A Shark Cage Diving Day

I realized when I woke up this morning to a whole lot of messages that perhaps the night of cage diving is not the best night to fall asleep too fast to write a blog post...but we survived unmaimed!

We also saw a LOT of sharks, to Patrick's delight. They showed up as soon as we parked the boat, and stayed around so continually that they let anyone who wanted to jump in for a quick second viewing do so. That second viewing was without a wetsuit, though, and that water was COLD, so I did not take advantage of their kind offer. Patrick, of course, did, and we have a whole lot of shark photos! We even saw a few jump out of the water trying to get the bait, which was fun to see from on top of the boat.

And now, we're off to Tasmania! We have a few tours planned, followed by some hiking that I'm very excited for - my fingers are crossed for beautiful weather so we can get some great scenery and pictures.

Exploring Adelaide on our Last Day

Today was already our last day in Adelaide - time flies!

We truly started the day in vacation mode, since we had half a bottle of wine left from our wine tour lunch, needed to check out (and so lose the wine glasses in our room) and couldn't haul an open bottle with us...so we took to heart the recommendations that our tour guides gave us about "brekkie wine!" After that more-relaxing-than-usual breakfast in our room, we ventured out into the 93-degree "spring" day to explore.

One thing I've noticed throughout Australia so far is the Christmas decorations - they take Christmas here seriously, even with palm trees instead of snow! They've also got a few more decorating options, like candy cane striped flowers...although their Christmas trees are definitely all turning a bit brown already.

We started with the Adelaide zoo, which was small but had some good exhibits including cassowaries tons of parrots and a panda! It was deserted, so when the animals felt like braving the heat instead of hiding in a corner, we had a good chance to see them.

Then we stopped by a few museums, the Migration Museum and the South Australian Museum. Both had some interesting history and information, including some beautiful Aboriginal artifacts and art.

Finally, a quick stop for a "tasting plate" of ice cream to ward off the heat, before heading to the airport for our next leg. One thing I'm learning about airports in Australia: security is less of a pain (hurray for keeping on shoes!) But flight-wise, we need to check out all options. We checked in today to see that our flight was delayed by 20 minutes. We checked the board a few more times to see that the delay wasn't listed, but there was no gate assigned. We decided to wander down to the gate on our ticket at the original boarding time (not the delayed one listed on the ticket!) and found our flight was doing final boarding, at the gate not listed anywhere on the boards, at the time boarding was supposed to start! So the moral of the story - check all the options in Australia. You never know what is happening when!

And finally, we arrived in Port Lincoln just at sunset. Sitting down to dinner - just before the restaurant closes - we're enjoying a beautiful view in a pretty small harbor town!

Adelaide Gardens and Wine Tour

We arrived in Adelaide yesterday afternoon after a leisurely morning in Cairns. It was a pretty flight, seeing the landscape of the coast and rainforest melt into the outback desert. Although the area we're staying in Adelaide is a pretty generic cityscape, after walking through the city's parks and restaurants we can say that it is a beautiful city. The landscape surrounding it reminds me a lot of southern Africa, with scrub forest and green farms surrounded by red dirt and brown hills.

We spent our first afternoon wandering through the botanical gardens and checking out a couple rooftop bars that were a little too cool and trendy for us, but had some good local wine recommendations!

Today we spent the day on a wine tour of the Barossa valley. Its a beautiful area with what looked like hundreds of wineries, although we visited only four - more than enough, considering that most gave us at least 6 and one let us sample up to 15 wines. I am impressed with the tour's planning and guide that I am able to write a coherent blog post! We met some wonderful people along the way from all over the world and enjoyed some good wine, more great views and even a winery with some dogs ready for tour folks to throw their ball!

Tomorrow we'll be wandering Adelaide until it's time for the plane to our next adventure - cage diving.

Diving the Great Barrier Reef

Well, we've returned from three pretty amazing days diving on the outer reef - and after about 10 hours of sleep, I'm finally feeling awake enough to write about it! Ten dives in three days, including two early morning and one night dive, in 4 different dive locations.

We saw everything we wanted to see and more, from rays and sharks to a napping sea turtle to so many fish and corals. Our first site was a little bleached, but the weather was beautiful enough that we were able to move further out in the reef after that and the colors were amazing! We saw butterfly and angel fish the size of dinner platters, a lobster as big as our dog, and mostly small sharks. (Note that we SAW a lobster - I didn't turn into one. The boat very kindly provided quart jugs of SPF 50, and I walked away with an actual tan and no burn at all!!)

We saw a huge variety of sites, some with huge towering walls of reef that went down far deeper than we could go, and some with lots of small, shallow coves. We got spoiled - as our first experience scuba diving outside of the cold Minnesota lake we did our training dives in, it's going to be hard to match this in the future!

Our Time in Cairns

While we spent some time in Cairns, it wasn't really our destination - it was more of a home base for all the exciting things just outside of Cairns, which I think was perfect. It's a city with beautiful scenery and hot tropical weather - but there's not much to do in Cairns proper. It's essentially a beach bum town - with a beach you can't use because of the crocodiles. And we didn't even get to see the crocodiles on the beach!

There are some great restaurants here, though, and beautiful views along the beach and on the harbor. If you like boats, there are tons of boats to look at, including one small fishing boat we saw that turns into a fresh fish cafe covered in Christmas lights once it docks.

