Day 30 - Downunder 2016 - Wed - 10/26/16 - Cairns

It wax a smooth overnight sail from Hamilton Island. With a scheduled 10am arrival, we awakened leisurely and took our breakfast in the Lido. We skipped the 9am devotional time as we wanted to watch the sail in. It's a very narrow channel with lots of markers which indicated we were at high tide. We had really nice seats up in the Crow's Nest and the city slowly came into view in the brilliant green water darkened in numerous spots by reefs. After making one last left hand 90° turn we headed for the cruise terminal dock. Upon reaching the dock the ship did a 180° clockwise rotation to be lined up to do a straight departure later in the day.

We met in the Ocean Bar the other two couples who we were taking the Eco Safari tour with and waited for the clearance announcement. It never came so we joined the line to disembark the ship. After a brief wait, suddenly the line began moving; and we were off the ship on a very steep gangway. Our driver and guide, Kevin, owner of Wilderness Eco Tours met us and we all paid him $358AU per couple before getting in his pristine Toyota Land Cruiser.  

As he drove us out of the city, he began to orient us to the area. Without going into a blow by blow description of the tour I would summarize it by saying that we spent much of the day on very narrow and twisty mountain roads crossing from the flood plain through the tropical rain forest into the outback and back again. We had great stops at the Copperlode Dam, another high waterfall along Davies Creek that Angela and I scampered down the rocks to look at more closely, the Barron Falls Lookout and Railway platform, as well as an ice cream stop at Emerald Creek Ice Cream where the products are all made there! While I couldn't partake in the ice cream, they had scrumptious jerky! Also during the day we had a splendid homemade picnic in the rain forest along a little creek. Many of the roads and numerous water crossings would have been wonderful to ride on a motorcycle. Back in town, Kevin took us to a place next to the city hall where there were lots of fruit bats hanging in a tree. They were quite noisy and moving around a bit but wouldn't be flying until dark.

Since we were only a few blocks from the ship Angela and I elected to walk back to the ship which we did in a meandering way along the sea wall and downtown streets. It's worth noting that there is NO swimming in the beach areas adjoining the city as it it built on reclaimed mangrove swampy areas and home to saltwater crocodiles! By crikey, I'm not tempting fate.

We ate dinner in the Lido and it was dark by 7pm so we elected to watch the movie, Sapphire Girls, at its 8pm showing in the Showtime at Sea. We had seen it previously on another cruise and it's quite good. The rest of the evening was pretty low key since there wasn't much going on around the ship.  

About a week ago, a pipe burst in the aft end of the ship on deck 6 and a number of passengers needed to be moved and many fans were installed to draw away the moisture. Tonight those were all gone.

We now have three sea days before reaching Darwin.  

While the destination is important, remember to savor our the journey.