Day 68 - Friday, March 30
Another long day on the Greyhound. Picked up at 9:00am, and it was gorgeous day - high 80's and sunny out. Wish I could've been on a sailboat or camping on this day instead of one of partly cloudy/rainy ones from the past week. But instead I was on a bus. And the A/C didn't work. And I was stuck next to someone who didn't seem to believe in personal hygiene. Oh and there was no way to open the windows either. So yeah, it was pretty much awesome. It was at least 90 degrees on the bus, everyone was sweating profusely, and it was miserable. Maybe not quite working-at-a-big-law-firm miserable, but close. Finally when we stopped at about 2pm, they switched out the bus for one with working A/C, and most of the people got off, so there was room to stretch and it was nice and cool. I got to Cairns about 830 and wandered over to Gilligan's, which I'd heard was a good place to stay, and I ended up in a room with 4 Australian Army guys there for a bachelor party (Bucks party if your Aussie, apparently Stag party in the UK). It was clear from just walking around that Cairns was a party town and that Gilligan's was the choice for many of the people looking to party. I walked around a bit and took in the scene, but called it a pretty early night. Luckily the bachelor party was quite considerate and opted to take the party to the streets/bars/strip clubs and were quite quiet when they returned.
Those with short attention spans and no plans for upcoming international travel should probably just skip to the next day at this point...
So, my friday night also consisted of a lot of time trying to sort out some credit card issues. After booking a bunch of flights the previous day, the credit card that I had been primarily using (my Citibank card**) was frozen, and when I was looking for my AmEx to use to pay for the room instead, I realized I had lost it, and the last time I remembered having it was about 2 months earlier, when I first got to New Zealand. Oops - not good. I may have mentioned I'm inclined to lose things, but I was a bit surprised to find I had lost this particular card given I didn't use it all. So after checking in with another credit card, I was trying to contact AmEx and Citibank, for different reasons, and having no luck trying to call the US collect numbers on the pay phones in Australia. Finally, using a friend's phone I found a toll-free Australian number for AmEx and eventually got transferred to the right person and was relieved to find out there hadn't been any charges in the 2 months since I last remembered having it. I had them send a replacement card to their office in Bangkok, which works out pretty well. So one crisis averted. I ended up getting online the next day and using the online chat help I got Citibank to call the place I was at and got that straightened out as well, but I was definitely a bit stressed out there for a while. Two crises averted.
** Even more off-topic and likely of little interest to most is the reason I've been primarily using my Citibank debit card for all my expenses so far. And that is because Citibank has a program called Citigold, which costs $30/month (or requires a balance of like $50k), but Citigold members aren't charged the 3% extra for international withdrawals and transactions that virtually every other US bank and credit card company charge. Since I'm spending well over $1000/month traveling, the $30/month is much better than having 3% tacked on to everything. For anyone else planning to travel abroad for a while, I'd recommend it. Also, apparently getting my card unfrozen would've been a bigger hassle if I wasn't a Citigold member because they wouldn't have been able to call out to an international number as they did for me to talk to them.
Day 69 - Saturday, March 31
I figured I'd use Saturday to sort out a plan for diving on the Great Barrier Reef. When I checked into Gilligans the previous night, they were offering a pay for 4 nights, get one free deal, so I had to quickly decide whether I just wanted to book one night and leave open the possibility of doing a live-aboard dive boat or booking five nights and just doing one or two day trips on the reef. I opted for the 5 night deal, and no live-aboard. So saturday, I did some research about dive boats and then checked with some dive shops and ultimately decided that I'd just do one day trip to the edge of the outer reef (supposedly the best diving) with 3 dives out there. I decided to dive on Monday because I wanted to watch the Final 4 games on Sunday, and the boat requires waking up super early, which wasn't conducive with my plan to party it up on Saturday. So I booked that and then had the afternoon to explore.
Though some of the neighboring towns have some nice beaches, Cairns itself doesn't really have much of one to speak of, so they have a lagoon. Apparently this public lagoon/pool/synthetic beach phenomenon is quite common in Australia, as there was also one in Brisbane and Airlie Beach that were quite large and popular. I checked out the lagoon and walked around a bit, then when I got back to the hostel, I decided to join my roommates and neighbors and preparty for a bit with some goon. Eventually we made it out to the bars, and joy was had by all ... or so I'm told. No pictures from Saturday, which is probably a good thing.
