We're in Cairns!

Yesterday, we flew from Adelaide to Cairns, Australia. Our flight took us over The Outback, of which I'm very glad as that is as close as we're going to get to that part of the country. It was interesting to watch the landscape under us empty out and turn brown - and then red. A large white smooth feature was puzzling until I asked the woman next to me what it was. She said it was Lake Eyre, a very large salt lake, one of the largest in the world, she thought. She flies this route regularly and hasn't seen water in it for 8 years. Thus, Lake Eyre is now a large salt flat.

Cairns is definitely of a different climate than Adelaide. The mountains/hills around us really remind us of the karsts in Thailand, though perhaps with less rock and more vegetation. Vegetation. . . it is green and lush here! Obviously, Cairns gets more rain than Adelaide. It is about 10 degrees warmer here than in Adelaide, highs in the low 80s this week, and we can feel that the air is also more humid.

Today, we're planning on taking the sky rail up to Kuranda and then jumping on a tour of the Rainforestation, a tourist attraction that seems to have displays on Aboriginal culture as well as native wildlife - flora and fauna. We should be back at the hotel around 5 pm. The friends we visited in Sydney happen to be vacationing in the area as well, so we may meet up with them this evening!!

We definitely want to see the Great Barrier Reef while we're here, but there is an interesting problem with that undertaking this week. The winds are quite high, 25-30 knots, making for swells in the ocean of up to 2 metres. This is not an issue for the snorkelling part of such a venture; rather, the issue is the boat ride out to the reef, which can take a good hour/hour and a half. There is concern over the possibility of seasickness on the boats. If winds have not died down by Friday, we may just go anyway. I don't know when we'll get another opportunity to see the Great Barrier Reef.

Hopefully, I'll be putting up photos soon. .