stories from the hood.