Palm Cove

Finally a REAL beach. A real OCEAN beach. With real WAVES and DOLPHINS :) Yes, dolphins. As soon as we picked a spot to sit on the beach we saw a group of dolphins a little from the shore splashing around. It was wonderful. I've never been to the ocean before and I've never stood on ocean sand or swam in ocean water. Naturally, I had to make sure that ocean water is actually salty and so I tasted it. Yes, it is salty. Really salty.

Katie and I were pretty scared of getting skin cancer from the Australian sun, so every half hour or so we reapplied our sun lotion. She told me that parts of the ozone over Australia in the summer are completely gone. I don't really know if that's scientifically accurate, but at any rate, I wasn't about to wait around and see how intense the rays from the sun could really get.

I finally coaxed (although, more like forced) Katie to jump in the waves with me. But here's something you have to know: I am scared of water that you cannot see through. So pools are great, you know? You can see the bottom and you know what to expect. Lakes are fishy (in more ways than one) because you can barely ever see to the bottom and you could be swimming with snapping turtles or water snakes or some hungry monster. That always freaks me out. Usually, Alex is around when I want to go swimming in a lake and so I have him jump in first and swim around and if he doesn't die within a couple of minutes I jump in. Well, it's sort of the same story at the ocean. Except, there's the possibility of sharks, crocodiles, jellyfish, stingrays... do you get my point? I was able to splash around for about 6 seconds before I started to think about the things I couldn't see and then I would run back to the shore. Then I would see that people were actually swimming and I'd go back out for maybe 9 seconds. But then I would think about the things I couldn't see and run back to save my life. And, of course, this just kept repeating. I was really wishing that Alex was there to test the water for sharks and stuff, but I had to go it on my own.

After a day at the beach, Katie, Stephanie and I went to the Cairns Tropical Night Zoo. Sounds mysterious doesn't it? We had a steak dinner at the zoo followed by a photo session with koalas. Then we grabbed our torches (which weren't actually torches but lame flashlights-how misleading) and set off on a tour of the noctural zoo animals. We saw the koalas in action and all of the reptiles in the reptile house. We had a campfire with the kangaroos while we enjoyed billy tea and damper. We even got to see the crocs being hand fed (only lunatics would get that close to a crocodile). And we met a real life swaggie. It was a pretty fun experience. But, I wish I could've gone to the zoo during the day time to see all of the other animals too. Maybe next time.

There will be a next time in Cairns for me. For sure. Bank on it.