It is Experience

Dear Everyone ,

It has been a while since we last talked. Why you ask? Because the place we were staying for the past two nights didn’t have electricity. They’re located in the middle of a national park and it is part of their conservation efforts. They compensated by comping brekky for us. Fair Enough.

The first day, we left Cairnes and did a bus tour up north to Cape Tribulation. On the first day, we went out on the Daintree River to look for saltwater crocodiles – we found them! Quite a large sight, although all they did was laze about. What a life!

Before getting to the resort, we stopped at a local ice cream spot where the flavours were of local variety. For a simple five dollars, we got one scoop of each of their four flavours: Jakfruit, wattleseed, coconut, and apricot. The wattleseed was bomb-dot-com (Nick)! Coconut? Wish it wasn’t the last one I tackled (Jer).

The resort was amazing. It is named “The Beach House” and it fit perfectly. Nestled underneath the rainforest our cabin was within a 5 minute trail to a perfectly secluded beach. The Daintree National Park, where we were staying, is an incredible location; The rainforest is 19 times older than the Amazon and the oldest in the world and connects to the Great Barrier reef which is the most populated and diverse ecosystem in the world. These two meet on a small strip of perfect sandy beach that is teaming with crabs running around sparatically.

The next day was arguably the greatest day of our young lives. We split a couple jugs (pitchers) with some Italians, two American teachers from Michigan, and our German friend, Fabian. We decided to wake up for the sunrise. So flash forward to 5 in the morning and our alarm is beeping defiantly against the quiet forest and we all stumble down to the beach wiping the sleep out of our eyes. We stole some chairs from the cafe and sat on the sand watching the stars slowly fading away as the sun began lighting the horizon. We woke up an hour and a half before sunrise, but it was amazing none the less.

Right after that breakfast was served; Our hostel gave us free bacon, eggs and toast. We all sat down and ate our greasy brekky before preparing for our trip to snorkel on the Great Barrier Reef. A bus drove us to the beach where our ship took sail from. The reef was a good 1 ½ hour away and was a mid shelf reef. This basically means the depths were 1-15 meters deep as compared to the outer reef which drop from 3 meters to 3,000 meters (this is a drop straight of the continental shelf). The barrier reef is actually a mountain range that was submerged and the reef is the tops of the mountains poking up. Jumping fish, cuttlefish, 4*2*4 foot clams, nemo, white tip reef sharks, jellyfish, barracuda, etc... are just some of the fish we saw. There are usually turtles that feed in the area but we were not that lucky. The reef itself was incredible. There were enormous fan reefs that looked like 4 foot wide flattened mushrooms and were bright colours: red and blue. We took two disposable cameras woith us so hopefully the pictures turn out.

After 4 hours of snorkelling we headed back enjoying free champagne on the bow of our boat for the afternoon. The sun was bright and the water was turquoise; we were giddy like school girls unable to believe we were smack dab in the middle of a lifelong memory.

The next day we went on a hike to Mount Sorrow (sadface). This proved to be a larger effort than we expected. We felt like Frodo, Sam, and Gollum when they climbed the secret staircase behind Mount Doom (for non-nerds this means we basically hiked 3 hours straight up, yikes). By the end we were above the clouds looking over Cape Tribulation, the view was amazing and always makes it worth it. We saw two interesting animals; the first was a snake that scampered away when we bustled through and the second was a cassowary (look this up on Google) and they are rare (only 15,000 in the wild).

We are writing this awaiting to begin our travel to New Zealand. We tried to wash our clothes but some US Sailors are anchored here this weekend and have taken all of the dryers. The nerve of those guys! Aren’t they supposed to be helping us? Anywho, we leave tomorrow morning for Brisbane and then Auckland! Hizzah! Tomorrow we leave Australia after about five months living here! What a thought – the time is here. Quite a thought really, we’ll miss it quite a bit. But onward and upward! Next time we speak, it shall be with a New Zealand accent!

Take Care (Jer),
Much Love (Nick),