After our last night of silliness in Sydney, we flew to Cairns. Compared to the relative bustle of Sydney and its air of excitement, Cairns felt incredibly laid back. Like a summer night in the South, but way more liberal and with surfboards and dreadlocks. This was probably my favorite stop on the entire trip. We stayed at a hostel called Gilligan’s. It was $40 a night in a 4 bed dorm and came complete with a pool and a cafeteria that was pretty cheap. Once we were settled, we wandered around town and had lunch a place called Union Jack. It was classic rock themed with a focus on British bands especially, so you know it was right up my alley. On top of that, the menu was themed to go along with the music. I had Rod Stew-It for lunch. I couldn’t love this place or its wordplay any more.
We wandered right up until it was time to visit the Cairns Night Zoo. We hopped on a shuttle that picked us up right down the street from Gillian’s. At the Night Zoo, they have a ton of poisonous reptiles that are native to Australia (of course), and we got to see a lot of animals that would otherwise just be asleep during the day, like wombats. During part of the tour, they feed their crocodiles, and I learned that a croc can jump its own body length in the air to grab a snack (which is terrifying to watch, in case you were wondering).
They also give you the opportunity to hold a koala, which is clearly an offer that is impossible to refuse. They cling to you like a toddler to its mother, and they feel wooly like a sheep. They are also surprisingly heavy, also like toddlers.
Dinner before you begin is included with your ticket price ($140 for a 4ish hour experience and the shuttle) and so is tea and snacks at the end, in a small enclosure full of kangaroos! I will say it was a little weird to enjoy a kangaroo steak so much for dinner and then pet a kangaroo to round out my evening. For the record though, kangaroo is red meat but tastes similar to a really gamey chicken, and a kangaroo also feels slightly wooly, but not as much as a koala, and also muscular like they could kick your ass.
The day after the night zoo, we got up early to snorkel the Great Barrier Reef. This was my favorite part of the entire trip. I tell people all the time that if they visit Australia and skip the reef, they did it wrong, and I’m dead serious. I got second degree sunburn, complete with swelling and blisters because I forgot my sunscreen when we snorkeled, and I’d do it again, sunburn and all, in a heartbeat. It was that cool.
We went with a company called Passions of Paradise for $135, a small price to pay for the coolest thing you’ll ever do in your life. We snorkeled two areas of the reef, Michaelmas Cay, which is a popular spot, and a private reef that Passions of Paradise owns. Michaelmas Cay is a bird sanctuary and goes from shallow to gradually deeper, so it was a good place to learn the basics of snorkeling. Thank goodness, because I was really awful at it. I spent the first 15 minutes holding my breath and then surfacing frantically for air because I hate breathing through my mouth. Once I had that figured out, I nearly drowned myself twice by sticking the tube of my snorkel underwater while I watched cool-looking fish dart past me. After I figured that out, I just had to learn not to scream stuff (thus spitting out my snorkel) while underwater. I only did that once. “Gil!!!!!” when a Moorish Idol went swimming by, because I’ve seen Finding Nemo waaaaaay too many times.
Passions of Paradise was really cool because on the way out and on the way back, they answer questions you have about the animals you see while you’re in the water. From a description that sounded something like, “A huge greenish-bluish fish with a lump on its forehead,” one of our guides immediately named the Maori Wrasse and informed me that the one we saw on the reef was only about ⅓ of their full size (400 pounds!).
The Passions of Paradise crew also does conservation work and talks about it with enthusiasm. While I was there, they were working on eradicating the Crown of Thorns starfish, which is still an issue today. These sea stars are naturally occurring on the Great Barrier Reef, but recent increases in the population of algae that they eat (due to fertilizer runoff) and water temperature have caused a population explosion of these critters. They are more numerous and also bigger, growing up to 30 inches when normal sizes are between 10 and 13. They eat coral and are decimating the reef as their population increases. When I was in Australia in 2012, the divers from Passions of Paradise and many other vessels had permits to inject individual seas stars with ox bile, which kills them, but is very expensive. In the last couple of years, it has been discovered that household vinegar has a 100% kill rate, so in all likelihood, by the time you take my advice and visit the reef with Passions of Paradise, they’ll be using that to save the reef one starfish at a time instead!
On our way back to the dock we got to see a pod of humpback whales, which was an amazing bonus on an already once-in-a-lifetime trip. By then I was already getting sleepy due to my epic sunburn (I seriously had sunscreen on my person all day every day of this trip except this one day), and we were headed to Ayers Rock the next morning. Stay tuned for the next leg of our journey!