Category Archives: Cairns

Cairns!

Posted on by robandlinds
Kathy bought a pretty awesome Living Social deal. The deal included a flight from the states to Sydney, a flight from Sydney to Cairns, from Cairns to Melbourne, and a flight back home to the states. It also included accommodation for 3-4 nights in each city AND a hot brekky each day! So, I decided to join her during her long weekend in Cairns, a city directly north of Sydney (~3 hour plane ride).
Kathy made on a few friends during her scuba diving tour and we ended up spending the entire weekend with them!
We managed to find a bar with a dance floor and I managed to show off my new dance move..

The next day – after only getting approx 4 hours of sleep the night before – we decided to ride scooters. Turns out they’re a lot harder than they look. The guy who was explaining how to properly ride the scooter got a bit nervous after we almost ran into a parked car in the parking lot.. Whoops!

We had such a blast – swam in some rivers, rode on the highway, stopped to look at a map, made a few wrong turns, almost hit a parked car, met some friends from Brissy who showed us up by driving legit dirt bikes, stopped to look at a map, passed some cars on the left, got honked at, got confused by their maps, sang some songs, hiked around a bit, and still made it back safely with less bruises than indoor soccer!!

Ms. G…i.a…n.s.i.r..a..c.u…s..a

Posted on by robandlinds

Kathy arrived on the same day that my parents left, so she got to spend the morning hiking around Balmoral Beach with the entire Ralph Family (minus Jer)!

The jet lag didn’t last long for her due to our wild Manly excursion. We took the ferry over to Manly and introduced Kathy to all of our Aussie friends, which went over well considering we had a previous, positive encounter with another Kathy in Hunter Valley.

United airlines managed to screw up again, but this time with luggage!! Upon arriving in Sydney, Kathy received the unfortunate news that her bag was missing and the airline didn’t find it for another FOUR DAYS. Regardless, we still managed to have a great time – sweats ‘n all ;)!

Great Wonders of the World

Posted on by robandlinds
Port Douglas is about an hour north of Cairns in northern Queensland. We stayed 5 nights at the end of June and into July. Port Douglas is one of the closest towns to the Great Barrier Reef and is right next to the Daintree Rainforest, the oldest rainforest in the world.
We were there for my 28th birthday
View of 4 mile beach
Pool shark
The start of our Daintree Rainforest guided tour
Took a boat up the Daintree River and saw a few cocs and snakes
Interesting roots on this tree. Our guide told us that Aborigines used these roots to make boomerangs.
Place where we stopped for lunch in the middle of the rainforest
I cant remember what these roots were called, snorkel roots maybe? Pretty cool.
One of the bars in Port Douglas had Cane Toad races every Saturday night. 4 lucky members of the crowd get assigned a toad. They then get a kazoo to encourage their toad to jump. First toad to make it to the other end is the winner. Not sure if I’ll ever witness something like that again.
On the 4th day we did our Reef tour. A boat took us out to the outer reef from about 8:00 am to 5 pm. We went to three different sites to snorkel. We saw several sea turtles, tons of fish, and one shark.