AUSTRALIA
January 31, 2011
I’m on a flight from Sydney to Cairns, watched the sunrise from the plane at 6:00am and am listening to my “Travel’ CD (thank you Michele and Jordan!)! Life is good! I love traveling and seeing the world and all it’s charm!
We arrived in Sydney yesterday morning and met up with Nick at the airport. Once again, we arrived in a foreign country, with no reservations for travel, no map, or plan of how to get to the hostel. We checked costs of public transportation and it turned out that it was cheaper to rent a car for the night; we were leaving again at 6:00 this morning. We drove straight to the hostel; checked in, and took the free bus around the city. What a cool city! Old, character, charm, artsy, café’s, bars, people everywhere. The waterfront was happening and looks like a great place to be. In the evening, at the park across from our Hostel we saw bats everywhere with a wingspan of about 15 inches! There were three large Magnolia trees in a row and they were flying all around them and feeding on the seed pods; sometimes fighting over one. They were very cool to observe. One would land on a branch, and use the little hand like things to grab hold and pull itself around the branch. We will be back here at the end of the trip and have time to tour around.
This morning we’re flying to Cairns, which is at the northern tip of the Great Barrier Reef. From Cairns we’ll visit the Rain Forest and have an Outback experience. We’ve heard a lot about this part of Australia and are looking forward to being there! Our plan is to rent a car In Cairns, spend time there and then take our time visiting little towns along the coast as we work our way back to Sydney; we’ll have 30 days to do it in.