The Great Barrier Reef for the Great Finale!

I'm officially up to date, posting in real time. Happy Halloween - we're going as snorkelers this year.

We chose the Quicksilver cruise to the outer Reef because it is a bit shorter than all day and offered more than just snorkeling. You cruise for an hour and half on a big boat that holds 450, but only 250 were aboard today. The boat docks at this station in the middle of the ocean.

Here's the Tin Shed, where we're regulars :-)

We started with a short ride on the semi-submersible and saw a few Nemos and three turtles and brightly colored fish everywhere.

Molly was tempted to try a prawn for lunch, but she couldn't get past the eyes lookin' at her. Trick or treat?

You can snorkel in an area right off the platform patrolled by lifeguards.
Wow.

Charlie spent most of his time riding Mike's back, but Molly was a snorkeler and Daniel went far and wide. Mike saw a shark, but we were assured they're not dangerous.

Mike is loading the car as I type for our trip back to Sydney, hopefully in time for the Melbourne Cup - a horse race that stops all the action in Australia. First thing the next morning - a flight to LA, then Detroit and a car ride back to East Lansing. Home.

Mossman Gorge and the Germinator

After a morning at the Port Douglas market, where snow cones were the breakfast of choice (bubble gum and cola flavor)...
we drove back up to the Mossman Gorge in the Daintree Rainforest. It was much more crowded at 10AM, compared to at 8AM and the water was too cold for me (how can that be in the tropics?), but the others went in and even tested out floating through some currents and rocks.



I missed the photo of Mike getting onto this rock - imagine a classic.
We had our last picnic lunch of bread and cheese in Australia near the parking lot of the Mossman Gorge area and changed out of our swim stuff (mine was dry, so it was easier). Mike went over to the car to drop off the things we didn't need for the afternoon hike and suddenly he was waving to us frantically. Who would have believed that a cassowary's path would include the edge of a crowded parking lot! What a weird looking flightless bird it is and there we stood, just a few yards away.

Here he/she? is headed for the Subaru! They're solitary animals, except when the male is raising the chicks, but they have habit paths that they follow for a few days at a time searching for food. Did he/she know the ice cream truck was parked there for the day? Oh, this was quite a find and made our day!


What else is there to say? We saw a cassowary in the wild (next to a Subaru). However, we finished off the day with a walk and some rock climbing by the longer legged members of the family. Charlie and I stayed back to dunk our feet in the water. He figured out which hand is his left while they were gone - home schooling at its best.
Molly and Charlie like to play tourguide on the hikes. Molly was definitely paying attention to yesterday's tour with the real guide. She told me that the small trees growing in the forest will sometimes wait millions of years for another large tree to fall so that they can get enough sunlight to grow. Well, some of the time references seem to have been confused, but it was the right sentiment.

Did I mention we saw a cassowary, in the wild?

We went back to the Tin Shed for dinner, because the view is hard to beat.

The Tropical Tour

We decided to complement Daniel’s ability to read and digest all the signs along the paths, info centers and lookouts with a guided tour of the Daintree Rainforest. We started in Mossman’s Gorge and got a view of a cool dragon lizard and crystal clear stream.

We tried a cruise along the Daintree River, in search of crocodiles in the wild, but only managed an egret and a few sun bird spotting.

We checked out the beach and “town” of Cape Tribulation, which is where the sealed (paved) road ends on the east coast of Australia. You can go on pretty much forever on an unpaved road to somewhere, if you so desire. Apparently the hole in Captain Cook's boat was the genesis for all the depressing names of places along this part of Queensland. Charlie was not affected in the same way and wrote (EILRAHC heart YLLOM) perfectly backwards in the sand.

Lunch included tips for mixing Vegamite with butter (not our only option, thank goodness – 3/5 of us didn’t even bother to try the tip), tasting the backside of an ant (again, 3/5 of us didn’t bother), and a swim in a secluded spot.

These strangler trees (really a fig tree) drop offshoot roots down from high branches and they twist around the original tree, eventually strangling it, so you have a series of roots that are hollow on the inside. This one is on one of the hikes we went on, where our guide Chris got out of the car first to see if the resident venomous snake was out and about. He's a "snake relocater" in his spare time, which provides no reassurance at all.

We saw cassowary droppings/scat/poo, but, alas, no cassowaries. They're considered a keystone animal in the forest because they eat huge amounts of fruits with seed and deposit the seeds in other parts of the forest for cross pollination. Some of the seeds will never germinate unless they've passed through the digestive system of the bird.

We ended the day at the Daintree Icecream Store, where you get four flavors in each bowl, of whatever fruit is ripe on their property that day. The Jakfruit is the largest tree-borne fruit in the world, weighing up to 80+ pounds. It's not too pretty to look out, but was very yummy in the ice cream. Wattle seed is the seed from a tree also and it tasted a little like coffee ice cream. Blueberry and Mango, not as exotic!

We arrived back at our place 9 hours after leaving. We haven't really done too many guided tours on the trip, but I think this one was worth it. Because the tour company wasn't busy (love those box jellyfish!), we were our own group - although they can be up to 8 or 12 persons. The kids asked tons of questions and kept the sibling bickering to an all-time low.

Far Up North

Turn up the heat! From Christchurch to Sydney to Cairns, with only a minor hitch as the labor dispute at the airport put us temporarily in very long lines to get through immigration. The flight to Cairns was particularly quiet. A 4AM wakeup call is good for something. We’re staying in Port Douglas, about 50 km north of Cairns on the Pacific Coast. The kids swam in the pool and we had dinner at a place called the Tin Shed, which we discovered has jugs (pitchers) of raspberry lemonade and view of the bay on the opposite side of the peninsula that Port Douglas sits on.

