Beaches

Since Port Douglas we've spent 4 days in Cairns, about 4 days in Magnetic Islands, and are leaving for the Whitsunday Island Tomorrow.

In Cairns I did a day scuba trip on the Great Barrier Reef. It was a pretty good dive all around, saw a few clown fish. The Reef is absolutely huge. We had to take a boat ride for about 2 hours off the coast to get there. When we arrived you could see the water breaking over the top of the reef as far as your eye could see in both directions. After I got up from my dive the tide had gone out and created what looked like a huge sandbar in the middle of the ocean.

So the next day we headed to a place called Magnetic Island. We camped out about 5 minutes off the beach and pretty much spent most of the days hiking around in the morning then sitting on the beach all afternoon. One of the bays had a huge rock, I'd guess about 25 feet high into the ocean. Micah and I climbed up to see if we could jump off it, then two Ozzie guys came up behind us and jumped off as if it was nothing. Micah jumps off and immidiately looks up to me and yells "wow that was scary". Of couse now I realize I have to jump off. So I did, of course while screaming the whole way down. Also we did a hike and saw a baby Koala. Probably the cutest thing in the world other than Beau Marley and Lilly. Also we had to say bye to our friend Darina who had been living and traveling with us for the past few months headed back to Dublin. We replaced her with our friend Paul from Melbourne, also from Dublin.

After Magnetic Island Micah and Jenni and I did another dive about 100 KM south. Its called the Yongala, it was a ship wreck from 1911. They advertise it as Australias Titanic. However the dive was at 100 ft down, and we had to do some new SCUBA training before they'd let us go down there. On the first dive I was a little freaked out because I couldn't see land in either direction and the dive was so low I could see the bottom from our boat. After a little calming by the dive instructor I made it down. But I had some ear problems from the depth and I couldn't do the second one. Got to see a sea snake and a huge grouper on the first dive.

Now we are in Wetsunday Islands. Tomorrow we are getting on a boat with enough food and water to survive on a desterted Island for three days. Supposesly we should be 5 of 12 people on this entire Island. Saddly though we will have to spend 4th of July without fireworks.