Thizz Face on the Reef in sick Aussie travel hats
Interested in getting married on the GBR?
My two days on the Great Barrier Reef mirror in fun and amazement at the natural beauty of Cairns my first and last days in Cairns (croc hunting and barefootin’). As badly as I want to tell you every last detail of the day, I will just give you a quick rundown of the top events.
Terence Farrell: You may remember good old Terence from the barefooted jungle tour. He is an Irish doctor, 26-years of age, and despite our prejudices against the Irish, couldn’t handle his booze. O and I spent most of the day with terence, who was on our Passions of Paradise Reef tour with us. By the end of the reef cruise, T and I were so close that I asked him a question about having sore testicles… so you know we were practically mates.
Terence Tezza acting like a Terry Tezza
Highlights of the tour:
One of the Passions crew members was in a wedding gown being photographed for their promo for having weddings on their boat. There were a couple of sweet pics of the young bride, but the coolest was one they took with her in the dress underwater on the Reef.
The crew was awesome. We shot the shit with them, they made us feel comfortable and wanted, and even posed for a few pics with us after the tour was over.
After Day 1 on the reef, posing for a pic with the Passions crew
The reef and marine life was UNREAAAAAALLLLL! I saw sea turtles, sting rays, countless different types of fish, enough different colors of coral to make a color wheel, and my personal favorite, giant clams. The colors, corals, and marine life made the time in the water go by quick. We spent around 2 hours in the water at Michaelmans Quay and another hour in the water at passion reef. Michaelmans Quay was also a bird sanctuary, so there of course was birds galore.
Sea Turtle, Michaelmans Quay
Going for a dive, giant clam in the foreground, broccoli coral abounds
And again
Owen Checking out the brain-like coral
Brain-like Coral, which was really bright yellow
Parrott fish munching on coral, you can actually hear the crunch, crunch, crunch
After we got back from the reef tour, we stopped and played some catch with some people from Japan and Korea. We say that they were going through pitching wind-ups while playing catch with a plastic ball. After playin catch with them for a while and checking out Terence’s lefty arm, we gave them one of our baseballs in presentation format… needless to say they were thrilled. As were we. Thrilled but not too tired to hop in on a little zumba class taking place on the esplanade. O wasted no time getting into it and within 15 minutes, he had coerced me into taking part as well. Drawn to the front of the pack, shaking my hips like I have some, and making a fool of myself. A blast indeed.
Our Japanese/Korean friends showing each other pitch grips with their newly gifted baseball
Show your favorite grip! Us with our baseball buddies near the Lagoon
Zumba dance on the Esplanade... still rocking the travel hats
We topped off day 1 on the reef with a nice little celebration. We met up with Terance and of course cashed in on the $5 dinners and $7 pitchers at Patrick O’Reilly’s. After a day in the sun, I was quickly pretty drunk… but I was a saint compared to sloppy ol’ Terence who was a completely different person when he was drunk. We also met up with a French woman who was traveling alone who we had met from our Reef tour. Maria was an interesting lady, and after hanging out for a while, chatting, she bought two quick rounds of tequila shots and then disappeared into the night.
Tequila with Maria
It was a bit bizarre, but our drunk ‘nanigans led us to meet some cool people, a bunch who I would meet back up with later the next few nights. While debating whether or not we should go into a popular bar “The Whoolshed”, we found out by the bouncer that there was a cover charge. I asked if we could look inside to see if it was going off, to which he responded.. “fuck off.” With a laugh, we headed back to our hostel where we ‘pulled the piss’ with some folks we had met along the way back. Good night in the books.
We enjoyed our day on the reef so much that we decided to book in for another day. Day two featured a more laid back day on the reef. We spent the day on Fitzroy Island, about a 45 minute ferry ride from Cairns. The morning was a bit of a struggle after the long night, but we spent our first few hours Sea Kayaking around the island.
In our group of fellow kayakers was our guide, whose name escapes me because my memory is Tezza, Kevin and Geraldine, a couple who aren’t actually a couple from our barefoot tour, and a Japanese pair who didn’t speak any English and couldn’t swim. As the athletes of the group (not to sound like a jerk), O and I kind of did our own thing while the instructor looked after the other two. In addition to kayaking, we also had another good snorkel, made “Happy Mother’s Day from the GBR” in the sand out of Coral, had a little catch, and checked out Nudey Beach (where I was disappointed to find myself as the only person in their birthday suit). Except, I wasn’t actually naked—In fact, quite the opposite. O and I, at the demand of our Kayaking instructore wore stinger suits (a head to toe, thin, wet suit-like thing that protects you from jelly fish stings). Even out of the water, we rocked the suits like it was our job, not only making them stylish, but also protecting our skin from UV rays.
That night also happened to be our most fun night out in Cairns. With our German roommates, we hit up PJ O’Brians again for our fantastic grub. Again drinks followed, but this time we went to Giligan’s for the afterparty. Owen had found out earlier that night that his flight had to leave at 2am and so at 11 he would have to catch a taxi to the airport. That didn’t stop him from getting after it, and together with our roommates, their friends, and some of the people from the night before that we ran into, we had a pretty formidable crew (see said crew below).
We had a good time dancing and with my new friend and croc hunting buddy Thomas, I stayed out real late. O and I were both disappointed he had to leave, because we were have a ‘hell good time’ but it was awesome traveling with him. I have met few who ‘pull the piss’ like he does, a real ‘top bloke’, mmmm. Hopefully if luck has it, we will have another road trip together in the future.
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