Cairns in a Nutshell

After Sydney I travelled up to Port Douglas, a small resort town outside of Cairns, with my family. I was excited until I saw all the rain. It was still around 70-80 degrees though.

Our hotel was actually outside of Port Douglas, so it was really isolated. I was kind of disappointed because there was only one bus into town that runs every hour. It was really frustrating because I wanted to explore Cairns and I wasn't able to.

On the first day we explored Port Douglas a little bit (it's a nice little town with shops, restaurants, and a bunch of pubs) and then Ryan (brother) and I went to the Rainforest Sanctuary. It was really expensive but it was worth it. There was a huge multi-level aviary with jabirus, brolgas, lorikeets, cockatoos, frogmouths, and even flying foxes. The other major exhibit was a huge walk-through kangaroo enclosure where we fed red and grey kangaroos, and parma and swamp wallabies. It was really cool because I ended up sitting with a mother kangaroo and feeding her while her joey looked at me from the pouch.

The second day was a trip out to the Great Barrier Reef. It was really the only day that was sunny while we were in Cairns, so we were really lucky. We took a tour by Quicksilver which took us to an area where they have a large pontoon structure that allows for easy snorkeling and scuba. Ryan and I snorkeled for around two hours and also took a semi-submersible around the reef to see more. It was a cool experience though it was very crowded and I wasn't able to see a whole lot. Still, Cairns was worth it just to see the Reef.

The third day was spent in Port Douglas shopping. I finally got a digeridoo (yay!) and then relaxed for the rest of the day in the pool (though it was very cold).

Anyway, Cairns was pretty nice, though I wished I could've managed to have stayed closer to town so that I could have had more chances to see things.