Cairns? Cans? Carns? Who knows?

Reporting to you live from the flight home, I’m here to tell you about why this weekend was an interesting but also good one. Most of the people in my program traveled to Cairns (pronounced like Cans) which is where the Great Barrier Reef is. The trip started with us waking up before class on Friday to find out our flight was cancelled. We had to email our professors to ask them if we could leave class an hour early so that we could make our now earlier flight. They let us leave, but then when we got to the airport, the plane was delayed until 20 minutes past the time of our original flight.

We finally made it to Cairns around 7:30pm but it felt so much later. James, Caroline, and I went to our Airbnb to put our stuff down before grocery shopping and then getting pizza for dinner. We decided to stay in for the night since James had to wake up early for skydiving and Caroline and I had to get up early to go pick up our rental car to go to the rainforest.

On Saturday, we got up and went back to the airport to get our car and then picked up Mary Grace and Cassie to drive up to the Daintree Rainforest. At first driving went really slowly because we had to get used to being on the other side of the road and the car. The biggest difference that consistently messed us up was the fact that the blinker and the windshield wiper were on opposite sides of the wheel from the US. Two and a half hours and a cable ferry ride later, we made it and hiked about two miles through the very humid but also very beautiful rainforest. There was this warning at the start of the trail about these birds called Cassowaries and how to get away from them if we saw one. We made it through without any Cassowary encounters and then decided to travel farther up the coast to Cape Tribulation which had a lookout.

When we got there, I think we were all expecting to have to hike up to a cliff-type thing in order to see out, but instead it ended up being an incredible beach (right). We were not allowed to swim there though because the water had crocodiles in it and none of us were really in the mood to get eaten. At this point we were all sweating so much from the heat and humidity since flying from Sydney to Cairns is about the equivalent of flying from New York to Florida and it is spring here so the weather was warm. The beach was so worth all of it though, it was like a little alcove between the mountains with the rainforest. After awhile we decided to start driving home so we could be back in time to make dinner that night.

On the way back we stopped at an ice cream place that had exotic fruit ice cream. The farm made all the flavors themselves and each ice cream was pre-made so you got to try the four flavors they offered. They had coconut and passionfruit which most people have had before but then they had wattleseed and black sapote. Wattleseed (back right) kind of tasted like cookies n’ cream but also kind of like mocha ice cream and I’m still confused about how that’s possible but that’s what it tasted like. The black sapote (front center) ice cream is made from a fruit that looks kind of like a green tomato but the ice cream looks and tastes like chocolate. It was so good, I don’t even like coconut but the even that tasted amazing.

When we left, Caroline went into the trees and stole an unknown fruit, which we later cut open and discovered was an unripe soursop which I had never heard of but apparently some of my friends have had it before. After stealing the fruit, we pulled out and accidentally were on the wrong side of the road which we quickly realized. Thankfully the road was quiet and rural so everyone was okay and it was funny.

James made it back before us and is amazing so he made us dinner for when we got back. We all talked about our days and we watched his really cool skydiving video. Then Caroline and James talked me into watching the movie “It” with them which was fun but also terrifying. Caroline kept screaming at all the jump scares and it somehow made it funny instead of scary.

The next day was the interesting one. We were up at 6:00am to get to a boat to take us out to The Great Barrier Reef for the day. It’s about a two-and-a-half-hour boat ride to get out there. A few people got very seasick and did not do well. I was a little worried that I was going to get seasick but I ended up being completely fine and I felt so lucky.

We finally made it to the first snorkeling spot and saw some of the reef there. The entire reef is about 800km long and is actually made up of about 3000 individual reefs, so what we saw was only a small piece of the whole thing. We saw a ton of different kinds of coral, a stingray, and these really cool cuttlefish that were transparent almost and then they changed color to camouflage to whatever was underneath them. Also, when we were getting back on the boat we saw a massive barracuda.

We ate some lunch and made our way to the second snorkel spot which was about five minutes away. We convinced James to come in with us and I think it helped him feel a little better but who knows. Mary Grace, Colleen, Caroline, and I went in on an underwater camera that the boat had and we got to keep the SD card so we took some pretty cool pictures of the reef and of each other snorkeling. The second time I found Nemo and Marlin but unfortunately didn’t get a picture of them swimming in their anemone. We also saw some HUGE clams which were so cool. They live to be eighty years old which is incredible.

We swam for a few hours and then got back on the boat. At this point the waves were massive. A bunch of us sat up front and because the boat was a catamaran, we were able to sit on nets that were between the sides of the boat and the middle. Every time the boat crashed over the wave, we all got soaked. About two minutes into the ride my hat flew off my head and I assumed that it would just be gone but we actually went back for it and I felt SO BAD. I literally caused the entire boat to go back for my hat. It was really nice of them to do that though. After an hour or so we got cold and went back inside.

So many people were seasick it was terrible. I think at least three people were throwing up and a lot of people just went to sleep so they wouldn’t feel it anymore. Somehow, we all made it off the boat alive. We headed home and took showers and then went to dinner at a Korean BBQ place we found in town. When we got back we looked at the pictures we got of the reef and made it about thirty minutes into the movie “Baby Driver” before passing out to get up at 5:00am this morning to make it to our flight.

This morning after we got out of our Uber, James realized he left his hat in the passenger seat so he will probably never see it again. When he said he left it there, I realized that I forgot my hat at the Airbnb after all that the boat went through yesterday to rescue it from the ocean. I’m hoping I can get the owner of the house to mail it to me but we will see.

We all took some losses this weekend but overall it was a really fun weekend and I can’t wait for my next trip. Next Sunday – Wednesday is our school trip to Melbourne. Then for Labor Day here, Mary Grace and I are planning a staycation since we haven’t had a lot of time in Sydney to explore (and we have a huge paper/presentation to work on). Then after that I’m heading off to New Zealand for spring break. Stay tuned to hear more about all of my upcoming adventures!