We arrive, everything is a "go" so we head through the "security" they have and wait at the gate. The travel is starting to set in as I am quickly figuring out that I need a time of rest. The 3 hour flight did just the trick.
That flight I was able to put headphones on and listen to music for the first time in over week...and when I say "music" I mean truly recorded music. Those of you that have traveled (or spent much time around me) know that I love to just bust out/join in to any song being played or collectively sung in any group. Doug is the same way. We have had many tunes busted out in harmony (or our best rendition of harmony) along the urban city walks...giving more soul to these already vibrant downtowns.
We didn't know what to expect today (sound familiar?) with the weather and our goals of wanting to SCUBA today...if we were going to Scuba today HAD to be the day because of the general rule that you must wait at least 18 hours before boarding a plane after Scuba diving and we will be on a plane tomorrow evening so trying tomorrow is out of the question.
We check into the hotel, after a very political one-sided conversation had by our taxi driver about his dislike for former President "W", and head to a scuba check-in...not happening. The water is waaaaay too choppy today and no boats are going out to the reef. Our only option (and one that we took) was to make reservations for the tomorrow morning to snorkel instead...I've snorkeled before and know that it is awesome, maybe it is no match for Scuba diving but still pretty cool.
After getting the "no Scuba" news we head down to the beach to quickly learn that there is no accessible beach in this "beach town". There is a very large and very nice pool with lots of trees and grass and people laying out though. We see it...and move on.
After walking the pier looking out onto the "beach" which is blocked off and looks more like an enormous drying up lake, we decide to walk into a restaurant and order a drink and take some suggestions on what to do in this town. The waitress, Margaret, delivers perfectly on cue so I interviewed her:
After we left Splash, we walked over to the visitor's bureau and booked up tomorrow's afternoon with a sea-plane flyover of the Great Barrier Reef scheduled right after we get back from snorkeling and right before we head to the airport. It SHOULD work out perfectly.
After we booked the tickets, we took the visitor bureau lady's advice and headed to some rooftop-zoo thing in the city center...great idea.
In this zoo-thing we were encapsulated with practically no barriers to all kinds of huge parrots that repeatedly dive-bombed us, there was an enclosed enormous crocodile, koala bear, iguanas and a few kangaroo-looking wallabys hopping around too...pretty cool environment.
After that we headed back to the hotel to rejuvenate, write some blog stuff, upload photos/videos then back out to that Splash restaurant for some fresh seafood to the likes of chowder and prawn spring rolls...yum!
(Note: Against my best efforts and much valuable time spent on the computer uploading, videos and photos have been the thorn in my side. I spent hours on this trip trying to get the videos I want uploaded for you to see along with the blog but it just hasn't worked out too well. Most of them will have to wait til I get back to the states...the level of frustration is high against electronics right now.)
No comments:
Post a Comment