our first taste of Oz

So we left Thailand on the 28th of November and arrived in Sydney around 6:30am on the 29th. It was a long flight and I wasn't nearly as impressed with the food on our Qantas flight this time, but nonetheless, we made it! We had a crazy shuttle driver who took us to our hostel and I'm thankful we actually arrived alive!

We stayed in Sydney for 4 days and had a great time there! We made it out to Bondi Beach and Manly Beach, visited the zoo (where the highlight was being very close to a mama kangaroo and her 8 month old joey) and saw the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Sydney Opera House and the Botanical Gardens. Sydney is a very cosmopolitan city and it was a big change for us after being in Thailand. It was a nice change although our traveller attire saw us denied entry to one or two places. It's always good to be able to flush toilet paper and count on there being flushing toilets and soap in bathrooms. :) We stayed in a hostel for the first time on our trip and after calling home last week, we now know that the idea of staying in a hostel and sharing a bedroom with "strangers" is a foreign concept to some of you. :) What can I say, this trip is a learning process for us all!

We headed to the Blue Mountains via train last Monday. The Blue Mountains are actually a series of canyons that are filled with eucalyptus trees which give off a blue hue in the air, and that's where they get their name. We only had about a day and a half there but we enjoyed every minute of the clean, fresh air and peaceful surroundings. We did lots of hiking (7 hours one day) and saw some beautiful waterfalls and wildlife including some black and white cockatoos.

On Wednesday morning, we made our way back to Sydney and flew up to Cairns. And WOW is it H-O-T up here!!!! It's amazing we're in the same country! Queensland is much more tropical than New South Wales and it's incredibly humid and in the 90's here. All we can force ourselves to do is seek water. And since you can't swim at the beaches of Cairns (due to a high jellyfish population and the presence of crocs), we found a pool yesterday and organized a dive trip for today. The Lagoon (the name of the pool) was cool, it had a sand "beach" on one side and the water was like bathwater - perfect for me, a little too warm for someone else! :)

We just got back from the dive trip after getting to dive 3 times at the Great Barrier Reef. This diving thing is so cool and I highly recommend it to anyone who gets the chance to do it! Even if it's just a fun dive to try it out and then you can get certified later if you like it that much. We saw lots of coral reefs and many, many fish, including Nemo!!! Unfortunately, we didn't see any sharks or turtles but the dives were still excellent. Someone in another group on our boat saw a Tiger Shark and a Reef Shark so we know they were near, but unfortunately we missed them. I guess we got spoiled in Thailand with seeing a Whale Shark on our third dive! Now we expect to see them all the time! We hired an underwater digital camera for the day and our pictures are being burned to a CD now so hopefully by the next post I can put some of those out here for you all to see.

We're thinking of renting a car and heading up to Port Douglas, the Daintree Rainforest and Cape Tribulation for the next few days but no plans made yet. We'll then be making our way down to Brisbane for our flight to Adelaide on the 17th of December. I've posted a few pictures and I'll try to send more via email soon.

Enjoy and you'll be hearing from us again soon!

Renee & Chuck

xoxoxo

(Pics from top to bottom: Bondi Beach, Sydney Opera House, kangaroo w/ joey at Taronga Zoo, us and the Sydney Harbour Bridge, me and the Three Sisters at the Blue Mountains, Chuck at Echo Point in the Blue Mountains, Blue Mountains lookout)