Rainforest Walks

First of all, Happy Birthday Ben!

One of our favorite activities we've done while in Australia has been hiking.  We wanted to share this with Sarah and Hannah and did some hiking with them while in Mission Beach.  We did the Fan Palm Boardwalk and the Lacey Creek walk.  These were relatively short walks, which was good because it was very hot and humid and there were lots of mosquitoes.  We saw several fan palms on the first walk, hence the name.  These are very distinctive plants with accordion like leaves that can fold up in high winds or storms to protect themselves.

We also saw this Strangler Fig.  These plants adapt to the dark rainforest and the competition for light by enveloping another tree sometimes killing the other tree in the process.

Here are a couple of pictures from the Lacey Creek Walk:

This night we ate dinner at Rustica, a great pizza place.  I think we ate 3 pizzas between the 4 of us we were so hungry and it was so good.

The Great Barrier Reef!

We woke up bright and early to go snorkel on the Great Barrier Reef.  A van picked us up from Calypso Dive and Snorkel and took us to where the boat was docked.  It was a large two level boat that took us to Dunk Island first to pick up more passengers and then out to Eddy Reef.  It was quite a long boat trip-probably an hour or more, but so worth it.  I have to admit I was a little bummed that Ben and I weren't diving, but the snorkeling was amazing and it was a great experience to share with Sarah and Hannah.  We saw gorgeous giant clams and two anemones with clown fish darting in and out of them.  The coral was the most colorful we have ever seen in all of our diving and snorkeling trips.  We snorkeled once, ate lunch, and snorkeled again before heading back to Mission Beach. 


The dark blue areas are the reef.



Tomorrow we will be posting about some rainforest and waterfall walks we went on while still in Mission Beach.

100th post!

How appropriate that our first blog post back with our new computer is our 100th post!  Thanks to everyone who has been reading.  We love seeing who is reading the blog and it is a great way for us to document our trip.

So, where did we leave off-oh yes we were in Sydney with Sarah and Hannah.  After Sydney we flew up to Cairns, picked up our rental car and drove two hours south to Mission Beach.  We stayed at the Taihoa Holiday Units.  We loved these accommodations.  They were basically small apartments.  Ben and I had one unit and Sarah and Hannah shared a unit.  We had a view from our units of the pool and ocean.  We went to the grocery store that first day and bought stuff to grill out by the pool.  We had grilled steaks, grilled kangaroo (we wanted the girls to try it), potatoes, and broccoli.  It was a great first evening in Mission Beach.

View of the beach across the road from our hotel

Still Waiting

Well, we're still waiting on our new computer and are not sure how long it will be. Sarah left on Friday and Hannah is here until Monday. Tomorrow we are headed to Bicheno on the east coast of Tasmania so Ben and Hannah can take a surfing lesson and we can see the fairy penguins come in from the ocean at night. We have 15 posts we want to put on the blog once we get our computer and will be posting twice a day to catch up. Thanks for your patience.

Computer Issues

Hi,
We're having lots of fun with Sarah and Hannah and have lots of fun stuff to post about but our computer is broken and we have to order a new one from the States so it may be a week or so until we can blog again. Get ready to hear about Mission Beach, snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef, more waterfalls, and my half marathon in Hobart.

Summer in Sydney

We've had a good couple of days here.  Yesterday we took the ferry over to Manly Beach.  Lots of other people thought that would be a good way to spend New Year's Day and the beach was packed!  We went to dinner in Darling Harbor at Wagamama, an Asian restaurant.  It was a great restaurant and opened up out over the harbor.  We came back to the hotel and played some euchre.  Ben and Hannah won one game and Sarah and I won one game.:) 

This morning we went to Hillsong Church.  Hannah had expressed an interest in wanting to go and we are glad we did.  The sermon was great and the music upbeat and professionally done.  I headed out for a run while the girls and Ben went to get us some lunch and we met up in the Royal Botanic Gardens.  We spend a couple of hours just laying in the shade enjoying the views of the Harbor Bridge and the Opera House.  We even saw a huge boat with a wedding ceremony going on on the top deck.

We walked around the gardens and got some flower photos.

This is a Glory Lily.  It is poisonous and is grown for a chemical compound that treats gout.

Water Lily

Tomorrow morning we fly out early for Cairns.  We are looking forward to seeing some Australian rainforest and maybe going snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef.

They're Here and Happy New Year!

We met up in Sydney around one and headed out for lunch.  The girls had a good, but long flight.  We walked over to see the Harbor Bridge and Opera House, stopped at an Aboriginal art gallery and heard a didgeridoo played, and got ice cream.  We went back to the hotel to let the girls rest and we ran a couple of errands.  We walked over to the Rocks area of Sydney around 7:30.  Most of the streets in the Sydney CBD were closed for the fireworks so it was fun to walk in the streets to dinner.  We went to the Rocks Cafe where Ben and I ate twice on our first visit to Sydney and were able to get a table right away.  After dinner we started to look for a spot to watch the fireworks.  People had been camped out for hours and even overnight for the best spots but we found a grassy hill on the west side of the bridge, opposite the Opera House and waited for just under 3 hours.  Boats were decorated with lights and parading around the harbor and some teaser fireworks were shot off at intervals before the big show as a countdown.  The actual fireworks were like nothing we had ever seen before.  At one point so many fireworks were going off it looked like daylight outside and not midnight. 

It is hard to capture in a picture but the picture above was literally showers of sparks raining down from the bridge.  Amazing!  Making our way back to the hotel afterwards wasn't so amazing because the crowds were crazy, but we made it.  Today I think we are going to take the ferry to Manly beach.  Happy New Year everyone and Happy Birthday Dad!