Cairns to Sydney, the end of Oz

So we reached the end of our canned updates last time around - in case it wasn't obvious from the random cuts, we wrote the last 4 blogs in one big sitting and posted them in little chunks. The hope was that it would buy us enough time to get back on the blogging horse and start doing weekly updates again... but no luck, we've fallen behind again =)

We are now about 9 days into the New Zealand part of our trip, so we need to catch up on Cairns and Sydney first.

Cairns turned out to be a bit of a weird one - our hostel was like a haven of tranquillity compared to the rest of the town. There were tons of bars in town centre, and this seemed to create a slightly booze fuelled atmosphere about the place (apparently the Ozzies mostly make the trip up there for 'Hen and Bucks' parties.) But we weren't really there for the night-life (thankfully!) so quickly signed up for a day trip out to the Great Barrier Reef.

We'd been warned to expect a great conveyor belt of ships delivering people out to the reef, and in this respect we weren't disappointed. There were a huge range of ships to choose from, but thankfully the very helpful chap at the hostel reception put us onto a bargain where we would get our first dive free, and then have the option for an extra 2 dives at a pretty good rate. This seemed ideal, so we signed up the next day.

As it takes a good hour or so to get out to the reef, the trip started pretty early so we found ourselves filling out the usual "if you die, its not our fault, and its definitely not PADI's fault" forms around breakfast time. The boat we were on was huge, about as big as the car ferries we'd been on in Thailand, and it was totally packed out with newbie divers going out for the first time to do Discover Scuba Diving trips. We started the day stuck with the riff-raff until we realised we'd been booked in as beginners too, so after a brief panic we found ourselves in the lounge for qualified divers.

Being stuck at the top of the boat didn't do much for Alex's sea sickness - it was a really nasty journey in the end as people were throwing up all around us. And it was a total scramble to get all the gear on, with the guides really hurrying everyone along despite their sickness. This kind of set the tone for the dive to be honest, it all felt a bit rushed. The guy massively overweighted us (really annoying having done all that bouyancy stuff in the advanced course) and wouldn't really listen when I said I didn't want that much - the production line approach meant everyone had to do what they were told pretty much. The dive itself was ok - nowhere near as pretty as our previous destinations and a bit annoying as the masks were a bit rubbish and we both spent half our time mask clearing. But we were both glad that we have now seen the Great Barrier Reef - but we did feel a little for the beginners, they were being marched into the water in groups, swimming around with linked arms and generally causing a menace to us swimming underneath them =) Not a great intro to scuba compared to other destinations in the world thats for sure.

After that we politely declined the additional dives, and hit the snorkelling for free instead.



By far the highlight of the day was getting to swim with a giant maori wrasse that lived at the second dive site. This was a massive really inquisitive fish that usually visits the snorkellers and divers each day, and fortunately he appeared half way through our snorkel. Now being cash-strapped travellers we couldn't afford to rent/buy the underwater cameras, so I've had to pinch a pick from the internet again :p



(We can't work out if thats a chap or a lady, but either way its not one of us with a crazy new hair cut!)

The fish was really fun to dive down to, as the people on the boat had explained that if you rub its nose it gets a bit of a head rush and lols around happily in the water. So we couldn't help but swim down and give it a good old rub, hours of fun =)

That was about it for Cairns, we chilled out for the remaining time (we went to see The Time Traveller's Wife and got ourselves into a right miserable state for a night! Loved it though, did reasonable justice to the book) and before we knew it it was time to jump back on the plane to Sydney.

The flight was a really strange experience after spending so long on the greyhound, it seemed quite bizarre to be back in the place we'd left all those long journeys ago. We'd booked into a well rated hostel (The Jolly Swagman) in the Kings Cross area of Sydney. For those that don't know, "The Cross" is Sydney's red light district, so we were a little apprehensive... but the hostel web site reviews were all really good so we thought it couldn't be that bad! It turned out to be a good choice - no worse than staying in Leicester Square or Soho in London), and after a good nights sleep we hit the tourist trail hard.



We ended up walking for miles, as Sydney is an amazing city to wander around. Its small enough that you can check out most of the sights in a day. Our route took us down the hill from Kings Cross to the Botanical Gardens, around Farm Cove to the back of the Opera House. The photo above is the view of the harbour bridge from the Opera House... and from there we went up through the Rocks to the bridge to get the reverse picture of the Opera House from the bridge...



It was quite the knackering day out, I think we walked for about 5 hours before collapsing in the park. The route back to Kings Cross became really familiar - its pretty much up hill all the way after going downhill out of the city. But it did mean we got to pass Sydney's luxury car area every day, and couldn't resist...



One of the things we'd been looking forwards to the most was seeing some of our friends who live in Sydney. The company we both worked for in London has had an office in Sydney for years, so there have been quite a lot of people making the hop to the other office for a bit. So we found ourselves hitting the ferry over to Manly on Saturday night to meet up with Shelley, one of Alex's friends from CMC, and her boyfriend Jimmy. Now it had been a while since our last 'proper' trip out with someone we knew (in Thailand with Bekka) so we had a really brilliant night out swapping stories and enjoying a really really tasty pizza. A few fancy bars later and sadly it was time to get the ferry back to the city after a really great night out.



The next day we were a little worse for wear (me especially, as per usual) so opted for a relaxing day out at the beach. Little did we know that Bondi Beach is probably not the best place to go for a quiet relax at this time of year...



Talk about manic! We wandered around the town for a bit, but it was too crazy for us in our fragile state so after Alex had her fix of the Sunday market we headed back into the town to try and find something quieter!

The next day we'd lined up another night out with a still current CMC-er (dying breed that they are!) and top footballer, Paul Brown. We arranged to meet in uber touristy Darling Harbour which gave us a chance to check out Sydney's Aquarium.



It was pretty good all in all, it definitely got better at the end with the massive tanks with sharks and all sorts swimming around. I think we have become zoo/aviary/aquarium snobs by now, each different exhibit gets compared to the sum of the amazing places we'd seen so far in the trip. The bar has to be pretty high to impress these days :p

We had another great night out with Paul, he lived pretty locally and took us to a gem of a sushi place were we ate at least a couple of the fish we'd seen earlier in the day, mmmmm tasty =)



Our last day in Sydney was pretty relaxed (not too much of a hangover thankfully, we definitely felt bad for Paul who was in work the next morning nice and early!) We had a lovely picnic in the park before heading back into town to complete our hatrick of meetups with another of Alex's ex-CMC buddies Phil who has only recently made the hop over to Sydney. We went out for drinks in 'the rocks' another of the fairly touristy parts but with some pretty nice chilled out bars.

And that was that for Australia. Definitely an action packed month, sadly marred with lots of organisational blunders and an epic budget fail. But despite this, we had a great time there and look forwards to coming back in the future - just with a bit more cash in our pockets =)

That'll do for now, next stop - New Zealand...