Blue Planet Journey

This giant spider jumped up on Caroline's pedal when we stopped in the Cairns Botanic Gardens! Yes, we know that Cairns is a world-class tourist destination, with many beaches, catamarans that transport people to floating platforms in the Great Barrier Reef for snorkeling or diving, nearby Kuranda National Park , and more. We were not impressed with the snorkeling and diving on a previous trip .  It's not that the experience was bad, but rather that our expectations were much higher.  After all, the GBR is THE coral reef, right?  Well, at the spots we visited, we've seen better.  So we knew this time we were going to avoid the diving, and go inland.  But where to visit? Bicycles are a great way to travel.  You can cover much more ground than by walking (which I love), but you are still "in tune" with nature.  The sights, sounds, and smells in the outdoors are not masked or hidden by an air-conditioned car or bus.  You feel every b...

Sign next to golf course in Yorkeys  Knob . Over the past few days, we have been on the edge of the Great Barrier Reef, just outside of Airlie Beach and Cairns. It has been warm, but not as blisteringly hot as in Sydney, where the temperature a couple of days ago was an astounding 117 degrees F !  Caroline and I are always being warned not to snorkel from shore, given that this is box jellyfish season and there are saltwater and freshwater crocs present.  There are signs everywhere, warning people to be careful. On a walk at Yorkeys Knob (our marina and a suburb of Cairns), we chatted with a lifeguard about stingers (and feral cats).  The lifeguard was adjusting a net surrounding a swimming beach that keeps the jellyfish out.  The high tide and full moon were making constant adjustment of the cables holding the net’s anchors in place a necessity.  While we were talking, we noticed a large log had either washed over or under the net, and Carolin...

The ocean and sky always appear in a different form, everyday. Over the next 4 months, I will be on 6 cruises in the South Pacific, all on the Celebrity Solstice .  The first one began on January 2 from Sydney Harbour, and as I write this we have left  Airlie Beach , a self proclaimed gateway to the Great Barrier Reef, and are an hour or 2 away from  Cairns .  When Caroline was sailing in Europe last year, I used this website to track her progress traveling   to different destinations.  It works for this cruise as well. I’ve visited Cairns once in the past.  I was giving a presentation at an international conference on fertility control in wildlife management on Great Keppel Island in 1996, and after the conference my goal was to visit Cairns and book a trip deeper into the Great Barrier Reef .  Unfortunately for me, about an hour after the conference ended, and before I left the island, I stepped on a buried and broken plastic sta...