Australia Trip: Days 13-15

(Previously on The Mundane Misfit: Heron Island.  Where all the women are smart, all the men are good looking, and all the food is overpriced and mediocre.)

Day Thirteen: Boat! Boatboatboatboat…

To midnight and rain. Lots of rain. Our first bad weather of the trip, and the forecast says it will be like this the whole 5 days we’re on the cruise. We can’t help but laugh.

It’s warm here in Cairns, though, and feels a lot like Hawaii. So if it’s a tropical rain, that’s okay.

I’d prefer not to have the 6:00 trash pick up be right outside my room, though!

Giant glass window to take in the view = Zero sound insulation, so I was up and at em pretty damn early this morning. The other two slept through it, and the sounds of everyone in the hallway also walking directly through our room, so they must have been tired. Everyone woke up without an alarm between 8 and 8:30, though, so I think we’ve gotten pretty regular early bird hours this trip.

We had morning tea with hotel provided biscuits (deeeelicious, and a lovely addition to the morning, thank you Pacific International) and then dressed for the breakfast buffet (not bad, but holy cow! Every resort we’ve stayed at uses the same food service provider! Same brand of butter, same jams, same premade pastry squares, same waaaaaaaaaaay sage-y breakfast sausages… only LEI – and Seabelle, the fancy restaurant on Fraser – did not conform). Now we’re up in the room journaling until 11am check out, and then will drop our bags off at the port and kick around Cairns until boat loading time (4pm).

(Later) Yup, that’s what we did. We bought frozen yog(h)urt with a variety of amazing fruit purees and toppings (Turkish Delight. And we’ve just finished Narnia. Seriously. Divine.) for lunch, and then walked the Esplanade, stumbling upon the huge (and I mean fraking huge… dwarfs the one at Wild Waves) public swimming pool that stands in for the beach water in Cairns not being super safe. We also got a Hawaii style tropical rain burst, and again, if that’s what they mean by a “rainy day,” we’ll be more than fine. (RE:  Stop.  Taunting.  The.  Gods.)

We swam for a while (continuing H’s streak of swimming at least once every day on this trip… honestly I’m a little worried about Uluru, but otherwise we’ve been pretty serious about getting her in water every single day), then cruised the harbor, seeing a ton of gorgeous ships (a very large percentage of catamarans here at the reef. For depth issues?) and then back to the hotel to grab our bags and off to the boat! We had our check in and our orientation, and now are killing time in the cabin before dinner (seafood buffet! Yum for me, yum for H who got up the courage to tell the purser that she doesn’t like seafood so will have a steak, yuck for Chang who doesn’t like seafood, but having to ask to go gluten free [he still has some huge rashes on his hands from eating bread on LEI… they’ve gotten better since he stopped, but he didn’t stop till mid-Fraser! Hey! I’m telling time {date?} in islands now!] meant he didn’t want to mention any other food issues to the purser, so he’ll be having seafood tonight).

Should be upstairs socializing, but just can’t. I’m such the cruise director in this family. Chang and H are more introverted than I, so it’s me that usually ends up being the outward facing aspect of K-pod. For example, tonight, I had to be the one to introduce our kid to the only other kid on the boat – a 12-year-old German girl with no English – so I’m saving my people strength for dinner, when I’m sure we’ll sit with that family and I’ll need to be “on” again. For now, off! Computer games and silence for a half hour is my prescription…

Day Fourteen: Keep your arms and legs inside the ride at all time!

Dinner was indeed my work/social time, but that wasn’t bad. We sat with Ronia’s family and they were charming. And dinner was delicious seafood indeed! However, I’ve never eaten diner on a roller coaster before; the swell was honestly dangerous! (retrospective edit two… little did I know…) People were falling all over the place… though we’ve managed to avoid injury.

Went straight to our bunks after dinner. Had a hard time sleeping between the heavy chop and worrying that H was going to fall out of her no side railed top bunk due to the heavy chop. Woke early to calm waters and sunrise – 5:37 seems to be my no alarm wake up time. The others woke up at morning announcements, just 10 minutes before breakfast at 7, so today was our first time missing tea. (We did have it with breakfast, but that’s not the same…)

Breakfast was fan-freaking-tastic! Second amazing meal on ship. A delightful continental bar (wonderful yog[h]urt, fruit, and pastries) and then a hot meal choice – I had oatmeal with honey and coconut, H had a waffle with roasted apples and cream, and Chang had bacon and Swiss cheese with a savory bread. Everything was superb!

Landed at Cooktown and did the guided walking tour through the town up to the museum, but decided it was too nice a day to go inside an old building, so K-pod walked around the town instead, taking in the sights and finding a treasure trove of beautiful plumeria frangipani flowers – just like the plumeria all over Hawaii, but in all the colors of the sunset! Stunning!

Then out to open water and in the middle of a storm (RE3: Ha!). Chang took drammamine, which, as usual, sent him almost straight to sleep. Fortunately he stayed awake for the snokel/dive safety briefing, because he reallllly wants to dive this trip.

Then back to our room where all of us crashed hard, but H and I woke up when they announced lunch, while Chang did not. When I woke him, he looked pretty green and had no appetite, so we let him sleep while we went down to lunch.

Another amazing meal! Holy crap, this guy is consistent! Impressive, working in a rolling box. Cajun spiced chicken, beef in gravy (much tastier than it sounds) and noodles, three kinds of salad, fresh bread, and a magnificent platter of tropical fruits: perfect mango, sweet dragonfruit, and tangy lilikoi were the winners for H and I.

