I'm feeling much better and I go down stairs to book my scuba dive for tomorrow with the concierge. I book a two dive trip that takes me up the coast about an hour to the main Great Barrier Reef area. I'm so excited. Its been about 3 years since my last dive here in Australia but it was near Melbourne off the coast near Torquay, which is the home of Rip Curl. It was fairly uneventful.
After booking my dive, I go have lunch at Dundee's (like in Crocodile), a place that my cabbie had recommended. It was great...garlic linguini with New Zealand mussels. I also had a local golden ale that was pretty smooth.
I decide to do a walkabout and venture through the local park and find all the tourist trap shopping areas. I pick up a few more things and head back to the hotel. I did notice there is a casino across from the Hilton, but think better and check into my room for the night.
Cairns reminds me a lot of some of the beach communities along the San Diego coast, probably a cross between Del Mar and Mission Beach. There are also a lot of Asians at this resort town. Seems this is a destination point for several Asian countries, notably China and Korea. Many stores signs are in Chinese and Korean, catering to the large number of tourists from those countries.
I'm going to turn in early, since I leave a 6AM in the morning for the one hour bus ride north of Cairns and then onto our boat to head out to dive the GBR (Great Barrier Reef). Really sort of miss having Bronce with me on this dive. He was the one that talked me into getting certified back in 1999 when he wanted someone to share diving. Thanks Bronce for enabling me to experience this once in a lifetime opportunity.
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| View od Hills and Pacific Ocean |
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| Waterway leading to Pacific Ocean |
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