February 29th - Yorkey's Knob Australia

Another hot and humid day today but as we start to go south in the next few days we should be cooling down.  This is another port in Australia as we make our way around the country.  Fred and I think we’re starting to develop Australian accents!

Today we were near Cairns the largest city in the state of Queensland Australia.  We didn’t actually go into Cairns instead we took an hour’s drive up the coast to Port Douglas.  This is a seaside town that kind of reminded us of Carmel in California, but not as busy or expensive!  We had beautiful scenery all the way to town.

This area is tropical with the Great Barrier Reef just offshore and the largest rainforest in the country just onshore.  We passed acres and acres of sugar cane fields, one of the largest crops in this area.  They export it to Japan but also turn it into rum, molasses and refined sugar for their own use.

Once in town we took a walk along a cliff path that started at the local beach.  The white booms mark the edge of the swimming area.  Unfortunately, large stinger jellyfish are in these waters.  This is the sign at the beach, don’t ask me what slip slap means!

These first aid stations were all over, I thought it was a joke at first but no that’s a bottle of vinegar.  If you get stung you pour it over the wound to get the jellyfish to let go.

The walk along the cliff face was very picturesque.  There are places where the town resembles Hawaii.

We had four hours on our own here and really three hours would have done just as well. We did have a great lunch and good gelato.  We’ve learned that they call gelato - ice cream here, even though it’s really not.  For gelato it was good, for ice cream it wasn’t. One more sign we came across today…

Our ship is too big to dock at the Cairns pier so we had to tender in to shore.  This usually means taking the ships’ smaller vessels to a nearby dock.  Today we were lucky to have the use of two large catamarans to help with the process because it was a long ride into town.  I think we were anchored two miles off shore.  On the way back after our day in Port Douglas we got stuck in one of the small tenders…and the wind had picked up and we had two miles to get to the ship.  It was rough and water would lightly cascade in at times.  People near the doors got a little wet and three ladies sitting near Fred and I looked scared to death.  We all got back safely but tomorrow is another tender port!

So, here we are near the Great Barrier Reef and we didn’t actually go out to see the coral, what’s up with that?  There was one excursion out to the reef ($226 pp).  You travel by catamaran for 1 ½ hours out to the reef where you get four hours on an anchored pontoon.  If you want to go into the water you have to wear a ‘stinger suit’.  We only saw pictures but they look exactly like wet suits, only they look lighter and are probably made of a different material.  I really don’t know how to swim and there was little else to do for four hours out on this pontoon so we passed on that. 

Other excursions took you to the rainforest or on a cable car above the rainforest or on a train through the rainforest or into Cairns.  We enjoyed our day in Port Douglas and it was great to see some of the countryside.

In other news…as I mentioned in a previous post, Cunard had given us $250 each for missing various ports or maybe it was for enduring 13 sea days, one or the other.  We got a letter last night that Cunard is also giving us $1340 per person in future cruise credits.  These credits can be used on any future Cunard cruise now for sale.  This is in keeping with what the other lines are doing.  They’re trying to keep their loyal customers. 

In still other news…the Holland America world cruise announced itinerary changes (we took the 2017 HAL world cruise so still follow what they do).  They will skip all their Asian ports and stops in the Maldives will be cancelled.  They also cancelled Kenya, but that seems more related to some terror attacks on tourists there.   They are substituting three days in Mumbai India.  That’s funny for a couple of reasons, first getting an Indian Visa is not a walk in the park, I know I have one.  Second, I’ve been to Mumbai for a two day stay and really that’s plenty.  I’m not sure what I would do with three days!

We went to a cocktail party given by the Captain last night in honor of the world cruise passengers (us).  A number of people there are worried about our stop in South Africa.  I’m not sure why, there’s nothing happening there now but that would be a major blow for us if it happened.  Those stops, and Israel were the two high points of the voyage.  If we missed Africa, that would be tough.  Here’s hoping it won’t happen!

Tomorrow we are in Arlie Beach, another jumping off point for the Reef!  It’s also the day we finally get back on schedule for the world cruise.  We were always supposed to be in Arlie Beach on March the 1^st!