CAIRNS

Last weekend we flew north to Cairns (pronounced with a Boston accent: Caihns) in Queensland to scuba dive the outer Great Barrier Reef since we were rained out during our Hamilton Island trip.

We hopped on a boat for 2 dives on Saturday. We skipped the 3rd dive for fear of decompression sickness b/c of our departing flight early Sunday morning - you're supposed to wait 18-24 hours after a dive before flying. Mere tried to convince me to do the 3rd dive anyways, which I found alarming giving her nurse practitioner background. Good thing we didn't try it since our return flight was rerouted to Brisbane for 2 hours because of too much fog (no joke) in Sydney and we only had enough fuel for the initial estimated flight time (super scary if you think about it). At least they gave us $8 food vouchers to use at the Brisbane airport, which bought us 1 muffin (thanks Jetstar!).

I was skeptical to come back out to the reef giving the poor visibility we had in the Whitsundays, but I'm so glad we made the trek:

Thank God we finally found Nemo! Mere now has nothing 1 less thing to obsess over

This turtle was awesome. He would swim right up to us. Maybe because the guide was ripping up stuff to feed him - which we found a little disconcerting since all they preached on the boat was about conserving the reef. Others on our dive were petting the turtle and one woman was sticking her hands in all the giant clams so they would close. Mere and I were the only ones not to touch anything. Let me rephrase that last sentence. Mere and I were the only ones not to touch anything...on purpose. There was a narrow cave-like corridor of coral to swim through - which I was unsuccessful as my O2 tank crashed against the overhang. Underwater I think I could her Mere's disappointment. I took video of our dive and it's easy to see when I smash into the coral as the camera turns into the Blair Witch Project all of a sudden. I won't post that video, but below are some Christmas tree worms - you can see a couple of them disappear as I approach.

Mere put the rest of the pictures up on her facebook page.

Good thing the diving was so cool, because as a city, Cairns was a dump. It felt like a mix of a backpacker hostel and the emptiness of Detroit (based on what I've seen on the news about present day Detroit since I've never actually been there, so this analogy may not be accurate at all). The hostel hotel Mere found for us on www.whereserialkillerslive.com Tripadvisor was right next to a strip club, which we both thought about going into to kill some time rather than spend any extra time in our hotel room.

Still a weird concept to get used to: heading north for tropical weather. It was still very warm in Cairns while the weather in Sydney is starting to turn as we head into fall/winter. It's in the 50-60 range in the mornings and nights and usually hitting high 60s-70 during the day. So far we've been lucky and not had much rain.

The past couple of days have actually been warmer in Boston -which will be a good thing when we fly home in June to visit. Well, at least I'll be visiting. I will be home for 10 days, and Mere will actually staying in the US until I come home in October. She will join me at the end of September to travel Thailand for 2 weeks.

Hard to believe we've been here for almost 8 months so far. Definitely looking forward to coming back!