Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef

Day 207 (January 21, 2019) – Cairns, Australia

We only had one reason to visit Cairns (Travis is always reminding me that it's pronounced "cans") and that was to see the Great Barrier Reef. After it was all said and done this few-day excursion was going to cost us a small fortune, but I didn’t want to go all the way to Australia and not see it. Travis had already been there twice, so this was more for my benefit than his.

The Cairns waterfront at night. 

We flew from Melbourne in the far south of Australia up to Cairns in the north. The scenery was totally different up there. The dry and barren bulk of Australia was replaced with humid, tropical forests. We gave ourselves three days in Cairns so we could pick the day with the best weather and calmest seas to visit the reef. Unfortunately, every day had the same weather prediction. Rain and somewhat choppy water, so we went on our second day, which had maybe a 5-10% chance of more sun than the other days.

The huge public pool. It was empty at night but packed out during the heat of the day.

Cairns was a proper tourist town. Lots of restaurants, bars, and tour companies advertising trips to the reef. It was nice to walk around at night when it cooled down a bit. There is a huge public pool and a boardwalk along the waterfront that goes on forever. And every night at dusk, without fail, we watched millions of bats flying overhead. We saw these bats all over Australia, but there seemed to be the most flying over Cairns. These aren’t small bats either. They’re about the size of a small dog with wings and quite a site to see as clouds of them swarm overhead.

Thousands of bats flew over the city every night at dusk. 

The next day we woke up early and headed to the dock to check into our Great Barrier Reef tour. We boarded a surprisingly large boat, that could have easily fit 300 people, but there were less than a couple hundred on it that day. The reef is a solid hour away from the mainland and as we would learn, the ocean can get a bit rough, so I was glad our boat was as big as it was.

Helicopter tours of the reef seemed really popular, but were way outside our budget range. 

In preparation for being on a boat all day I took a triple dose of motion sickness medication. I wasn’t taking any chances. Unfortunately, most people on our trip weren’t as prepared. The boat was rocking so much that the only thing you could really do was pick a place to sit down and hold on as we plowed through the swells. I felt so bad for the people that got seasick. It seemed like a quarter of the passengers ended up huddled in some corner feeling horribly ill. The worst part for them was that this was only the beginning of the day. They were trapped on this boat until the late afternoon.

The boat that took us out to the reef.

We were fortunate and felt fine all day. Even with the choppy waters it was a great experience. The ocean was calmer around the reef, but it was still a bit rougher than we would have liked. We got dressed up in bright blue stinger suits that covered our entire body except for our head and toes. We strapped on fins and a snorkel mask and jumped off the back of the boat to go for a swim.

During the ride out. The weather wasn't ideal, but fortunately it never rained. 

I wish that we had better photo documentation of what we saw at the reef, or us looking ridiculous in these blue body suits, but we didn’t want to pay for an overpriced underwater camera and with the boat rocking everywhere it was too difficult to coordinate having our cell phones out while we were getting suited up to get in the water.

It doesn't look like much from the surface, but underneath it's a whole different world. 

We saw a hundred different types of fish and corals. The highlights might have been the giant clam that Travis found. It was seriously enormous. It could eat a small person if clams did that sort of thing. And we also saw a reef shark. I saw a lot more of it than Travis did, but it was enough to scare me back into to the shallower waters. It was swimming around below us along the ocean floor maybe 30 feet down. The underwater scenery was beautiful. The ocean floor had pure white sand and up rising from the floor were these huge columns of coral that came up to just below the surface of the water. We were swimming at the tops of these columns, packed with colorful fish and sea life, but you could also swim over where this column dropped off to the ocean floor. All along the cliff edges were more coral and more fish. It looked exactly like what you might picture in your head.

Our only picture we have of fish, taken from the boat looking down into the water. 

We had been snorkeling a number of times before, but I think this was one of the more impressive experiences I’ve had. Part of what impressed me so much wasn’t even the experience itself but the realization of how absolutely enormous the Great Barrier Reef is. At both reef sites that we visited we were looking along an arc of reef that stretched on for a huge distance in either direction. This would have been impressive on its own, but we were only in one tiny section of the reef, which stretched on for hundreds, if not thousands, of miles along the coast of Australia. The enormity of the reef and the thought of how much underwater life there is down there is overwhelming.

On the end of our last snorkeling excursion when the sun finally decided to make an appearance. 

The ride back to Cairns was just as seasickness-inducing as the trip out but we were ok, unlike many of the passengers. Back on land, our last day was spent picking up some last-minute necessities, like buckets of inexpensive sunscreen, and planning our trip to Bali, which we would be flying to the next day. Our trip to Cairns was absolutely worth it and I’m glad we included it on our Australia itinerary. It was a nice way to end our Australian adventure.