Cairns & The Great Barrier Reef
To get to the reef you have two points of entry. You can visit the city of Cairns, a beautiful coastal city of around 150,000 people, or you can visit the very small coastal town of Port Douglas, with around 4,000. Where you stay is most likely based on how many other people you want around at night. We decided to choose Cairns, and hopped a Virgin Australia flight from Sydney that got us there in a little over three hours. You can drive it if you want too, but the two towns are more than 1500 miles apart, and the drive takes more than an entire day so flying is the most reasonable option. I will tell you the Australians are pretty laid back with their domestic flights. I tried to hand the ticket agent at the airport my passport and she literally said to me, "That's fine, I don't need that." Oh well. Once you are in Cairns getting to the heart of the town is easy. They have shuttles that run several times an hour, but we just took an Uber into town. They have free WiFi in the airport, so getting a ride only took a couple of minutes. We were off the plane and at our apartment in half an hour. If you are looking for a place to stay I would like to highly recommend the Apartment 78 on The Esplanade. We found the apartment on Airbnb, and could not have been happier. The apartment is on the 7th floor, so you have a wonderful view of the town from the balcony, and it has a washer and dryer on the inside that makes it much easier to travel. On top of that, the owner of the apartment has his own gelato shop one block over, and you get half off if you come by and say hello to him. Within a five minute walk of the apartment are more than twenty restaurants, the train station, and the harbor your ships to the reef will leave from.
When you are looking to go to the reef you have several options, and it can be confusing. First, where the ships go is not generally known ahead of time. The Australian government limits how many ships can go to the reef in a day, and the tide dictates which reefs are too shallow to visit at certain times. Most ship companies will give you five or six reefs that are an option, and then head out that day and find one that is open to visitors. When going you also have to take into consideration how many people you want around you at a time. Some of the larger boats have more than 125 people on board, but some of the smaller boats will keep between 70-80 passengers. The trip out to the reef is more than two hours each way, and a lot of it was through rough waters, so many of the passengers on board were getting very sea sick. Once you are there you have two options, you can snorkel around or scuba dive down to the bottom. On our trip we made it out to the Saxon Reef. The water was shallow that day, so snorkeling got us within a few feet of the reef itself. While out there the guides told us more about the reef's condition. A coral reef is actually a living organism, and much of the food it uses to grow is from algae that grows on the reef itself. The algae is what gave much of the reef the bright colors so many people love to see. Several factors have led to the algae dying, including rising temperatures in the water, and the one the tour companies glossed over quickly, the number of tourists coming out there to see it. That being said, while the algae is dying, the tour guides stated the reef itself hopefully will not die, it will just grow slower. Being out there was a surreal experience. While not as bright as it once was, it was still beautiful to see, and the brightly colored fish stood out even more because of the dull reef. When you go be sure to bring a waterproof camera, or you can rent one from the tour companies like we did. For around $40 you get the camera for the entire snorkel, and you get to keep the SD card with your pictures when you are done.
The next day in Cairns we decided to head the other direction, instead of out to sea, we headed inland into the rain forest of Kuranda. Kuranda is a small town on the outskirts of the Kuranda National Park. From the Cairns train station, located on the backside of a shopping mall in the center of town, you will take about a two hour historic train ride up the mountain to the village. You have two options for going up, you can leave at 8:30am or 9:30am. The train ride takes you through some of the small towns that were built by miners and loggers in the late 19th Century, and stops at the stunning Barron Gorge for ten minutes for people to take pictures. Once you get to Kuranda it's a short walk from the train station to the village that is full of coffee shops, arts and crafts stores, and restaurants for lunch. The real reason to visit for us was easy, the animal parks. While Australia is full of animal parks, the ones in Kuranda let you get up close and personal with many of the animals you have traveled around the world to see. After paying to get into the Kuranda Koala Gardens, you are allowed to wander through the park with the animals. Inside they have koalas, kangaroo, wallabies, wombats, and many more animals I had never heard of. They have feed boxes located all around the park for visitors to help feed the animals. My suggestion is to take the early train in to town, and go straight to the animal park. We got there around 10:45am, and by 11:30am most of the animals were fed and asleep for an afternoon nap. While you are there you can have your picture taken with one of the dozens of koalas they have. These shy animals barely wake up from a nap, and when they do they look completely confused to be waking up next to a giant man, but they seemed okay with it after about ten seconds. They are so cute you want to start throwing your money at the photographer for as many more pictures as you can get with them. After they take their official picture, the photographer is happy to use your phone or camera to take as many pictures as you like with the koala. After you leave the park get away from the crowd with a walk through the rain forest. The town has miles of paved trails through the jungle, and after two hours of hiking the only other people we saw were doing a photo shoot for a Samsung camera. When you get done with your hike head back into town, have some lunch, visit some shops, and then head back towards the train. The trains head back to Cairns at 2:30pm and 3:30pm. I will suggest the 3:30pm train. After the first train leaves the town feels empty, so you have it almost to yourself for a while. The stores are also much more willing to make a deal when they know half of their potential customers just rolled out of town. There are a few small hotels in town if you want to spend the night, but I think the town becomes very quiet after the day trippers leave.
A couple of more things to point out about our time in Cairns are the people and the food. This is a beach town, and the crowd in town reflects that. Most of the people walking the streets looked like college students visiting from the northern hemisphere, or locals who want to be beach bums for a living. That being said, the crowd was awesome. Everyone seemed very laid back, and the town was generally quiet by 11:00pm each night. The food was also great there. For such a remote place you felt like you had found the center of the world for eating. Within one block we saw Chinese, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Turkish, and Vietnamese restaurants. You could be there a week and eat from a new country every night. While we only visited initially for our trip to the reef, we are excited about returning in future years, and hope that everyone else that visits will have as much fun as we did in Cairns.
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