September 19: Philip drove us to the airport for our plane to Cairns in northern Queensland. We were shocked to discover that Australian airlines charge you quite a bit for each kilo exceeding their baggage weight limits on domestic flights and because we are carrying 4-months of equipment etc, we were socked with more than $230 in charges! (We resolved that before our next domestic flight, we will ship a bunch of stuff on ahead to New Zealand and send other stuff that we can do without home to the US rather than continue to pay such heavy charges.)
We arrived in Cairns (pronounced Cans) at around 6 PM and were driven by van for nearly 1.5 hours in the pitch dark along a very windy coastal road north to Port Douglas. There, the key to our room at Villa San Michele awaited us, although all the staff were gone for the night. We walked around the elegant little tourist town, ate a reasonably good Chinese meal, and shopped for breakfast food which Peter cooked every morning in the little kitchen in our very comfortable suite.
The next morning, we awoke bright and early and after a breakfast of fresh pineapple and ham n' eggs with English muffins and marmelade on our patio...
...we headed off for our trip out to the Great Barrier Reef aboard the Calypso.
After a very bouncy trip of about an hour and a half...
...the Calypso anchored and we slipped off the back to do the first of our three "dives" over the reef.
Most of the 25 or so people on the trip snorkeled, but about a half-dozen did scuba diving.
To say it was spectacular would be a great understatement. It was truly sublime.
We didn't take the following pictures, but we saw everything in them and more, including:
Spectucularly colored corals...
...of many different types
Giant Clams
A sea turtle
An incredible variety of fish species...
...in many different sizes...
...shapes...
and colors
as well as sea cucumbers
...a small shark and even this stingray, the same type, that killed Steve Irwin, the famous Australian TV naturalist/crocodile hunter.
After lunch and three dives, we headed back through even rougher seas, arriving back in Port Douglas at around 4 PM, a very full and exhilarating day.
Therese still had the energy for a quick swim in the little saltwater pool at the Villa San Michele...
...followed by a delicious take-out seafood meal and a bottle of New Zealand Sauvigon Blanc on our balcony. (The wine here is incredible!)
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