Day 95-98: Cairns (but no pictures), The Great Barrier Reef, Back to Cairns

In Cairns, Molly and I spent our first full day moving our stuff from the budget backpacker we had stayed at to the private suite we had booked for the four of us (fortunately, just around the corner) and exploring the town.  Cairns is built around tourism.  There are rainforests nearby, beaches, historic places, but in particular, the Great Barrier Reef is only a boat ride offshore.  The town itself is full of the sort of shops you would expect: surf shops, cheap t-shirts and beachwear, and a surprisingly good Chinatown, with excellent food.  

There is an issue with what the Aussies call "Stingers", or jellyfish, so even though so many of the beaches are very nice, you can't really go swimming at them.  Cairns, to get around this, has a free public pool right on their beach esplanade, so you can soak in the water on a hot day.  This turned out being pretty necessary, as the humidity is often more than 90%, the temperature is also more than 90 F most days.

Later than evening, Mary and Monroe arrived.  We cooked a lovely dinner of grilled fish, caught up on our respective journeys north from Brisbane, and got ready for the next morning.

We had booked 4 berths on the Rum Runner, a 16 berth vessel that does budget overnight trips for snorkeling and scuba diving on one section of the Reef.  The boat left early on Tuesday morning, so we left most of our luggage at the rented apartment (we would be coming back there the next day anyway) and packed overnight bags for the boat.  Once aboard, we motored out for 3 hours to the reef, where we would anchor and swim for the next 24 hours.

The crew aboard were mostly American and Aussies (the largest group of Americans we had met, in fact, since Thanksgiving).  The vast majority were going diving, or working on getting certified to dive, but there were a few of us who just wanted to see the reef and snorkel.

Including those two shift characters.

Here's the boat, anchored at a reef.  You can see the lighter colored reef, and the darker bits are the deeper waters surrounding it.

So I don't have any pictures from us snorkeling.  A combination of not having an underwater camera, not wanting to drop my phone overboard, and the wonderful awkwardness of suiting up in a wetsuit every time we got in the water kept me from really taking pictures.  But trust me, it was amazing.  You should do it, whoever you are that is reading this.  Everything in the water, from the tiniest fish, to the coral, to the giant clams, is iridescent and beautiful and chaotic and psychedelic.  I saw a shark on our morning swim (not too big, only 2 meters long or so), but I loved the giant clams the most.

How big is a giant clam? I can hear you asking.  Big.  5, maybe 6 feet across.  I'm sure they get bigger, but that's still impressive, and almost scary when you're only a couple feet away.  I kept getting images of it closing on my leg, and not letting go as the tide came in.  They don't move too quickly (or at all) so really not too much danger there.

And now, a few more pictures in my continuing series, "Molly likes to nap in the sunshine."

A quick explanation of the above photo.  You'll note the almost tiger stripe like bruises on Molly's legs.  She had a run-in (literally) with a cable fence a few days previous while she was running in a torrential rain, and the bruises had just reached the "orange and green" stage.

Surprisingly, even for a pretty bare bones and ratty vessel, the food on board was pretty good.  The captain, who was also the cook, took a lot of time making the salads look good, and we feasted rather well at every meal time.

A long day of swimming and being outside left Molly sunburned, but pretty happy.

The boat, of course, wasn't actually air-conditioned (see above photo of open hatch), so even as the sun set, it was pretty warm and muggy on board.  As a result, most people moved their sleeping pads to the upper deck.  This was a fact I didn't realize until the next morning, when I almost stumbled across several people (including Molly) as I awoke to take in the sunrise.

I'm not normally up this early, but the morning breeze, in addition to bringing the storm above and the clouds below, started the boat rocking a little more aggressively than it had all night, which was surprisingly not an unpleasant way to be awakened, even for a non-morning person like me.

After three more swim sessions, sadly, it was time to head back.  The sun, the waves, and the swimming had all worn us out.  One by one, we all found places to nap. It was almost comical how sleepy the afternoon made all of us.

The scenery was still nice.

\Soap Box On

A few thoughts, however:  We did book the budget reef cruise, it was true.  Rum Runner was easily $300 less expensive than the next snorkel/scuba overnight on the reef.  What we did not find out until we had almost docked back at the marina is that a lot of these savings come from the captain not paying his crew.  That's right, the 4 people who took care of the divers, helped with the boat, the food, and keeping us informed and safe were all volunteers.  Which means that they all asked for tips after we finished, as that would be the only pay they would get from the trip.

I'm already not a fan of "tips to supplement crappy wages" but "tips because it's the only way we get paid" left a bad taste in my mouth.  I understand that all of the people who had volunteered to help did so because it allowed them to dive on the reef for free, but that is weak tea, at best.  Additionally, the dive instructor, even though he was very good at diving himself, was Japanese and at best spoke very little English.  We all got one introductory dive, and having someone talk you though your first experience of trying to breathe underwater in very broken English is off-putting, to say the least.

So even though we did have a great experience, I would find it very hard to recommend that outfit (Rum Runner) to anyone else wanting to see the Great Barrier Reef.

\Soap Box Off

One last note:  Coastal Australia has bats.  And not normal bats, either.  Giant Fruit Bats.  And I mean GIANT.  It's freaky the first time you see 3 foot wing spans circling a tree a dusk.

Eventually, you get used to it, though.  It's Australia, of course the bats are freakish.  At least they can't kill you like everything else on the island.