Day 70 - Sunday, April 1
Unable to find a sports bar open at 8am showing the semifinals of the Final 4, I headed over to the travel shop that provides free internet and found an internet feed for the games. I was happy to see UK and KU win, knowing that the Suwanskis/Joneses and Mr. Spratt would be pleased. After everyone checked out on Sunday, I was the only one left in my room, with no one new checking in, so I opted to take advantage with a nice little nap after a late night the previous night. And then I headed to bed early because I was being picked up at 645 for the dive trip in addition to the sheer excitement of a room to myself and night of uninterrupted sleep.
Not sure if they do the April Fools thing here or not. I'm guessing not, because no one mentioned it, and I know of no one here in Oz who was fooled. And because the US is 14 hours behind, even the little time I spent checking Facebook on Sunday was free of the usual April Fools relationship updates, etc.
Day 71 - Monday, April 2
I think I ranted already about how ridiculous it is that the Ipad doesn't come standard with the alarm clock function/app that's on the Iphone. And I've been waiting till I get to Asia to get my iphone fixed/unlocked and/or to get a cheap digital watch with an alarm on it. So I guess you can see where this is going. I had set an alarm for 6:00 using the crappy alarm clock iPad app I downloaded in Fiji, and sure enough, for no good reason, it didn't go off (sure, maybe it was user error, but I never had a problem with the Iphone alarm not going off). So, anyway, I woke up at 6:48. Crap! (I may have used some stronger language that isn't suitable for publication - in case I run for President some day). But I figured I'd probably still be fine. I already had everything pretty much ready to go. Threw on my boardies, threw a few things in my bag, and I was seriously out the door in less than 2 minutes, and down in front of the hotel no later than 6:51. No sign of the bus. Virtually no bus I've been on in the 2+ months I've been traveling has showed up early/on-time and left less than 5 minutes after the scheduled pick-up time, so I figured it was probably just late, but unfortunately, according the receptionist I eventually talked to, it waited 5 or 10 minutes on me and left at 6:50. I seriously must've missed it by like 30 seconds. And when I talked to them at 7:00 they were unwilling to come back and get me. They did, however, allow me to reschedule for Tuesday at no charge. That was a bit of a setback because I was tossing around the idea of heading up to Cape Tribulation on Tuesday, but I had received mixed reviews about Cape Tribulation anyway, so figured it wasn't a huge loss and proceeded to go back to sleep.
After waking back up and spending some time uploading photos, I decided that I wasn't quite sunburned enough, so I hung out a the pool and relaxed. It's a tough life traveling the world ;) Once again I called it an early night because, once again, I was planning to wake up at 6am, and once again I had the room to myself, which was quite nice.
Day 72 - Tuesday, April 3
After testing that the alarm would work given my passcode lock and auto-lock settings and everything, I set it for 6am again, and then what do you know - it didn't go off again. W! T! F! Time for a new alarm app I guess, though I'll be in Asia soon, which will hopefully remedy this issue. Luckily I had slept A LOT in the last couple of days and was nervous about oversleeping again anyway, so the good ol' internal alarm had me up at 6:10 and I made the bus.
One of the advantages that I had heard about a liveaboard is that it gives you enough tie to get to the outer reefs, which is supposed to be best for diving. Leaving out of Cairns, some of the day-trip boats do go to the outer reef, but from what I was told, the outer reefs near Cairns are relatively far from the continental shelf, and, as a result, considered not as good dive sites as those further north, allegedly because they are shallower with worse visibility, and less coral walls, pinnacles, etc. So I was convinced to take a boat headed out of Port Douglas, the Silversonic.
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| From Australia - Great Barrier Reef |
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| From Australia - Great Barrier Reef |
It was another beautiful day, with hardly any swell, and a really nice ride out to the outer edge of the reef. While I didn't get a chance to check out Cape Tribulation via land, we did get a glimpse of it from teh water.
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| From Australia - Great Barrier Reef |
Here's a picture of Fred (or was it Frank?), who is basically a giant pet wrasse at the Turtle Bay dive spot, that all the divers get to pet and swim around with:
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| From Australia - Great Barrier Reef |
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| From Australia - Great Barrier Reef |
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| From Australia - Great Barrier Reef |
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| From Australia - Great Barrier Reef |
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