in the merry old land of aus: cairns

Next stop: Cairns, Queensland, Australia! We arrived in Cairns later in the evening and waited and waited for our shuttle to pick us up. When it finally came, we were off to Nomads - the serpent hostel, which was fairly nice . It had a swimming pool, restaurant and bar and was cleanish. Our air conditioning didn’t work so we switched rooms after the first night because it was so humid and hot!

Our first trip in Cairns was to the Dain tree Rainforest. On this tour we went to several places including Milla Milla Falls, fed some turtles the side of the road, went to a pond and saw platypus, and a bbq spot for lunch. It was a full day of touring and picture taking, and rain. The next day in Cairns was a 'rest day' which we spent walking around the downtown area and shopping a little. We also planned another trip for the next day!

We took a cruise to Green Island which is located right on the Great Barrier Reef. Our boat was called the big cat. We snorkeled around on the reef and Steve, being brave unlike myself, took a cruise further out onto the reef where he took underwater videos and pictures of the coral and fish to show me! They were awesome and a lot more clear than the area that I saw closer to the island.

While we were in Cairns, Laura, Olivia, and Dave were also there. We met up with them to go out for supper and drinks. Although Steve was with me for the last couple weeks, it was really nice to see more familiar faces. We had one more day in Cairns and we thought we wanted to do something else while we were there so we went on crocodile explorer cruise! No big deal, I know. On this cruise we stopped at a crocodile farm where they had over 14,000 juvenile crocodiles and around 50 adult breeding crocodiles. To bread the crocodiles, there was a river and natural area where the crocs were basically tricked into breeding naturally. Workers at the farm locate the nests then distract the crocs while they rob the nests of around 60 to 100 eggs at a time. In the wild only around 2 to 5 of these crocs would survive, however by incubating them on the farm, they have over an 80% survival rate. By incubating them at a certain temperature they are also able to have mainly male crocs, which is more efficient on the farm because they grow larger faster than females.

The next day we flew back to Adelaide and got back into our regular routine of site seeing the city. Steve would be leaving soon, so he spent a little time packing while I did my little bit of homework. Which reminds me, this was an exchange trip, for school purposes. Hm, I guess I should have shown you some of my school work then! Unfortunately though, my computer crashed and I didn't have the one design project from Adelaide saved onto anything else. This project was for Designing Sustainable Communities, which Alison and I took together. The project went over very well, even the presentations! We both spent a good amount of time, meaning enough to do a good job but not too much that it would take away any of our time in the sun. I will miss Adelaide and Australia in general, but not that it is time to leave, I am so excited to be going home and seeing my family and friends again! It has been a long time, five months, since I have been in my home town, and I think it is about time I go back now. Five months was good to travel New Zealand, Australia, and to experience Adelaide on a closer level. I think that once the weather started to get cooler in Adelaide, it confirmed the fact that I should be going back home to enjoy our summer time and get rest before my final year at the University of Guelph.