Monday, October 7th, 2013
We had booked and paid for a day in the Atherton Tablelands, but when our transfer didn't show up at 7:50 this morning we discovered that someone had erred and we were not, in fact, booked for today! So we rebooked for tomorrow and scrambled to choose and book an excursion for today. We settled on a ferry trip to Fitzroy Island and a day exploring there. Great choice! We quickly repacked our day bags to include swimsuits and towels and hopped a taxi to the reef wharf.
The ferry trip was about an hour from Cairns and the Island offered beautiful beaches - one clothing optional, several hiking trails, at least one restaurant/pub, a resort, a campground and facilities for water sports. There is also a turtle rescue facility on the Island. We began our day with a hike up to the secret garden - which wasn't a garden at all - just more rainforest. We followed up with an Ozzie lunch - sausage rolls and crisps and then a walk to the aquaculture facility for turtles - closed today for Labour Day, but it didn't appear to be a facility open to the public at any time. We then found a shady spot on the beach with rocks nearby where we could change into swimsuits.
Here's my travel partner, Tina, actually in the water. She didn't venture any further out than this! I thoroughly enjoyed myself floating and playing around in the Coral Sea. Speaking of the Coral Sea, much of the beach is covered in dead coral smoothed by constant washing but still ouchy for barefoot walking.
Once we'd had enough of that, we hired a double kayak and paddled up and down the island - just enough exercise to warrant a beer before hopping the ferry and taxi back home.
Dinner at our hotel was excellent - made even better by the very handsome man at the next table who presented us with a bottle of wine he'd ordered and was unable to finish by himself. After finishing that and the wine we'd already ordered, we were feeling no pain and ready for bed.
On another note, we have met some wonderful, friendly people here. Canadians are known to be friendly but, so far in our experience, the Aussies have us beat hands down. Mind you, the main industry here is tourism so all of the locals and everyone in the service industry is very polished when it comes to making tourists feel comfortable.
No comments:
Post a Comment