The Great Barrier Reef...and other ramblings

G’day from Cairns!

That’s pronounced “cans”, btw.  The r is silent of all things…or maybe it’s just the Aussie accent that loses the R in the fun.  I am sitting in my hotel room, doing laundry (it was time) and drinking a Fat Yak Pale Ale out of Matilda Bay.  Definitely not an American Pale Ale, but it has at least some hops compared to the lagers that are prevalent here. 

While we are on the topic, they have licensed liquor stores here for all liquor including beer and wine.  You can’t get those at a grocery store at all.  But they have one conveniently located to my hotel so I am not too put out.  The other interesting thing is they have full beers and half strength beers.  It’s sort of like a light beer, but they tweak the alcohol content as well.  Remember the labeling they had in New Zealand that shows how many “standard” drinks are in the bottle?  They do that here too.  Half strength usually equates to 1 standard drink in a bottle vs. 1.4 or more with a full strength.  Or I guess another way of looking at it is 3% alcohol vs. 4 or 5%.  The half strength version of Fat Yak is called Lazy Yak for when you are going to sit around and do nothing.

Let’s see…when last we chatted, I was about to head out for the last day in Auckland.  I ended up catching the ferry out to Waiheke Island.  I had to be back to meet Dan’s friend, Susy by 3:30 but the ferry ride is only 40 minutes and I caught the 9AM one so I had some time.  The island has bus service and you can rent bikes and/or cars but I chose to just walk it.  There were 3 wineries within maybe 2 miles of where the ferry dropped us off so no problem.  Since I had skipped breakfast, however, I took a quick detour over to a butcher shop in the small town to get a bacon and egg pie.  Very good.

View of Auckland from the ferry

 

They have some nice houses on that island

I believe it’s at this point I am supposed to point out that Dan is a bit of a poosie because the walk up to the wineries was not that bad.  Yes it was uphill.  Yes I looked like I just took a shower while I was tasting at the first place (and thank goodness for the kind lady pouring who was able to not wince as rivers of sweat were pouting off me)…but it wasn’t THAT bad.

The first winery I hit was Mudbrick Vineyards.  They have excellent wine if you ever get the chance to go there.  I learned that Waiheke Island is predominantly known for their Syrahs although they do make whites with grapes from the south island of New Zealand and Mudbrick also had cab and merlot grapes on their property.  Their signature wine was called Velvet because that is the mouthfeel they wanted to have.  It’s a blend that changes every year, but is predominantly Cab, Merlot and…crap…maybe petite verdot?  Excellent wine and I wish I wasn’t 6 weeks from being home because I would have bought my 3 bottle allocation there.  I could ship to the US, but it was like $250 shipping for 6 or fewer bottles.

Anyway, went to Jurassic Winery right next door but they were closed for harvest so I went over to the third winery, Cable Bay, and tasted their wines.  Pretty good.  I can’t complain, really, but after Mudbrick…they were just all right.

 

View from Mudbrick Winery...so yes it was uphill from the water...it was a fairly steep walk

View from Cable Bay Winery

They have these walking paths all over the island.  It's how you can walk down to any beach or wherever you want to go.  This one is the path from up near the wineries down to the ferry.

From there I headed back down to the ferry and caught the 1PM ferry back to Auckland.  I lazed around for a bit before meeting Susy in the lobby of my hotel.  She coincidentally had a Make A Wish family staying in the same hotel and had met them before meeting up with me.  She was awesome.  Drove me around a bit to see some sights I hadn’t seen with the hop on/off bus.  Specifically, One Tree Hill…that has no tree anymore but does have a great view of the city.  Then we went down to the harbor to walk along the waterfront where they are opening a bunch of restaurants and trying to revitalize the area.  After that, a quick stop to feed her pooch (awesome and super smart dog, btw) before getting dinner.  I had to leave at the crack of dawn the next day so she dropped me off after that.  Thanks again Susy!

