Magnetic Island

Our trip to Magnetic Island was pretty tiring but once we got there it was what we'd been looking for.  We had to take a bus from Cairns at midnight and arrived in Townsville a 5am.  We took the 7:45am ferry to Magnetic Island, dropped off our stuff at the hostel, and since we couldn't check in yet we went to the picturesque beach down the road to close our eyes.

We didn't do much the first day but the next morning we rented a 4 wheel drive vehicle to drive around the island which is only about 6km from one side of the island to the other.  We needed a 4x4 because most rental vehicles won't let you go off the main road (even if it's paved) if you don't have a 4x4 for insurance reasons. First we stopped at a beach to snorkel where I wore my stinger suit for the first and only time. After snorkeling we went for a hike to check out the forts that were used for war times back in the day.  It was also a hike where you are most likely to see wild Koalas.  We didn't see any but the hike was was really nice and had a beautiful view. When we got back to our car we were so hot and thirsty and there happened to be a woman that set up here smoothie station while we were on the hike... yummmmm.

Next we went to feed wild wallabee's (mini kangaroos) carrots.  They were sooo cute and would eat right out of your hand. By this point the sun was beginning to set so we drove to the west side of the island and watched a beautiful sunset. We're not sure what the internet situation will be over there so if you don't hear from us in the next week, our phones will be back on when we land in LAX on the 24th at 1pm.

We arrived in Sydney late last night and stayed there for our flight this morning... besides sleeping in a baby changing room we're ready for our resort in Tonga! We'll be at the Reef Resort on one of the Vava'u islands (Kapa).

Back from the reef

We're back from an amazing adventure on the great barrier reef. We are exhausted but had such a wonderful time. I highly recommend doing this for 2 nights. 1 night isn't really enough and 3 nights would be too much.

We had to wake up for the 7:45am shuttle to take us to the boat station. We didn't have an alarm clock and by the time we realized the room we were staying in didn't have one, it was too late to buy one. We walked all around Cairns trying to find a place that was open but nothing. On our way back to the hostel it started to downpour. We ran as fast as we could but we were still drenched from head to toe. We both love the rain so it was pretty fun.

We ended up writing a note and sticking it on the door of the office asking them to wake us up when they open at 7am. We crossed our fingers and hoped it'd work. It was our last resort. We also hadn't been sleeping in much past 7:30 or 8 so we weren't too worried. We ended up waking up at 6am! wooohoooo!!! go us :)

We got on the shuttle with all our bags and hit the road to the office before being transferred to our first boat. We did 2 dives on the first boat which was filled with people on day tours as well as live aboard customers. 2 girls ended up getting sea sick while we were on the first boat and wanted a helicopter to come pick them up when the captain wouldn't turn the boat around (it's a 90 minute boat ride back). He called the heli office and it was going to cost $1180 to pick them up. I guess it was too much (no kidding) so they stayed on board.

Our first 2 dives went pretty quickly because we were so excited I think we used our air faster. We didn't really see anything big until we transferred to the other boat. We did 12 dives total, 4 on day 1, 5 on day 2, and 3 today. We did 2 night dives which were really cool. The night dive we did last night had a TON of sharks. I guess they have learned to use the boat's lights to hunt for fish. I got an awesome video just before we went in of 3 or 4 people in the water with 3-5 sharks swimming around and then a pipe fish comes flying out of the water trying to get away from the sharks and all the sharks go swimming after it.

What we saw:

Sharks- Tons of them
Nemo - :)
Turtles- Sooooo peaceful
Flounder
Clams- SO BIG ("as big as a truck tire"-Cam)
Sting Rays
Lobsters
Tons of different fish
an Octopus

There were a lot of other things we saw but I can't think of them all right now. We weren't really on the boat that much because we were in the water most of the time. Our first dive was at 6am and our last dive was at 7pm. We would wake up and dive, eat breakfast, go for 2 dives before lunch, eat lunch, go for another dive, eat dinner, go for another dive, then eat dessert. By this time everyone was asleep by 9:30-10pm to wake up again at 5:50am.

We're killing time right now until our bus at midnight back to Townsville. Our bus arrives in Townsville at around 5:30am and we'll head to Magnetic Island at that point for 2 days. We're not quite sure what we'll be doing there yet, mainly relaxing, snorkeling, and exploring. I think we're going to meet up with some people we met on the boat tonght for dinner.

Scuba Diving Trip

We're off to the Great Barrier Reef tomorrow! We'll be out on a boat for 2 nights and 3 days. We just rented an underwater digital camera to take pictures and videos so we'll be able to upload these pics. YAY!!!!

You'll hear from us when we return from the boat.

