Cairns

Liz at Great Barrier Reef  
Liz and Turtle Great Barrier Reef
The second stop on our Australian adventure was Cairns (pronounced “cans”). We woke up really early to catch our flight out of Sydney. We really didn’t do much in Cairns, we spent time on the beach (which was across the street) from the apartment that we rented on Trinity Beach and after eating all of our meals out in Sydney it was good to be able to cook for ourselves. We only spent 2 days in Cairns, so we were up at the crack of dawn on our 2nd day so as to catch a boat out to the Great Barrier Reef. Since we didn’t pre-book an excursion we were placed on a standby list and finally made it on to a tour. We took a huge catamaran out to a pontoon at Moore Reef, and enjoyed our day snorkeling; we also took both the glass bottom boat and semi sub tours offered. It is winter in Australia, so Liz was hesitant to go in the water because she expected it to be freezing; she was pleasantly surprised to find that the water was actually a perfect temperature. Needless to say, the snorkeling was incredible, and we were lucky to have the best weather possible, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky so the visibility underwater was really clear. The colors of the coral were just amazing, there were giant clams, turtles and brightly colored different species of fish (which we didn’t learn the names of). There were so many gorgeous colors and wildlife to see that we really should have gotten one of those disposable underwater camera’s.