Having trouble catching up with the blog postings. Here's the first week of October carrying on from last post.
Wednesday 2nd October:
We had a day to kill since the reef trip we wanted to go on was fully booked out today. Drove 20 mins north to check out the beaches closest to cairns looking for somewhere to snorkel but no success. Sea too choppy as there were no outlying reefs on this stretch to break the waves. Checked out Trinity Beach then sunbathed and went in the sea at Yorkey's Knob (great name and sea 26 celsius!)
Here's a pic of the route we did up to cape tribulation and back. It has the beaches we checked out just north of Cairns as well (Cairns far right of map), if you can see it clearly enough. Maybe it's too small, I don't know.
Thursday 3rd:
On Thursday we had our reef trip! At last! We sailed with Reef Experience on a decent sized boat headed for two sites on the outer reef. Meals and tea and coffee included as well so we were more than satisfied! However, after signing the health and safety medical form I was informed by a dive instructor that I wouldn't be diving today. When I asked why he told me that Queensland law doesn't allow anyone with an asthma condition (no matter how mild) to dive. You could imagine how annoyed I was with myself for being honest and ticking the asthma box despite me not having any asthma problems for ages. So a day of snorkelling it was. Tom was able to go diving with a group of certified divers but said they spent too long faffing around above the water instead of getting down there to make it a decent dive. But he did see some big fish that we couldn't see when snorkelling. Nevertheless the snorkelling was great! Hundreds of fish swimming very close to us. Two different reef sites with plenty to see and great coral. Sea temp 26 degrees again so didn't need a wetsuit. I booked to go on a guided tour with a young and pretty marine biologist called Emma. She had a great personality and took us round all the good areas and we ended up spotting 4 turtles, lots of ginormous clams and got to hold 2 sea cucumbers. Saw loads of Parrot fish, Angel fish and Nemo fish as well as hundreds of other colourful species! A great day out at sea for shore (pun intended haha)
Docked back in marina at 4:30pm. Got a few bits from supermarket then drove south for the first time since we started our road trip! We drove until it got dark and stayed on a roadside site by Innisfail.
Friday 4th:
Woke up amd drove to the nearest beach. And what a beach it was. Etty bay is a small gem of a beach tucked in between two little outcrops of land with a cafe and boating club. Not many people there at all, maybe not that well known about. We cooked breakfast (our fave instant pancake mix), sunbathed and played spongeball in the sea then had lunch on the bbqs. It was almost like we were eating on our own private beach. Would have paid a small fortune for this spot
Making heavenly pancakes at Etty Bay
Etty bay. Chest still white!
Late afternoon we set off to find a place I'd been really looking forward to seeing. If you do a bit of research on Paranella Park you'll see why. It's so my kind of place and it didn't disappoint. It's basically the architectural vision of a Spanish traveller who emigrated to Aus back into the 1930s. He built a dream castle by a waterfall (cleverly using hydro electricity) and filled it with quaint buildings and follies and held parties for the locals. Think Great Gatsby style. Most of the park has survived and there are ruins too. The waterfall still uses a hydro electric system to power the park and adjoining camp site where we stayed for the night.
Our admission included a two free tours, one daytime and one nighttime so after arriving and having a bit of tea we went on a night tour of the park and waterfalls which were illuminated by mood lighting. It was like alice in wonderland down under! We both loved it. And we saw a tree full of fireflies on the tour which was a pretty cool thing to see.
Paranella Park ropebridge over waterfall
Saturday 5th:
We had our Paronella Park day tour which was great and we fully explored the park during daytime. Got some great pictures. Drove to Mission Beach in afternoon, but slightly disappointed by its small size (considering everyone raves about it). Went to tourist info to find out where nearest supermarket was (South Mission Beach). They told us that it would would be closed for two days straight after today (sunday and labor day = Aussie bank hol). So we stocked up on food and a quick drive around found us a nice camp site area (albeit a paid one as there are no free places to camp at Mission), which actually was part of the Mission Beach skydiving centre! This worked out well as I had been planning to book skydiving with the Ultimate Oz guys who we had our first week with as they could give me it for 300 but since we had found ourselves at Mission Beach earlier than anticipated and we were in a Vodafone black zone I just decided to pay a bit more and book it direct at the centre so we didn't have to book more accommodation and wait to try and book it in with UltimateOz. Booked it for the next day as they had one spot left on a lunchtime dive. No going back now. Eeeesh!
We had one of the best nights that night. Cooked tea in the camp kitchen and met some local Aussies on their holidays. What a bunch of legends they were hah.
Also bumped in to an old man who told us we should move our van from under a tree as it was near an ants nest and loads of ants get blown off the tree as well. He suggested it would be better to move it next to a van which he said had 3 German girls in it. The old man was right!
Sunday 6th:
Pancakes for breakfast and plenty of time to shit myself for my skydive (12pm).
Extremely nervous but knew it was going to be amazing.
It was more than amazing, it was incredible! Probably 10x worse than a rollercoaster, but a very very good rollercoaster! Free falling over mission beach, the reef, the lush islands and clear blue sea was an unbelievable experience. Was so glad I did it!
Tom was very jealous and I felt quite bad for him as he didn't have enough money. It was very expensive when you add everything up. But these kinds of experiences are what I've been saving up for for years. I have no doubt that after we have jobs and he has saved up he will be back up here to do one and probably try and get his skydiving license too!
Mission Beach
Day after the skydive
Afternoon we had a late lunch in camp kitchen and met the 3 nice German girls we had discreetly parked our van next to. We had actually been planning to move on further south later on the afternoon but once we remembered it was Labor Day the next day (nothing open) and more importantly we could spend the night chatting to these lovely Germans, we decided to stay an extra night. Had a nice night chatting on the beach around a campfire (this was after they had caught us in the middle of practicing a cheesy azonto routine with music) and we also managed to get away with not paying the extra 20 dollars for the extra night we stayed the next morning! Yeaaa!
Monday 7th - Mission Beach with German girls! Anna, Olga and Ina
The girls were heading south too, looking for work, and asked if they could follow us (get in!). And so we drove in our first convoy from mission beach en route to Townsville stopping off at a free campsite (basic facilities) at Rollingstone. On the way (in the dark) The girls hit a kangaroo, much to our amusement since they didn't have insurance for night time driving (because of animal risk) and we had persuaded them to drive in the dark. Whoops. At Rollingstone, we had some porridge mixed with water (no milk, bleurgh) for tea and drank and chatted with our new and attractive foreign travel buddies. Chuffed!
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