I’m 25 years old and have officially made it to all seven continents! Woohoo!! (On this trip, Australia is technically #6 since I don’t get to Europe until April… but I’m on my way!)
Darwin: I had the best introduction to Australia I could have asked for! There’s not too much to see in Darwin itself, but I spent a lot of time with my couchsurfing host – he was awesome! Darwin marks my first official couchsurfing experience and it was more than I could have ever hoped for. Couchsurfing is a web site in which individuals have a profile, post pictures, and offer free accommodation to other travelers. Travelers give each other references so you can get a sense as to whether or not someone is legitimate… their place is clean… etc. It was very hard to explain this to my mom and my aunt but I guess the idea of emailing a stranger and asking if I can stay at his house just isn’t that weird to me anymore. :) Greg, my host, picked me up from the airport, drove me around the city so that I could see more of Darwin, and gave me my own room to sleep in. Though he refused to let me buy him dinner as a thank you, it was really nice sitting at Stokes Hill Wharf watching sunset and enjoying a seafood dinner :)
I wandered around Darwin by myself the next day…. doing the heritage walk and learning that just three weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Darwin was attacked by the very same Japanese fleet. The city was attacked 62 times in total! There are WWII oil storage tunnels to see here as well as an American B-52 bomber. I didn’t make it to the storage tunnels or the aviation museum, but I did take the Heritage Walk around Darwin seeing the sites have survived all the bombings and a devastating cyclone in the ‘70s. That night, Greg made us dinner and I got to try kangaroo for the first time!
I wish my time hadn’t been so short in Darwin, but I’m really looking forward to visiting again and maybe perhaps venturing out to the famous Litchfield or Kakadu!
Cairns: I left Darwin at 345am to catch an early flight to Cairns. I had to move my clock forward a half hour when I arrived. So strange! I didn’t know time zones could shift in half hour increments! When I got to Darwin, I was officially 17.5 hours ahead of California, but now I’m 18 hours ahead. About Cairns… I don’t really have much of an impression of the city – it’s the gateway to the Great Barrier Reef and I was able to book a 3day/2night liveaboard diving trip within an hour of arriving at my hostel. The city caters to backpackers and I was able to find the cheapest accommodation I’ve seen in Australia. I stayed in an 8-bed female dorm for $12 AUD/night! Most hostels also give you a voucher for a free dinner – I definitely took advantage of my free spaghetti bolognese and it wasn’t half bad! Like Darwin, there doesn’t seem to be much in Cairns either. I at least didn’t see much of the city, but it didn’t help that it poured rain all day long.
I love giant clams!
ProDive Liveaboard: I agonized a bit over choosing which company to dive with, but I supposedly ended up with the best of the best: ProDive. They designed their boats specifically with diving in mind and though 11 dives in three days is a lot, it was a great time! The entire trip, you are eating, sleeping, or diving – it’s a really different way of living than I’m used to. Since getting certified, I’ve wanted to dive the Great Barrier Reef but fresh off of diving Sipadan, I wasn’t so impressed initially. Unfortunately, parts of the Great Barrier Reef are dead/dying because of tourists who damage the reef. But, it’s just so massive that there are still really beautiful parts of it. I loved Flynn’s Reef in particular - it was so colorful and alive with tons of fish, coral, and swimthroughs.
Seeing sharks and turtles will always be exciting for me too! I got to feed a turtle this time! It was a hawksbill turtle... it bit my finger and it kind of hurt, but I’d never had a turtle in such close proximity before! Worth it!
I’ve also realized that although I am an advanced diver approaching 50 dives, I have zero capacity to navigate underwater. The dives were unguided so it was just me and my dive buddy Sarah who turned out to be just as bad at navigating as I am. Our first dive, we surfaced super far from the boat and had to get picked up by the zodiac/rescue boat. After that (and being teased a lot), we’d have to pop up pretty much every dive to make sure we knew where the boat was. Even if we had to swim a ways, we always made it back to the boat after that :)
Bowen: I took an overnight bus from Cairns to Bowen the day I got back from the dive trip. I purchased a Greyhound hop on hop off bus ticket that’ll get me from Cairns to Sydney – about 3700km down the east coast of Australia. Anyway, Bowen sucked. I walked to one hostel in the blistering heat and it was closed! It was a working hostel that had closed for the season. I walked uphill to another hostel and the guy said that because I was coming from Cairns, I’d have to wash all my things in case I was transporting bed bugs. Hot, tired, and grumpy, I didn’t want to deal with this so I ended up booking a bus ticket to the next town – Airlie Beach. I spent the day bumming around Bowen, seeing nothing, and just waiting to get out of there. Wikitravel says that Bowen is perhaps the “best kept secret of the East coast.” Lies! This sign was in the bathroom - it just epitomizes Bowen for me:
I was very happy to catch the bus to Airlie Beach, the gateway to the incredibly beautiful Whitsunday Islands :)
Next Up: Sailing the Whitsundays and Beach Bummin'!
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