Australia, Part II
Cairns
Cairns was not as we expected. We did a whole lot of nothing while there. But we did do some fun things. Our second day, we spent the majority of the day sleeping in, wandering around a mall, and wondering how we were going to watch the season finale of Game of Thrones. That night, we went on a bar crawl, which ended up being one of the most ratchet things I have ever done. Cairns is a MAJOR party city. There were drunk stupid girls and frat-like guys everywhere. We played games in a group (or they played, Deirdre, Morgan, and I did not.) that involved taking off an article of clothing if you lost in order to stay in the game. As a result, there were naked people playing games in bars.
The next day, we headed to Palm Cove. This is a little seaside town with a gorgeous palm tree-lined beach that is about an hour out of Cairns. We layed on the beach for a few hours on what was the clearest day in Nothern Australia that we had. The waters are supposed to have saltwater crocs and you’re not supposed to swim, or do so with caution. We got drinks and lunch after at a nice bar and grill.
The following day, we woke up early to board our cruise to the Great Barrier Reef at 7:30am. It was a warm 2 hour ride out to the reef where we were free to snorkel for several hours. I didn’t spend more than a few minutes snorkeling because of the choppy water. The reef was amazing though! I got to see it more in depth and for a longer time during a scuba session that Deirdre and I took.
The boat ride back was so rough that people were throwing up left and right, they gave us unlimited free wine as a “sorry for the inconvenience”, one of the two engines went out, and it took three hours to get back. We flew to Brisbane the next morning.
Brisbane + Australia Zoo
We got an AMAZING dinner at the bar in our hostel that night. We stayed and played trivia, coming in second place and winning a bottle of wine. We had this after three jugs (or pitchers) of beer. We met some locals later on that were very friendly and bought us another bottle of wine.
The next morning we boarded a Greyhound bus to Beerwah to the Australia Zoo, home of the Crocodile Hunter! I grew up watching Steve Irwin and it was like Disneyland. By far the best zoo I have ever been to. There was so much interactive stuff going on, as far as keepers carrying around alligators, koalas, echidnas, etc for visitors to take pictures with for free. There were tons of opportunities for encounters or snapshots with different animals. Deirdre and I got a picture with a cheetah named Shibah, who purred the whole time.
Many of the enclosures allowed you to go up to and touch the animals that roamed freely, such as the koalas and kangaroos. There were plenty of shows to see. We watched tigers and crocs (of course). Steve’s face was everywhere, making for a really emotional time. It was a really amazing zoo.
The next day we lounged around the YHA all day until our flight back to Wellington at 7.
