Today we left Cairns for the first half of our expedition of the Great Barrier Reef. With both of us being Pieces, we love sea life and snorkeling, so the Reef has been very high on the Bucket List since the beginning. Now here we are!!!!!!

The Great Barrier Reef is rather a misnomer. Jacob, our marine biologist, says that a more appropriate name would be the Great Barrier Reef System because it is made up of thousands of individual reefs which cover an area equivalent to the distance from New York to Florida. That’s a lot of reef which is a good thing because nearly 75% of our oxygen comes from coral reefs and algae beds.

Anyway, we left Trinity Peer and sailed to Thetford Reef where we went SNORKELING ON THE GREAT BARRIER REEF/System for the very first time!!!!! The water was warm and the views beautiful and I took about a million pictures. These are just a few.

We spent the next day at Pelorus Island and Tom and I took an “explorer scuba lesson” and went for a half hour dive – very, very exciting!

In the afternoon Jacob,  our marine biologist, set up a “touch tank” with creatures he’d collected from the reef. Here we are some of them.

 

 

The next day we bobbed around one reef and another ending up on Dunk Island for more snorkeling.

Jacob, explained the cleaner wrasse as the carwash guy. Other fish come to him to have bacteria and parasites cleaned from their scales and gills. The larger fish gets a “good cleaning” and the cleaner fish gets dinner.

Then we headed up the incredibly scenic and lush Hinchinbrook Channel which separates mainland Australia from a myriad of small islands off the coast. The channel is lined with miles of rich mangroves and its inhabitants include crocodiles, dolphins, turtles, dugongs, giant clams and soooo much more. The twisted roots and trunks of the mangrove provide shelter and a “nursery” for plethora of baby fish and turtles. Unfortunately we only got a glimpse of a dolphin but the scenery was tranquil and lovely.

Tom and I spent about an hour or so on the bridge with the captain. Captain Gary is very young, handsome, charming and friendly. He’s also Irish and talks with a lilting brogue. He chatted with Tom about the charts, technology, etc. and I took in the scenery. (I did get to drive the boat a couple days later for about two minutes. I backed it up about 10 meters to the right position for our next snorkel.

The next day we anchored off the Sudbury Reef. After a glass bottom boat ride, we snorkeled off the back of the boat. It was a sunny day – the first we’d had – and the snorkeling was fantastic. We saw profusion of fish, coral, giant clams, anemone, crabs, sea stars, sea cucumbers – beyond awesome!!!

Then back to Cairns to drop off our passenger friends who were disembarking and to pick up another group to continue on the northern loop of our cruise.

These are just a few last minute photos and memories of the ship.

On November 20th we arrived in Sydney, Australia!

We were only in Sydney for a short while – just long enough to catch a train to the domestic airport to catch our flight to Cairns, Australia to begin the next leg of our adventure.

Tom and I spent today in the pretty city of Cairns, Australia in preparation for our next leg of the journey – a great big check on our bucket list. Cairns is about 1200 kilometers (a 3 hour flight) up the coast from Sydney. It is also the main access point to the Great Barrier Reef, but more about that later.

 

We took advantage of the down time to wander around the city harbor area and get the feel of the city – clean, laid-back, and lovely. Here are some pictures from our walk-about.

This evening we dined at an interesting place call The Cock and Bull. We walked the five blocks in the rain (Cairns has just entered their rainy season. Since it is in the middle of a rainforest, it gets a lot of rain.) We were told that it was a great place and it turned out to be just that. We looked at the huge meals coming out of the kitchen and decided to share a meal.  Tom and I decided to share a meal and even at that it was way more than enough. Traci, this is where you need to cover your ears/eyes. We opted for the restaurant special – the Croc and Roo special – yep a combo of  crocodile cutlet and kangaroo steak and it was delicious! Crocodile tastes like a combination of lobster and chicken – interesting. Roo tastes like a good variation of a good steak. It was very much worth the rain trek.

Tomorrow we board the Coral Princess  for seven day cruise along the Great Barrier Reef!!!!  This ship is small – only about 40 passengers – and much more to our style. However, there will be no internet access – expensive or otherwise, so I’ll be off line for awhile. I promise to take lots of pictures and keep careful notes along the way and I’ll catch you up when we’re back among the connected. Till then, we wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Love,

Charli & Tom

November 17, 2013 Noumea, New Caledonia

Our last big adventure of this part of the trip was to the island of New Caledonia. Before this trip, I had never heard of New Caledonia, and we were surprised at the size and sophistication of this place. It is a French possession and greatly due to tourism and nickel mining & export, the annual per capita income is around $39,000 as compared to the $5,000 for Fiji and the other islands that we have visited.

Our planned excursion was scheduled for the afternoon so we spent the morning on a short van tour of the capital city of Noumea. It is a fairly large, hilly city compared to the other islands, and reflects the wealth of the island. It boasts of beautiful white sand beaches and the world’s largest coral reef rimmed lagoon. It is a beautiful island.

At noon we began our tour – another checkmark on the bucket list. This was a tour of a botanical garden and wildlife preserve. Okay, you might say – been there, done that – BUT this one we did on Segways!!!!!

I was a little nervous at the beginning, but we had good instructors and they insisted that we practice a lot before they allowed us to head out into the general population. The trick of the Segway is all in the shift of weight – to move forward you lean forward, to stop you stand up straight, reverse lean back on your heels. To turn right you lean the handlebar apparatus to the right and left to turn left. As I said, we practiced for about a half hour on a small track – I only ran over one cone.

Once we were fairly competent, we set out and spent the next hour and a half zipping up and down the hills

and around the park stopping at various exhibits along the way.

     It was Sunday and the park was very crowded, but no one was injured and the people seemed to enjoy watching us. We found them to be very warm and friendly waving and saying “bonjour” as we passed. The outing was very fun and we loved it. We were pretty tired by the time we got back to the ship, but the adventure was well worth the effort.

Next stop, Australia!!!!!