Hello culture shock! Compared to Southeast Asia everything is clean and orderly, there are street names with signs, people follow traffic signals and stop for pedestrians and prices are 10 times higher. Backpackers here take a little longer to warm up to conversations.  I miss the perfect balance of craziness and tranquility of Southeast Asia.

I arrived and caught a free shuttle to my hostel, Cairns Waterfront Backpackers, which is located right in front of the lagoon. The location is awesome and it costs $18 Australian dollars for a room of 4, free WiFi (which is hard to find), free dinner. It is a pretty good price!

I didn’t want to lay on the sand of the lagoon because there have been crocodile sightings. I’m not about to mess with a prehistoric animal.

You can swim in the lagoon, but you may encounter a crocodile in transit to the mangroves south of the lagoon. They likely won’t kill you because they’d have to drag you all the way back to the mangrove’s and they just don’t have energy because they are low metabolism animals. “ain’t no body’s got time fo that!” Sorry, that never gets old.

I went for a run along the waterfront and it was nice. I did some lunges in a park. I wanted to explore more, but didn’t have time.

I booked diving that night with sea quest. We went out to Norman reef I saw a huge sting ray and tons of colorful coral. There are tons of little caves. I also got to play with a curious Napoleon fish. I put up my arm up and wiggled my fingers and he came straight to me and I rubbed him from his lips to the belly. He was super squishy.  I wonder what he would taste like.

This was the first time I jumped out of a big boat, it is so much easier! It was also the first time I didn’t have problems with equalizing my ears. 

I got a little sea sick and I was freezing, so I skipped the last dive and laid out in the sun.

That night I sat on a bench and watched the huge fruit bats fly around. They are the highest fruit bats I’ve ever seen. I’m glad they eat fruit and not human blood

A drunk aboriginal sat by me and was hitting on me. Lol. He wanted to go get drinks together. When I said no he asked me for 2 dollars. I was getting annoyed so I got up and sat with some British girls.

There were 2 adorable sweet British girls that were staying in my dorm. We went to the Whoolshed for our free dinner. I wasn’t going to drink, but then I decided to since it was only 10 dollars for 5 drinks. We ended up staying there late. I won 150 dollars and a snorkel cruise in a contest I’ll have to come back to use it. Lol.
The next morning I made breakfast in the communal kitchen. I made breakfast and lunch the day before and it was the first time I have cooked in 4 months. I actually miss cooking. Especially with Happy, my old roommate! After that I packed up and met up with Casey, one of my guides from diving. We got gelato and he was nice enough to take me to the airport.

I was sad to leave because I didn’t have enough time to explore. Yet, I’m really excited for a mini road trip from Perth south to Pembertom with Artur.