Australia 2016

Australia, what a place! This trip came about with a bit of luck after finding $500 round trip tickets to Sydney from Minneapolis. Unheard of! We almost pay that to fly to Seattle! Along with my parents, we booked a trip to down under. After a 3 hour flight to San Francisco and a 15 hour flight to Sydney, we made it!

We spent two days in Sydney exploring. We went to the zoo, saw the Sydney Opera House, explored the wharf area, and took a "Sit on Top" city bus tour that was actually really cool! I had never done one, but you actually learn a lot and save your feet from all of the walking! We had some serious jet lag and were a little more down to earth in those first few days. From there, my parents flew out to Port Macquarie to stay with some family friends and Ben and I headed to Cairns and Port Douglas, Australia. 

We stayed in an Air BnB called the Artist Studio. It was the perfect size for just the two of us and close to town and the marina that we went to for diving. Port Douglas is a quaint and picturesque ocean front town. Great restaurants and fresh fruit/vegetable smoothies. We enjoyed going to the farmer's market and getting reflexology massages in town. While there, we did a lot of driving / exloring. We took a cable car and train through the Daintree Rainforest. The oldest rainforest in the world. We drove the self-guided tour through the Tablelands...very pretty countryside. We explored the tourist town of Cairns and went diving twice with Calypso. Diving the Great Barrier Reef was exceptional. The coral and small marine life was abundant. The colors were not like any other that I had ever seen. While diving, we saw some bigger marine life...a reef shark, a sting ray, and dolphins. I didn't have any issues diving this time, which I was very grateful for! 

All in all it was a relaxing trip. We would say that it should be on everyone's bucket list. After going once though...not sure we would go back. The crazy wildlife that they have there really restricts certain activities that we like to do. You can't openly swim in the ocean or lounge on the beach because they have salt water crocodiles that will attack and jellyfish that are deadly. You can't really hike because they have extremely deadly snakes and spiders. It was beautiful and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, but we are too adventurous to be confined by crazy dangerous things that want to kill you :). Enjoy the pictures and watch the video if you want to see more!