Australia

As we headed back to the hostel, we passed a little spa that advertised to backpackers, Seksi Day Spa (no, really). We made a reservation to come back for a massage that evening. It seemed like the right decadent thing to do on a vacation. When we got back to the hostel, we looked through some more promotional material and changed our minds. We had the hostel owner call back the spa and move our reservations to the next day, after our SCUBA dive, and we reserved a place at Tjapukai by Night, a local aborigine dance production. Heather had mentioned that she'd attended this when vacationing with her family, and she really enjoyed it, so it seemed like something we should try. We also reserved our SCUBA dive (which our host had persuaded us to hold off until arriving for reasons explained below) and a local eco tour of the rainforest for our third day.

Here's where we learned a bit about hostel economics. Hostel owners sell their rooms for dirt cheap, but they make most of it up in kickbacks from the activity providers in the area. Whenever we asked to borrow the hostel phone, our host would always politely talk us out of it and call himself, so he could identify the right hostel to receive the kickback. Once we got a feel for the dynamics, it was a little bit freaky. In fact, our bus driver to the Tjapukai turned out to be a dive company publicist in his day job, and we spent our ride there and back discussing the complex economics of adventure tourism in Cairns.

Tjapukai by Night was organized in a way reminiscent of the luaus in Hawaii, though it was a much smaller operation. We enjoyed it and learned a lot, though we did find it a little overproduced. We were lucky to have a good referral to an authentic luau in Hawaii, but Tjapukai was the only shop in town for this kind of thing, and we're lucky there was one. The didgeridoo player was really impressive.

Day 8:

This was the day we'd come to Cairs for in the first place -- diving the Great Barrier Reef. One word: wow.

We had a three dive day scheduled with a large dive compay. The size of the dive operation blew us away. We were used to the Hawaii style -- small local dive shops with motorboats, a couple of guides, and 4-8 divers on a single trip. This was a huge bilevel amenity-filled boat that held approximately 70 divers and staff, with breakfast snacks and lunch on a buffet at the lower level. It was amazingly efficient, but also more impersonal. Terran ended up with the wrong size BC, which he didn't figure out until he was in the water. He ended up stuck with it for the whole trip. They were also a bit more a nickel and dime operation. In Hawaii, we always dove with a dive shop guide. Here, even as beginners, we were charged extra for a guide. We used one for two of the three dives.

We learned that we need a lot more dive training and experience, especially when it comes to efficient air use. Susan was only able to get a little under a half-hour out of a dive tank, and Terran only a few minutes more. With proper breath training, we could get closer to an hour. We'd also have better control in general. With that said, our slightly less than 1.5 hours of total dive time was amazing. Among others, we saw a huge sea turtle (in the amateur enhanced photograph -- you have to get very close to photograph anything but blue underwater), nudibranch (shown on our guide's hand), clams, many angel and surgeonfish, huge multicolored anemone and coral, a clownfish (bigger than we expected), and a barracuda. There were reports of shark sightings, but we missed them.

We napped on the trip back to shore and staggered to our massage appointment with our hair in water tangles. They didn't even blink. The massage was wonderful. After that, we wandered around the city and eventually stopped to eat at a delicious-smelling Asian restaurant. As we arrived, a tour group of approximately 100 Japanese were leaving. It was a boggling experience to see the army of tourists file out the door. It emptied out half the restaurant, and we had no trouble being seated. It was more upscale than we realized, however, and they seated our bedraggled selves in a corner of a function room, where only a few other guests would see us. When we realized what was going on, we couldn't help laughing. Then we stuffed ourselves on food that was more authentic Chinese than you usually find in the states.

Then, back to the hostel for sleep.

Day 9:

Our flight left at 9pm, so we decided to take an eco tour until 6pm, Wooroonooran Rainforest Safari. After the Great Barrier Reef, the big thing to see in Cairns is the tropical rainforest. We looked into hiking it on our own, but we had limited mobility without a car. So, this tour looked like a good idea, and it turned out to be pretty good. It was a slow day, so we were hooked up with an Italian couple and a bilingual tour guide in a little van to roam around the countryside.

Our first trip was to Josephine Falls. On the way, we sighted a Ulysses butterfly, which is one of the wildlife-hunter quests in this area. Unfortunately, no picture. It's hard to get butterflies to pose. It was a nice short hike to the waterfall, and the tour guide filled our ears with fascinating details about the trees and vines. The waterfall itself was picturesque as promised, and then we soaked in the pool below for a while. This was part of the tour, but recent rainfall made the water unsafe to actually swim. In the humid heat, the cold water was wonderful.

Then Terran saw something crawling around on the rocks above. He pointed it out to Susan. who thought it looked like a river rat. Terran called to our guide to get more information. The guide took one look, and his eyes went wide. "PLATYPUS!" He shouted to another tour guide. We raced out of the water to see if we could get a better look, but it was already gone. Apparently, the platypus is what everyone wants to see, but wild sightings only happen about once every six months. Our wildlife-sighting fu for this trip was pretty impressive. We didn't get a good look, but we did get a good feel for the flat and furry ends, and its movement.

Then, on to Johnstone River Crocodile Farm, where crocodiles are farmed for meat and hide. We met a bunch of crocodiles up close and the quirky staff that kept them. Fascinating and a little scary.

They also had a herd of tame kangaroos and wallabies, which we fed and petted. Sweet and friendly creatures, though not as graceful as their wild siblings b/c they felt no fear.

We had lunch at an Italian buffet, and our companions bought wine for the table. They seemed baffled that Terran didn't drink, but Susan was happy to take his share. We had a complicated translated conversation with the help of the tour guide, who was also a lot of fun. He was a native Italian who had been persuaded to move to Australia with his wife.

The blue-headed bird in the lower left is a cassowary, apparently a legendary fierce fighting bird native to the area.

In the afternoon, we visited Babinda Boulders gorge and snorkeled in a natural water hole. We also tasted lemon ants -- no, really, ant excretions -- tangy, and unmistakably lemony. That was the icky-but-fun moment for the day. On the way back, we saw a bank of river crabs and a kookaburra; wildlife fu again. The tour finished up with a local didgeridoo craftsman, who gave us a beginner's less on how to play the instruments. We thought hard about buying one, but decided we had enough bulky luggage to take back with us.

We made it to the airport in plenty of time. Then our flight was delayed over two hours. Important lessons learned: Burger King (called Hungry Jack's there) burgers are lamb burgers in Australia. Airport paperbacks are absurdly expensive, even when currency conversion is taken into account. When we finally made it on the plane, we found the seats uncomfortable, and service doesn't even offer courtesy water! Virgin Blue thinks it's all about service, but we beg to differ.

Day 10:

We took this day easy to wrap up our vacation. After a late morning, we headed down to take the tour of the Old Melbourne Gaol that we'd missed on the first try. It was an interesting and creepy part of history. Then we met Heather at Victoria Market, which had closed. She was at least able to find a child's black opal for Haven.

We ate dinner at an Outback fare restaurant. The food was better than we expected. We discovered that we love emu and wallaby, and kangaroo isn't bad. Then we got even more decadent and bought pastries at a truly over-the-top cake shop, went shopping to cook breakfast for Heather in the morning, and retired to the apartment to struggle finishing our sweets.

Day 11:

The best thank you we had to offer Heather was to cook for her. So we took the leftover stale baguette from the ballet picnic, leftover cheese from our cheese shop tangent, and augmented it with prosciutto, milk, eggs, and spinach to make a breakfast frittata. We assembled the night before, left it to soak overnight, then figured out how to make the apartment microwave/convection oven work in convection mode. The result turned out not too bad.