We started off the next morning staking our place on the Four Mile Beach a few minutes walk from our place, The Outrigger.
The low season in this area starts November 1 because that's when the box jellyfish may have come to town. While walking toward customs in the International Terminal of the Sydney airport, there is a huge mural that asks if you know Australia's deadliest animal and at the end of the mural, the cute little jellyfish is highlighted. It's late October now and none have been spotted, so the nets that they have in place at the beach to keep them out of a small swimming area are not up yet and the warning for Marine Stingers said "unlikely". Still, there is vinegar on hand, which supposedly provides a teeny tiny bit of relief. Have fun kids!

Actually, all three kids were surprised by how much they like swimming in the ocean when the water and the air are warm. The cool waters and air of Sydney made them skeptical at first, but we had to drag Molly and Charlie away at the end of the day. Daniel was curled up on a beach chair with the Kindle, reading "Treasure Island."



Dinner that night...

You are My Sunshine!

Technical Note for the official archives: These events took place on Wednesday, October 26th - our internet connections were non-existent or kooky in New Zealand.

A day and a half of rain on a holiday can really bring you down AND make the sunshine seem spectacular. We quickly packed our bags for the trip to Christchurch (our flight out the next morning) and raced to the Franz Joseph Glacier walk in the sun!! It is one of the few glaciers that is advancing in the days of global warming. The walk out there is filled with waterfalls that we would pull off highways in the rain to hop out and view because they’re so beautiful, but they almost seemed ho hum because there were so many of them. Charlie impressed the other walkers by wading through the glacial runoff as if it were a hot tub – he got his picture taken with one family. Silly boy.

By a late lunchtime we were in the town of Hokitika, eating in Café de Paris. Hokitika has some industry and a big tourism trade in jade, or greenstone. I think we counted 8 jade outlets in town. We also happened upon the Sock Museum, which just begs a visit. The owner produces and sells hand-crank machines that knit socks. She has about 15 of the machines on display in one little room and sells the hand crank knit socks for $35 a pair. Strangely, the socks are not even made from New Zealand wool, despite the sheep population – the wool was from Germany. She told Mike that she sells 1000 of these machines a year for $2000 each, mostly to wealthy Americans. Her U.S. base is in Pinkney, MI – just down the road from East Lansing. While we’ve been in Australia, she was in Michigan. If you’ve ever read “Roadside America” – this would definitely belong in “Roadside New Zealand.”

We traveled through Arthur’s Pass on the way to Christchurch and eventually caught back up with the rain, just about the time we met these Kea – the only Alpine parrot in the world.

New Zealand isn’t really about the wildlife in the same way that Australia has been for us – I think I read that bats were the only wild native mammal. Possums and deer were introduced and their overpopulation lead to creative outlets: possums are a pest that get made into some sort of wool/possum material. If you ever order venison in the States, most likely it was imported from a deer farm in New Zealand.

We had a few minutes of dusk to check out the business district of New Zealand that was hit by the earthquake. Most of the central business district is inside a fence that is inaccessible - pretty eerie by night. We heard that all buildings over 4 stories will be demolished.

Remember our view of the mountains in Queenstown? This is our view from the Avalon Motel in Christchurch:

Now, right to bed because we have a 6:30 AM flight to Sydney in the morning!

Rain Rain Go Away

Turns out, there isn’t much to do on the West Coast when it is raining buckets. We checked out a Wildlife Center where they have 3 Rowi Kiwi birds on display. Seeing a kiwi (the other major New Zealand symbol, in addition to the fern, and the source of why New Zealanders are called kiwis – not the fruit :-)) was neat, although we’ve gotten spoiled by finding things in the wild, this would have to do. No flash - it freaks out the birds, so no pictures of the real kiwis. There are only 375 Rowi Kiwi’s in the world, all on the West Coast of New Zealand. In the wild, 95 percent of eggs do not survive, so conservationists take the eggs when they are laid and allow them to hatch and the chicks to grow for 18 months in captivity before releasing them into the wild. In this way, 95 percent (coincidentally?) survive. Kiwi chicks are completely self sufficient after exiting the egg – sort of like our kids – NOT (the three of them just discovered this “cute” turn of phrase and are using it liberally – although Charlie and Molly feel the need to make sure that you heard the “not” and explain what they really meant). O.k., so reading all of that and playing in their fake glacier took about 30 minutes.

Now, off to the Franz Joseph Glacier hike after eating peanut butter and jelly/bread and cheese sandwiches in the car. That hike lasted less than 30 minutes in the pouring rain. Our ever insightful and typically rosy Molly summed it up, “Whose idea was this anyway?!”

How about an afternoon of Legos in the motel room and an early dinner instead? We ate out at one of the two open cafes in town and lamented that getting bread for the table costs extra in this neck of the woods, but it took the edge of the hunger we worked up drying ourselves off all day.

Travel Day

We were sorry to say good-bye to Queenstown, but packed up and headed for the West Coast first thing on Monday morning for the next planned stop on the quick tour. The views along the lakes and mountains are breathtaking and, again, we were struck by how few people there are anywhere.

View of Mike in the "unspoiled" natural world

The views got harder to capture on camera as the rains started to fall. We were undeterred while driving through the Haast Pass (we purchased a map for $2 and were determined to use it) and stopped at all the marked waterfalls and sent the kids into the rain for a view.

I thought the camera protecting umbrella deserved a mention.

By the time we arrived in the town of Fox Glacier it was near dinner time and we got the bad news that the weather looked bad, real bad, for our hopes to walk on the glaciers. With that disappointing forecast in mind, we walked as close as you could get to the Fox Glacier on the sanctioned path. Our attire of shorts and sandals was met with a few confused gazes by the slicker/hat/boot-clad tour groups.