 

Where the one tree used to be on the hill.  Nice view though

The trip to Cairns was a bit exciting.  First the flight out of Auckland was 40 minutes late getting there.  Luckily the Qantas business lounge in Auckland isn’t bad and I had a bit of breakfast before leaving.  The flight itself wasn’t bad over to Sydney and they made up most of the time lost somehow.  Transferring from the international terminal to the domestic one in Sydney was extra fun helped out by the fact that a couple of boys sports teams were trying to do the same thing at the same time as I was.  I had to go through customs (pretty fast) then recheck my bags with Qantas, go through security and then hop on a shuttle bus that took us over to the domestic gates.  I got there about 10 minutes before my flight was to board so all was good there.  While the Auckland to Sydney flight had the laydown seats, domestic business on Qantas was like US domestic first class.  Same type of seats…no entertainment system, etc.  We did have drinks and dinner (I did a salad with prawns) so it wasn’t all bad.

 

Dessert on the Sydney to Cairns flight.  Interesting..but pretty good!

Cairns is HUMID.  Luckily it’s also around 82…but solid water when walking outside.  I stayed the evening I arrived at the same hotel I am in now and they agreed to hold my luggage I wasn’t taking with me on the liveaboard for me.  I was only doing about half the liveaboard full cruise (3 days out of 7) and was flying back from Lizard Island (where apparently Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie did their honeymoon at the 5 star resort) so had a weight restriction on what I could take.

I walked around Cairns a bit.  It isn’t very big.  I realized I am going backwards as far as population goes.  Sydney has a population of around 4.6 million (in the greater metro area), Auckland is around 1.5 million, and Cairns is 146000.  Sunday I am traveling to an island off Malaysia that maybe has 1000 people? 

Cairns is here for diving and snorkeling and there are rain forests near here (doing that tomorrow, btw).  Every other business downtown is a trip/tour planner.  You wouldn't think all of them could exist at the same time, but I guess they can.  They do have a pretty cool esplanade along the bay although when the tide is out, it turns into a mud bog.  My hotel is about a mile and a half from the center of the shopping/restaurant/nightlife area which is okay with me.

 

Let's go swimm...oh...walking!

Then again, maybe not.  That's right folks.  They have salt water crocodiles here.  Apparently back in the day when they weren't protected and the Aussies still had guns, a typical Saturday would involve a croc shoot to clear them out so you could go skiing on the rivers around here.

I have been diving the past 3 days not counting today.  The boat is called Spirit of Freedom and I would guess there were around 20 divers on board with a crew of 7 or 8 really helpful and nice people.  The boat was big enough that 20 was just about right…a couple of times it was too many, but whatcha gonna do?  It was an interesting mix of people with 20ish dives and people with > 100 dives (I only do that because I am at 126 and then next closest to me was in the 300s).  The first day we did a couple of checkout dives at a place called Caves on Normal Reef.  They were really for the staff to assess how calm/competent each diver and dive buddy pair was for the rest of the trip.  I was paired up with Daniel, who was Russian, but lived all over the world because his parents worked for a Russian airline and moved all over the world.  He now lives about 5 hours south of here and is a documentary film maker and was scouting locations for a film they are going to do on coral bleaching. 

 

Spirit of Freedom.  3 levels...my cabin was at the lowest level with no windows.  I was in a quad share (2 bunk beds crammed into a tiny room) sharing with 3 women in I would guess their 60's all from Tuscon.  The moment when they came into the cabin and realized I was the 4th was pretty hilarious.

When the water gets too warm, the coral bleaches and while it can survive and recover if the water cools off, it may also die because the normal food it lives on can’t survive those warm temps.  The water on the dives was 82F so great for us…not so good for the coral.  Daniel and I matched up fairly well in how much air we went through and temperament so it was a good deal.

 

A light example of bleaching.  There is some coral that is totally white.  

