Over the past couple of days, we’ve been traveling from Alice
Springs to Cairns. While in central Australia, we found the weather hot and dry
from early morning to the late evening. In Cairns, we are now on the coast and in a
lower temperature area but with tropical humidity.
On our last day in Alice Springs, we visited the Desert
Springs Park, a national park concession with exhibits on desert animal
and
plant life and then made a side trip to the Anzac Hill memorial. A two hour flight took us from
Alice
Springs to Cairns.We stayed at the Pullman Hotel in which most of the
lower floors seemed to have one full bed for two room occupants rather than
a queen or king bed. After
realizing the unusual bedding situation,we upgraded the room for $30 a night to top 16th floor that had a
great view of the harbor and rooms with a king bed.
A view from Desert Springs Park
©2013, R. Ono
©2013, R. Ono
 |
| ©2013, R. Ono |
 |
| ©2013, R. Ono |
Anzac Hill in Alice Springs
©2013, R. Ono
©2013, R. Ono
Cairns is a popular site for visiting the Great Barrier
Reef. Many reef operators offer a 90 minute catamaran trip from the Cairns pier
to a floating platform that serves diving and snorkeling services as well as
helicopter tours and submersible boat and glass bottom boat trips to view the reef and fish life. A full hosted lunch buffet with hot and cold items was part of
the day activities. The trips run all day – meaning that once you leave the pier at
8am, you return to the pier at 5pm. If the seas are rough and you are prone
to seasickness, you are out of luck as you will be on the reef platform all day. The
trip reminded me of an ocean fishing trip I took many years ago where those
prone to seasickness were pretty much left to quietly suffer until the return to the
pier. During our ride over to the reef platform, the seas were choppy due to
wind and high tide. As the day wore on, the tide receded and the seas calmed
down. The high tides also created somewhat murky water viewing.
Lobby of Pullman Hotel
©2013, R. Ono
©2013, R. Ono
 |
| ©2013, R. Ono |
 |
| ©2013, R. Ono |
 |
| ©2013, R. Ono |
 |
| ©2013, R. Ono |
 |
| ©2013, R. Ono |
 |
| Helicopter Co-Pilot ©2013, R. Ono |
No comments:
Post a Comment