Cape Tribulation photos -- and Diving the Great Barrier Reef

We're in Airlie Beach, cheesy tourist capital of Australia, and almost none the worse for wear from our adventures in far north Queensland!

Queensland looks a little bit different from the Red Center. er, Centre.

 I promised some photos from Cape Tribulation, so here you are. I mentioned some of its history in the last post, but didn't show you the rainforest mountains plunging right down to the white sand beaches:

Once the hordes of tourists left on their afternoon buses, we had the beautiful beach to ourselves.

Well, ourselves and the little crabs that make Rorschach tests with the tiny little balls of sand they chuck out to make their homes. Crazy, huh?

Yep. And we finally pitched our tent!

(We had been lugging tent, sleeping bags, and sleeping pads all around Australia. In WA, the campervan made them unnecessary, and we'd been in cities otherwise -- so we were beginning to wonder if all that schlepping had been for naught.)

We found Justin's favorite beach on our drive back to Cairns:

Ellis Beach, north of Cairns.

I also forgot to mention that we were shown absolutely lovely hospitality by Margo and Homa's friend Gai and her family before departing for Cape Trib. She (rightly) insisted on us procuring photos from our liveaboard trip and served us lasagna even though she hadn't been properly expecting us, and she and Rich told us awesome stories about the area's native crocs.

And then it was onto the liveaboard dive boat. After some thought, we opted for a boat that would take us out for five days and four nights to explore the northern reef, and try to get out to Osprey Reef in the Coral Sea -- reputably one of the most pristine dive sites left near Australia. We had no idea what to expect, but we received an absolutely unforgettable trip.

We were immediately impressed with the crew's professionalism from the moment we hopped on board. They had the entire business of housing, feeding, and guiding a bunch of divers down to a precise and perfectly executed science. As they said on the first day, all we were to expect over the next five days was to "eat, sleep, and dive." But the eating was pretty well consistently the best we'd had since we arrived in Australia, and we consumed it in a lovely dry common area:

And the sleeping wasn't bad, considering it was on a boat:

And the DIVING! We didn't make it out to Osprey reef -- the weather was too rough to make it across the long stretch of open sea we would have had to cross to get there -- but we were offered 14 different dives at 12 dive sites all along the Great Barrier Reef. At places that looked like this:

With water this color:

Diving takes a lot of gear, but we were excited to get in the water just about every time.

In this photo, Justin had just seen an Australian cuttlefish. (I had to sit out this dive, for reasons I'll explain in a second.)

Here he is about to see the cuttlefish:

The wildlife was just amazing, and that much diving made us really comfortable in the water. We were able to get kitted up and descend in a few minutes flat by the time our tenth dive rolled around, and were comfortable enough with our air consumption and establishing buoyancy and whatnot that we were really able to concentrate on seeing what the reef had to offer. We saw clown anemonefish in the thousands bobbing around the anemones, reef sharks, parrotfish, giant cod, cuttlefish, and sea snakes, and that's just the beginning. Fortunately, there was a really talented photo/videographer on board who shot every dive and edited it down to a watchable 53 minute video, and provided us with over 200 photos. They're currently packed away, but I'll share them with whomever wants to look.

The only drawback (minor, really) is that all that diving gave me an egregious ear infection in both ears. I'm pretty well deaf right now, and I couldn't do the last three dives because I was too sick, but I think the worst is over. As this post is getting a bit lengthy, I won't delve into the raving compliments I have for the Australian medical care system, which got me diagnosed and properly set up with antibiotics and ear drugs in under an hour and for less than $120.

Today we took a 10-hour bus ride from Cairns down to Airlie Beach; we're leaving on a sailing trip for the Whitsunday Islands on Friday. In case you want to know what ten hours on a bus with two raging ear infections feels like:

I'm fine! Really.

We have a day to kill tomorrow, and then we'll be on a boat again until Sunday evening. Ahoy, mateys!

Meredith and Justin