Liveaboards are pretty interesting.  It’s basically wake up, eat, dive, eat, dive, eat, dive, eat, dive, eat, sleep, rinse repeat.  I may have gained weight, but I haven’t seen a scale so I am acting like that hasn’t happened.  The second day started out with what turned out to be the best dive of the whole trip: Steve’s Bommie.  A bommie is a pinnacle in the ocean that you basically go to the bottom (or as low as you can safely since some pinnacles go super deep) and then circle it as you ascend back to the top.  Tons of life: sharks, nudibranchs, some saw an octopus.  Just a good dive.  The other dives were hit or miss.  I would say 5 or 6/11 dives were really good and the others were okay.  I still saw something cool each dive and I was diving with fish and all that cool stuff so don’t get me wrong.  I was just thinking it was going to be WAY better than it was.  Probably my own fault for building it up in my mind so much really.  Still some pretty cool stuff I got to see.

 

Little patch of soft coral

Nudibranch...this one was maybe 2 inches

Giant clam.  This was probably 3 feet across

You know.  It was pretty cool, this school circled us a couple of times when we first got to one of the dive sites.  Tons of them.

A big grouper cruising along

A whole wall of soft coral.  Really pretty

We did 2 dives the first day, 5 the second, including a night dive, and 4 dives the 3^rd day.  The night dive was pretty cool.  Daniel had a blue light (which he carefully explained was NOT a black or UV light even though people call them that) which made some of the coral glow when he shined it on it.  Sort of neon colors which was pretty neat.  I didn’t take my camera with me on that dive unfortunately.

 

3 little nudis all together.  A little blurry, but whatareyougoingtodo?  These were all maybe half an inch or so

Potato Cod at Cod Hole.  They feed them and have them sort of trained to come over to picture opportunities

Anemone

Another Potato cod.  I added these so you can see how big they are.

White tipped reef shark.  It was only 4 or 5 feet long...sort of a small one.

It was a pretty good group of people on there.  Quite a few Americans, but also a German couple and a Portuguese guy along with a handful of Australians.  When not eating or diving, you really just sit around and chat with each other learning where they are from and their stories.  It was a good time for the most part.  One of the Aussies ruptured his eardrum on his first dive…was bleeding out of his ear…yeah…not a good time.  He was done for the trip and while he had booked a 7 day, he flew back with us.

 

Yet another nudi....if you haven't noticed, I like nudis

School of fish at Lighthouse Bommie.  These are blue striped somethings...yeah...all yellow, but someone fixated on the blue stripes.  Tons of fish in this school

This is a pipe fish.  Often confused with a sea horse mainly because they LOOK like a sea horse that is just stretched out...which I think is what they are.  They are in the same family, anyway

Sea slug.  Pretty cool looking, though

Fan hanging from one of the edges of Lighthouse Bommie.  It is a pinnacle that looks like a lighthouse in profile.  Even has  a passthrough (opening) at the top that lets light through and supposedly "shines" light if the sun hits it right

Finally a fish looked at the camera for the photo!  These aren't quite Nemo's but they are relatives and are anemone fish

Another Nudi.  This one was kewl.  Never seen one like this before.  And for all the nudis I found, the dive masters from the boat saw 3 and all were even more different.

School of Jacks that were hanging out under our boat

A crappy, but still the best I have picture of a sea snake.  It's head is in the rocks trying to get away.

Yesterday we checked out Lizard Island a bit before flying back in a prop plane at 1000 feet.  Yep, the whole hour flight back to Cairns was 1000 feet above the ocean and because of that, we had to wear a life vest packet around our waist in case we had an unfortunate water landing.  I think we were so low so none of us would get bent.  We certainly didn’t wait the minimum 18 hours before flying but my joints feel okay so I think things are fine.

 

What it looks like flying at 1000 feet, but rainbow!

Last night I went out with a couple from the boat who also did a 3 day trip.  Doc and Cheri from Virginia.  Super nice people who have lived a crazy life.  They were both teachers and back in the 70s they met while hiking/traveling around New Zealand.  They taught in Australia, got married in India, traveled southeast Asia by trawler or whatever cheap way they could.  The stories had me rolling.  They would tell this crazy story about being on a not very legitimate guided tour of Burma where the guide was going to a mountain village to trade bullets for chilis and then talk about walking to Darjeeling during their 6 month wandering of India.  Pretty much every story ended with “young and dumb”.  Glad to have met them.