Back to the room where Chang was still out of it, we rested for a while until the time for the presentation on reef animals was given at 2. It was a lovely presentation, though the one on mantas at LEI seemed more engaging. I was falling asleep during the presentation, so after I went and cuddled with Chang on his bunk and we slept right up until it was time to go out on the boats to snorkel and dive!

I don’t know how he went from comatose to full bore so quickly, but he did! He went out on the first boat – getting to cut the line, because the divers-to-be got to go to use their newfound skills under a very shallow bit of water.  H and I followed on the second boat, and we had a lovely snorkel before the sunset. The depth was perfect, the water temperature bracing but not actually cold, and the fish and coral as stunning as expected. H took advantage of the perfect depth to learn to free dive (going under the water, completely submersing your snorkel, and then clearing it out with an explosive outbreath when you surface) and she did it! Enough times to feel really solid with the skill! Chang tried also, after H had it down, and he got it too! So now all of K-pod can free dive, and Chang is one step closer to scuba!

There were drinks and some appetizers on the beach after our snorkel (although after the welcome champagne, I have determined that I do NOT like being tipsy on a boat, so we all had Lift, our new favorite drink [a bubbly lemonade]). Then we boated back to the big boat and had a delightful BBQ dinner of steak, kangaroo, mackerel (the first time I’ve ever liked that fish), and sausages (meat heavy meal!) with salads and bread and pavlova for dessert. (Oh. God. Pavlova. Must learn how to make when I get home. We’ve loved it everywhere we’ve had it.)

Then Bec, the real cruise director on this ship (turns out to not actually be my job), took us all to the back of the ship, where the search lights had drawn a ton of big eyed travely and a single tawny nurse shark, which we got to feed! Fishy fingers were well worth the washing. 🙂 Then off to bed with us! I was actually the first of K-pod to fall asleep, as H stayed awake and caught up on her journaling, out of excitement to write about learning to free dive…

Day Fifteen: Drink of the day, Dark and Stormy

…so I was also the first one to wake, and see the sun rise over Lizard Island. The other two slept until right before breakfast at 7, and then we came back to the room to get our wetsuits on for a trip to Watson Beach. (Tea with breakfast. Don’t you worry. Tea was had.)

As soon as we got to the beach we hopped into the three kayaks available, but it quickly became clear that the wind and current weren’t going to allow us to boat (or more specifically, H was too light to keep her boat from flying all over the bay. Sorry, love, but it’s so), so we headed back into shore and went out to snorkel.

Um, not so much. My mask, for unknown reasons, was almost unusably foggy, despite having used quite a bit of anti-fog, and, much more importantly, H’s began leaking, and much more sadly, H’s underwater camera popped open, exposing the insides to water. As of tonight at 5pm as I am writing this, it has not come back on, so it may well be broken. (RE4: Yup.  It’s dead.) Poop. We did manage to rescue the memory card, so all the shots she’s taken to this point were saved, but all the underwater shots from now on will be taken by the gopro, which is great at video, and not so great at stills.

Back to this morning, though… it was not our favorite snorkel, so she and I called it a morning, knowing there would be more snorkeling later in the day. Chang, who wants to wring every minute out of this trip, went out in the kayak again, while H and I went on the glass bottom boat tour and then all of us went back to the big boat.

Lunch was a rather groggy affair, as it turns out I am not the only member of K-pod to be made sleepy from salt water, but delicious as usual (jasmine rice [cooked to perfection, which is hard to do at scale!], a beef stir fry and a gorgeous honey fried chicken dish, the usual lovely array of salads and fresh fruit). Then we came back to the room, intending to go up for the reef presentation a half hour later, and instead fell smack asleep until just barely before we arrived at Ribbon Reef Number 9. I’m not sure they would have woken up even then, except that it was to be Chang’s first dive, so I woke him up for sure. We all wet suited up, and headed out, H and I to glass bottom boat while Chang dove.

Hm. It’s really grey out there. And… some pretty serious wind. And rain. And holy cow the swell. Annnnd the current!

The glass bottom boat was a bust. We saw some stuff, but the skipper had to push so hard on the motor to keep us in place that any sensible fish ran the hell away. And then a squall came up in the middle of the ride, so they took the boat back in. When it cleared and they went back out, H and I didn’t choose to go along. We waited for Chang to surface, which he did pretty shortly after that, and then we headed out for a short snorkel as a family. It was truly beyond stunning, I do strongly recommend visiting Ribbon Reef #9, but oh holy night, the current. We pushed out as hard as we could, but it was another “kick at full strength just to stay in place” situation, so eventually we gave in and let the current carry us back to the boat.

Chang had had a great dive, by the way, even getting to see (and getting on video) the mating of some sturgeon fish, which looks really cool, and I’ll try to convince him to post somewhere. But he’s definitely hooked! Already talked to the instructor, Kristy, about going out again tomorrow.

Now we’re back in the room, journaling and resting before dinner, as the boat heads off to Ribbon Reef 3, where we will arrive late tonight, and dive early tomorrow. Maybe! It’s pretty darn black in those skies… Wish us less storms!

(Next time on The Mundane Misfit: Days 16-18.  Yeah.  You know how that “less storm” wishing turned out…)