The Long Overdue Cairns Update

And now, the Cairns update. Here goes.

I flew out of Albuquerque on Tuesday (of last week?) I believe. The flight to LA was unremarkable, but the LA airport is. It was a big U with the international terminal at the bottom and my arriving terminal at the top. If you are ever in LAX, please make use of the wonderful shuttle service they have when you are trying to transfer between terminals. I walked the length of it when I was looking for my friend Mauritiana (if you are reading, hello! The chocolates survived and are delicious) and while it did stimulate my legs out of atrophy, if I had not had as long a lay over I would certainly have missed my flight.

While we were bumming around the international terminal (the USO is a decent choice for this sort of activity) we discovered this contraption:

I am not really sure why it was there, but willing the balls in the various directions they could go turned out to be great fun.

The flight into Melbourne was long; Qantas has good in-flight entertainment; there was a bit of a rush at the Melbourne changeover; and now we are in Cairns.

I liked Cairns, but it seemed rather touristy. On our first day in the city we went on a boat out to a cay to dive. That particular part of the reef seemed to me to be nothing really spectacular. The visibility is much better in the Caymans, and the most interesting wildlife I saw were two giant clams. The captain decided that we would be staying put for the afternoon dive as well because of the wind, so I decided to go ashore on the cay and watch some of the nesting seabirds. I unfortunately forgot to bring my camera otherwise there would be some fantastic shots right about here.

I did, however, bring my camera the next day when we went to the RainForeStation.

This fella was just loafing around the yard (we could pet him). He is a gray kangaroo.

This is Jack the Ripper, so named because he kept killing the female crocodiles they were trying to mate with him. We were not allowed to pet him.

I dont remember what this guys name was, but he liked me. He got my to scratch him under his wing.

If you don't recognise what this is, there might be no helping you.

I have a few more photos (a wallaby, the dingos, the duck we got to ride in, and me holding a koala to name a few) that I might upload later.

And that is Cairns. Expect my next update soon.