Today I ran the esplanade (why I know it’s 1.5 miles to the center).  After running, it finally happened, friends.  I had been debating whether to do it or not…the stakes were so high and the stories so scary.  But I was at the continental breakfast at the hotel scanning spreads to put on my English muffin when it slapped me in the face.  There I was looking at the options: marmalade, strawberry jam, vegemite, honey…wait…go back…vegemite…hmm.  It was in a fairly friendly yellow labeled package…what could be the harm?  It’s supposed to be a great source of the B Vitamins!  What could possibly go wrong?  It basically looks like tar.  Black…viscous…non appetizing to say the least.  I took the smallest swipe of the knife and put the little dab on the English muffin.  Slightly unpleasant flavor…but it wasn’t enough to really judge.  More tar on another portion of muffin…yeah…no…it’s pretty gross people.  Be thankful there are other ways to get your daily recommended allowance of B12.

After breakfast I took off to wander the town.  I first went down the esplanade mainly because I knew it had shade from trees.  They have this cool area there that’s free called Muddy’s (the mudskipper) Playground.  It’s about a quarter mile of fountains and little playground areas with forts and see saws to help keep your children occupied.  Sure the urine to water ratio is way too high, but it’s for the kids! 

 

Good start to the morning, right?

I went through a pretty cool open air market that had booths of crap souvenirs along with stalls with fresh produce.  I wanted to see what kind of crazy fruits and vegetables there were so I wandered through what was the equivalent of a farmers market.  In the middle was a table where this lady was selling her chili sauces.  As I passed by she asked “do you want to try my sauce?”  Hell yeah I do!  She claimed the fire she spooned onto the cracker wasn’t that hot.  It did have a nice flavor…before the flames kicked in.  It was raw chilis mixed with whatever other ingredients…to be added to something you cook.  I just nodded as sweat started forming on my forehead.  Luckily, one of the fruits that was available that they were letting people try samples of was Longan…which is like a lychee…which is a hard skinned, large marble sized fruit that has white flesh that’s wrapped around it’s seed.  Super good…and has the power to help quench the burn.  There were also custard apples which I have heard of.  I think they have custard like insides…there were no samples of that.

I headed over to the local shopping mall where I was reminded there is no Burger King in Australia.  Actually, I think there IS a Burger King, it’s just not the USA Burger King because someone already had a place named that when BK wanted to come on over.  So here it’s Hungry Jacks.  Yep.  Hungry Jacks: Home of the Wopper.

 

This is actually from Manly Beach but I forgot to put it in that blog.  Hungry Jacks.  Crazy, isn't it?

This was hanging in an underwear store in the mall.  Got to LOVE the Aussie sense of humor and lack of moral outrage.  I am sure if this was in the US, people would be picketing the store over it.  I did not get a pair, for the record.  My boys are comfortable enough.

I stopped in the local casino too and won a bit of money…enough to pay for my tour tomorrow anyway.  Did I tell you about blackjack over here?  The dealer doesn’t take their hole card until AFTER you play out your hand.  So they deal everyone else 2 cards and they deal themselves one face up.  Theoretically it doesn’t make a difference…but it feels like it does.  For sure it threw me off the first time I saw them doing that.  The crazy thing is if they have an ace showing, they call for insurance (people who play blackjack know what I am talking about), but then everyone plays out their hand before they take the second card to reveal if they have a 10 or not.  Crazy.

Hey!  We are caught up.  What do you know!  I think the dryer is also done so I need to go get my clothes anyway.  Of course it’s going to take me another hour to get all the photos uploaded but you are worth it, dear reader.  But for now, I am going to shut up.

Remember it’s our time, the people’s time!

Love to all!

Jim