And the weather is beautifully hot and humid...last night I had a nightmare about blizzards, so I think I'm adjusting to the tropics nicely!

Although it's a nice town in general, I have to say my favorite part is the scenery - so here's a few photos!

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving from the sun deck of our dive boat...have some pie and stuffing for us!

Hiking the Rainforest in Daintree

This glitch where I can only upload three photos before crashing the system may make things a bit overwhelming here...today was a day of a lot of photos!

After our beautiful beachside breakfast we headed up to Mossman Gorge, a hike in the Daintree Rainforest National Park. We enjoyed a long, humid hike with some lovely views before moving on.

Next was a crocodile river tour - no photos as I wasn't fast enough on my phone, but we glimpsed a few!

Finally, we hopped a car ferry and drove up to a few more hikes in the rainforest and on the beach before our long drive back to Cairns.

Tomorrow we board our liveaboard, so we'll be off for a few days, but hope to have some great photos for you this weekend!

A quick stay in Palm Cove

At least, I think it was Palm Cove...there are a million little beach cities here and we stayed in the city for less than 12 hours!

The good news - we survived our first drive on the left side of the road with minimal drama (thanks to Patrick) in spite of arriving at 11 pm in pouring rain and with me feeling sick due to I think the most turbulent flight I've ever flown on! And we had a lovely little beach hotel waiting for us, with  beautiful sheltered patio to sit on and listen to the rain for a little bit before sleeping.

And then in the morning, there was our view for breakfast....

Last Day in Sydney

Today is our last day in Sydney, so we're knocking out all our last to-dos! We started bright and early again (good thing they are good at coffee here!) with an opera house tour. It was quick, but a fun way to see a bit of the opera house even though we weren't interested in any of the shows here for these three days.

We then wandered around and explored the Rocks district, full of cute restaurants, and Observatory Park (previously a working observatory and now a museum). 

Finally, we swung through the aquarium (not terribly impressive although they are one of only a few aquariums to house dugongs, a saltwater manatee). We actually finished all our planned events early today, so wound up just having coffee and snacks in the Queen Victoria Building, a lovely old building that is now a shopping center but has some great architecture and Christmas decorations!

As I write this we're sitting waiting for our flight to Cairns, where we will be visiting the rainforest and great barrier reef. Our access to WiFi is less than guaranteed, but we'll fill you in next when we can!

A Few More Photos from Sydney

Well, all - Blogger seems to have set itself a limit of 3 photos per post before it crashes, so here's a second post for our Monday in Sydney, with a few more photos!

Sydney by Boat and Foot

We had an easy day planned for today - a leisurely breakfast, the ferry over to the zoo and then dinner at the Sydney Eye, an observation tower overlooking the city. We woke up early after falling asleep at 9, and were off...and promptly boarded the wrong ferry.

I can't say I regret the mistake, although it would have been nicer with sunshine - we ended up at the beautiful Manly Beach, which it turns out is not where the zoo was.

The ferry ride itself was beautiful, with some fantastic views in spite of the fog and rain. We arrived at the zoo to more rain and regrets that our ponchos were one of the items that didn't make the cut for bringing when I was trying to make our weight limit! We had a nice, lazy day wandering around the zoo anyway, and it cleared up partway through our day. The zoo itself was not bad - I'd never seen an echidna, wallaby or platypus before - but the view was spectacular.

We then took a slow wander through the botanical gardens (more views) before heading up to the observation tower (noticing a theme here with the views?). While the observation tower itself was a little too crowded to be fun, the revolving restaurant and bar on the next level down was much more relaxed and offered the same view as long as we ordered the equivalent of one drink each and an appetizer to share. Not a bad place to watch the daylight disappear and the city lights come out!

I had this goal of not walking quite as much today as my feet were already tired, but we definitely didn't meet that one. We'll see about tomorrow!

Good morning, Sydney!

We arrived in Sydney bright and early at 8 am, after about 24 hours of travelling - thankfully we were both able to get some sleep on the plane! We decided to take the adventurous route and walked from the airport to our hotel. While it wasn't a quick walk, it was a sidewalk the entire way and we ran into a whole lot of gardens, breweries and other places we otherwise never would have seen. Including a chocolate bar - and yes, I did use jet lag as an excuse to eat a chocolate soufflé at 10 am!


We made it into town just in time for our walking tour, which I had thought was an hour and a half but turnedt out to be a 3 hour tour of Sydney! A few highlights:

St. Andrews Cathedral

Queen Victoria Building (fancy shopping center with great architecture)

An alleyway decorated with birdcages, always playing the songs of the native birds that live in the bush nearby

We hit the opera house and the harbor bridge just as the drizzle started, so those photos will come on a nicer day! Mostly, though, the weather has been beautiful and warm - just a slight sunburn for both of us.

And now, we've finally reached a late enough hour to get some sleep - so good night!

And We're Off!

Well - almost. After a few hours of switching things in and out, we're at least finally packed. Once we get into Australia, our baggage limits are 7kg a person (about 15 lbs), and we finally clocked in at 6.8 kg each! It took a bit of creativity and we'll both be wearing our jeans, jackets and sweatshirts to check in for each flight whether it's 50 or 115 degrees, but we made it!

First stop after a very, very long flight is Sydney. Keeping our fingers crossed that it isn't pouring rain, as the ponchos were one of the items that didn't make the weight cut.

And now, off to the next task - packing up Gadget's things for his vacation with both sets of grandparents and his best friend.