Feeling a bit refreshed

Finallyyyyy... The rain has stopped today which is a relief. Yesterday we found a cool beach on our way back to Cairns called Ellis Beach. It was raining a little but the waves looked pretty steady and they were going perfectly inside the stinger nets that were set up by the life guard station. We spent about 45 mins body surfing!!! sooooo fun. After that we were feeling refreshed and happy we finally found a place we could go.

That night we went to the parking lot where the lagoon is in Cairns and cooked our 4th night of pasta. There happened to be a concert going on in the park right next to the lot. Since the rain was on and off we decided to go see the Michael Jackson movie to pass time until parking was free in town. We were planning on parking somewhere in town and sleeping but I guess it's not ok to do that. We woke up at 12:30am to a security officer knocking on our windows, shining his light in the van, and shaking the van to wake us up. He said you're not allowed to sleep in Car Parks in the city of Cairns and they charge $1500 on the spot! So we got up and drove about 30 minutes back to Ellis beach and parked just outside the Cairns boundary.

This morning we woke up to the sound of the waves and ate our breakfast on the beach before we laid out. We drove into town and went to the lagoon which is awesome (I think I wrote about it earlier). We're inside checking up on emails during high sun then off to see if we can extend our diving trip to 4 days 3 nights... wooohoooo!!!! soooo excited!!!

Debbie Downer

We're having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. I think we'll move to Australia... Or not :)


I hate to be Debbie Downer on this post but we're a little disappointed with the way this part of our trip is going. When we decided to come to Australia our vision was to rent a camper van, drive up the coast and stop to snorkel, surf, and sign up for the occasional scuba diving trip. We're near the Great Barrier Reef, we thought it'd be easy.

We arrived in Townsville on the 3rd and had to be in Cairns by the 5th to pick up our camper van. It's only a 2 hour drive. While we were there we had a great time with some locals and it happened to be the day of the Melbourne Cup so everyone closed down their shops to watch the race. We ended up finding an information center and found out a bunch of live aboard boats were having last minute scuba diving trips to the outer barrier reef so we signed up for a 3 day 2 night trip. It would end up shortening our driving and exploring time but decided it would be ok, and it is.

We took 2 days to get up to Cairns and on our way up we stopped at a couple of places people told us to check out. Nothing special but kind of neat. We slept in the car the first night and stopped at a Mango Grove the next morning for breakfast, lunch, and mango icecream (sooooooo goooood). I got crepes with mango jelly for breakfast (yummmmmmmm). As we continued our drive we found out we couldn't just get out of the car and swim at any beach because the northern part of Australia has Stingers. They are a lot like Jellyfish but smaller and have a worse sting. It's really hard to see them because they are really small and their tentacles are really long. The only way to be 95% sure you won't get stung is to swim in an enclosed area that has "stinger nets"... or where a really good looking stinger suit.

We finally got to Cairns and slept in the car again. We were excited to get our camper van the next day and decided to sleep in the car one more night to save some cash. We saw a ton of Kangaroos as we were trying to find a place to park, it was awesome!

The next morning we found a place called the lagoon which was a public pool that was basically on the beach and it had public showers. We hadn't showered in 2 or 3 days so that was really nice... This is where our trip really starts to go down hill...

We went to drop off our rental car before picking up our Camper van since our car was due before we could pick up our van. We drove to the airport and realized the camper van company was not located on the airport property even though they told us it was on or near... I guess "near" means a $15 cab ride. $15 is a lot of money when you're traveling for 7 weeks and the US dollar is plummeting.

When we called the company to see if they had a shuttle bus to bring us to their place, they were extremely rude. This company is called Backpackers Camper Vans... They also do Britz and Maui camper vans. We finally arrived at our rental place and they were rude to us upon arrival. They seemed annoyed we were there and started adding on charges after charges making the quoted price go from $55/day up to $80/day. When we decided to not take the insurance, they didn't just preauthorize my card for a damage bond (which is what every other rental company has done this trip), they charged my card $2900! With the 3% exchange fee that's an extra $87 fee that I have to pay for something I didn't even buy or damage... The woman was not helpful at all and it ended up taking us 2 or 3 hours to figure the whole thing out.

I couldn't call my credit card company so I ran about a mile down the road to get a calling card to call my mom so she could call my credit card company. It was kind of funny, she had me on one ear and the credit card company on the other trying to translate the problem haha. At this point we don't even want the stupid camper van anymore but we can't cancel it or we'll still get charged for the whole time we reserved it.

