Back in Melbourne

You know that feeling after being on vacation that towards the end you are starting to look forward to heading back home and taking it easy? Yeah, that doesn't really apply when you spend a week in tropical paradise diving and snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef. Not that Melbourne is a bad place but Port Douglas was a friggin' dream. The weather was perfect, the beach was 50 yards from our huge condo, and the troubles of the day were to decide whether to dive, snorkel, hike the rain forest, or just lay on the beach. Plus, the place where we stayed was 3 or 4 times the size of our current flat.
Speaking of those tough decisions, we spent Thursday driving far north and hiking at various stop-offs through the Daintree rain forest. We even stopped for a croc cruise, and saw a few of the scary buggers. There wasn't quite as many in this river as the one Nikki and I went on up in the Northern Territory, so I figure you could last a good 10 minutes instead of 5. But like the boat driver said. "I reckon you'd hev rocks in ye head" if you went swimming in this river.

Friday, Nikki and I went on another cruise to the Reef. This time we went to the Low Isles, and snorkeled. Here we swam around with sea turtles and saw a shark, squid, and of course thousands of tropical fish and coral aplenty. Cara and Nick decided to stay ashore and hang out on the beach. That night we had dinner at a nice restaurant by the water and watched the ships come in as the sun set.

I could ramble on and on about the sights but the best part of all was having great friends to experience this with. What a great 2 weeks we had with them. I knew Nick could handle me, but I thought Cara would get tired of me and use her superhero Dr. powers to talk me into swallowing my tongue. But it didn't work out that way at all. We all had such a good time. Even when Nick decided to drive us out on a 3 hour detour in the middle of the Daintree rain forest at dusk (which is peak animal road kill time), we all still got along. Speaking of that detour... we killed several cane toads but no animals big enough to leave a dent in the rental car(you are welcome Queensland).