"Oh my God, Oh My God, It's Coming This Way"

I have arrived to Cairns. It's a real nice tropical city. So far one of my favourite locations in Australia. On my first night (Thursday), I met up with a couple (Alex(girl), and Taylor (boy)) from the UK that were on my New Zealand tour and we went out for dinner. Then headed around the city and I stumbled upon something that made the entire trip completely worthwhile. I came across the "Sister Cities" park. And Yes!!!! Sidney By The Sea is the sister city of Cairns and I have driven by the Sidney "Sister Cities Sign" every time I go to the BC Ferries. I have now completely the Trifecta of Sidney, Anacortes, and Cairns! Later that night we somehow had a 3 year old boy come and start playing with us. No Parents in sight. He brought his stroller and proceeded to run at us with it. It was frightening! We were able to distract him by pointing to a guy doing a fire-spinning in the distance. There is nothing like watching a random 3-year old kid run off alone in the dark.

The next day, I went on a Great Barrier Reef tour with Alex and Taylor. We headed out for an hour and half to Moore Reef. The tour company had a pontoon (sp?) set up at the reef. We got there and jumped into the water! It's the tail end of the "Stinger" season. That's a nice name for the season that has Box Jellyfish swimming EVERYWHERE! Box Jellyfish can be lethal! As there has never been a sighting of Box Jellyfish at this particular reef, I felt fine going in the water, but Alex and Taylor got Stinger Suits. These look just like those full body speed skating suits! Very funny!


We had an awesome time snorkelling. The 3 of us went throughout the entire zone of allowable snorkelling. We saw an awesome purple/green Parrot Fish that was about a metre long. It would chomp on the coral reef and you could hear the chomps distincly. As we headed towards the pontoon, we spotted the Scuba Divers below us. There was a camera man who was feeding this large fish named Wally and a large sea turtle. Taylor and I dove down and were able to stroke the turtles shell. We got back up to the shore, I looked down at the turtle and it was slowly heading up straight for us. "Oh my God, Oh my God, It's coming This Way!!!!" I got so excited that I had swallowed half a litre of water. I tried to keep watching the turtle but was struggling for my life. The turtle ended up surfacing and went straight into Taylor's arm. Then dove back down.

Later in the day, we went back down near the scuba divers, and spotted our turtle friend. This time we "hijacked" him. We were able to get the turtle a good 50 to 60 metres away from them. At one point, I was able to grab onto its shell and catch a free ride. Then Taylor shouts "There is two of them!!!!". Oh my god, we ran in to 2 of them. We then chased them for a little while, and then FLASH, a couple of camera shots. The Scuba Diving Cameraman found us, and was there to take "his" turtle back. We did get a couple of great photos of us with the two turtles. No one else got two turtles in their photo. Not to mention ours wasn't a fake posed picture. We were actually chasing the things. We spent the rest of our time in the water just laughing about all the fun we were having.

The rest of the trip consisted of a 20 minute glass bottom boat ride, a 20 minute semi submersed submarine ride, and 2 full lunches. Mmmmm good. It's going to be hard to ever go snorkelling again. The colourful fish, and coral, the warm water.... It was absolutely amazing!!!!!

That night, I went out for dinner with Taylor and Alex, and the rest of their Contiki Australia tour group. Another member of the NZ tour was on their tour as well. I spent the night avoiding a "crazy" guy on their tour. If you got in a conversation with him, you were stuck for the rest of the night. I actually had to be quite rude to ask him to leave a photo of the 4 of us from the NZ trip. Because of a bizarre story (tell ya later), Taylor ended up smashing me in the nose with his knee. Ouch, I don't think it's broken, but it hurts. They are now off to Alice Springs, and I'm not sure where I'm headed for the next week......

Jane, Me, Alex, Taylor, Crazy Guy