We finally got it figured out. So now, we're pissed off driving a run down van that smells bad, is dirty, and we have to eat and sleep in. We decide to go grocery shopping and get on the road. We end up driving for only about 45 minutes because by this time it's dark out and we need to find a place to sleep as well as make dinner. It was pretty funny making our dinner and we were laughing the whole time because it was absolutely ridiculous. We have some pictures.

The next morning we started our drive up to Port Douglas and Cape Tribulation. We found a gorge in Mossiman which was awesome. It was raining the whole time but we were in a rain forest so it kind of came with the territory. Things were starting to look better. We were starting to get bummed out though because we had been in Australia for 8 days and the only time we had been in the ocean was learning to scuba dive. We continued up to Cape Trib and when we got there it was beautiful. We found a place to park which was right next to the beach... Perfect!... we got out to go run in the water. I was prepared to wear my stinger suit (yes, I bought one)... We stop at a sign that says "these waters are filled with Crocs, do not swim!" AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH... That entire area was filled with Crocs and stingers. It was a beautiful area that we couldn't really appreciate because we couldn't pay the 100's of dollars to go on the tours and we weren't allowed to go on unpaved roads with our van to get to the places these tours go. We found a different site to sleep and stayed there.

The next morning we tried going to a couple of places and walks to check out the place but by this time we were over it. We felt like we were homeless and we just wanted a place to swim. We drove back to Port Douglas and found a camping ground that had a pool. It was finally a place we could swim even though it wasn't the ocean.


At this point we're just really disappointed because we had very simple expectations and none of them are being met (swimming in the ocean, snorkeling, scuba diving, surfing). We're tired, spending money we don't want to be spending, and trying to pass time until our diving trip in 3 days....... We're in Australia and we're trying to PASS time!! ahhhhhhh... Hopefully the next post will be more upbeat but I guess we're entitled to 1 meltdown over a 7 week period.

Time Change

With the recent time change from NZ to Australia as well as day light savings in the US, here is the updated time difference:

In Australia it is currently November 2 at 12:30pm
In NYC it is currently November 1 at 8:30pm

Scuba Diving

We're certified to scuba dive!

We were a little concerned about Cam being able to get his certification due to asthma because in order to do your certification you need to get a medical in Australia. On Friday, the day before we started our in water class, we went to a dr. across the street from our hostel. They didn't have any appointments that day but were able to fit us in at 12:15pm. When we started looking over the stuff they were going to fill out Cam started getting really nervous because he had never been able to pass the breathing tests before. We figured worrying about it wasn't going to help so we went to the hostel drank some tea and he had his first cup of coffee ever (supposedly caffeine helps open the airways to the lungs). Then he went in the bathroom and turned on the hot water to steam up the bathroom. We weren't going to pay $80 for him to fail the test, plus the money we'd lose if he wasn't able to take the course we'd already paid for... no pressure... He passed which was such a relief!

After the appointment we decided to check out Sydney since there wasn't going to be much time for that. We walked through the botanical gardens to the Opera House which is so beautiful, ate our lunch on the steps, then we took a ferry to Darling harbor and walked back to the hostel. Since the ferry was a form of public transportation it was only $5 each instead of a tour which would have been around $20-$30 each.

Our scuba diving class started on Saturday morning at 8am. We woke up at 6:15 to get our stuff together and make it to the 7:00am train. We did our classes with Abyss Diving Center and they picked us up at the station. It took about an hour to get our paperwork together and take our review test (both of us got 100% by the way), then we were off to the pool to learn how to use all the equipment. We were in the pool from 10:30am-2:30pm learning how to do everything from different entries into the water whether your entering from the shore or a boat, to scenarios such as running out of air or how to get water out of your mask when your under water. Then we had lunch and drove to the ocean for 1 ocean dive. It was pretty rough but we got to feel what it was like to be in the ocean.

The next day we were at the ocean the whole day for 3 dives. The first dive was showing our instructor most of the skills we learned in the pool and a little exploring, whereas the 2nd and 3rd dives were very little skills and mostly exploring. On our 2nd dive we saw a Blue Groper (not a grouper) which was about 3 feet long and reminded me of a puppy dog. They follow you everywhere and are so interested in what you're doing. When our instructor would point things out like starfish or moray eels, the blue groper would put it's nose right where her finger was to see what she was pointing at. On our 3rd dive we saw a shark (a small non-aggressive type), a bull ray (it was HUGE), a moray eel, some nudibranch, a huge starfish, and a bunch of smaller fish. It was AWESOME! After that we were certified. Now we're planning on going up north to find a 3 day diving trip on the Great Barrier Reef.

We leave tomorrow for Townsville. Our flight leaves at 7:10am on Jetstar. We will drive up to Carins and rent a camper van to drive around for 5 or 6 days.

Off to the beach today!