Fliss....
Happy Birthday me!
We've just spent the last few days getting ready for Holly. Pete's been frantically sanding & varnishing so that when we have a full house (Will & Narena are flying in from Melbourne in weeks time to stay for 9 days) he'll be free to go site seeing with us. It'll be very cosy on-board!
Pete stayed with Naz to carry on varnishing whilst I went to the airport to meet Holly.
After spending 32 hours travelling she was shattered and swore she would never fly that distance again.
In the evening Ian & Cathy from Ariel came over for a birthday drink. I think they now me quite well as they bought me a box of red wine as a gift!
BBQ's chicken kebabs & salad for our intrepid traveller and we all retired for an early night.
Holly had brought me birthday cards & presents from home so all in all I had a wonderful day! I couldn't have asked for more.
Holly
Holly & I had a wonderful week, shopping & just wandering around Cairns. We visited the local Casino which had a small zoo on it's top floor, lots of beautiful birds, crocodiles & rare parrots it was quite expensive for what was their but still lovely to see.
Cairns is a lovely town with a real heart to it and without a doubt set up for the tourists. The streets are lined with people selling boat trips out to the reef, sky diving and many other excursions. Loads of bars restaurants and gift shops.
Replica of Captain Cooks "Endeavour"
As the Cairns waterfront is all mud flats they have a lovely lagoon/swimming pool on the water front where people hang out. They have live music playing at the weekends and loads of BBQ's for people to use. Everywhere is so clean!
The other good thing about the Lagoon is that there are free showers so we all just wandered over there for showers which saved the water we have on-board.
Holly highlighted my hair for me and unfortunately I ended up looking like a dodgy Rod Stewart impersonator! Desperate calls where made to the local hairdresser to fix it, luckily a few lowlights sorted it out. I was very pleased with the end result.
We decided that we would save the sight seeing for when Will & Narena arrive.
We decided that with so many people on-board we would have to go into a marina as we couldn't carry that much water for everyone to have a shower each day. Compared to UK prices it was cheap at $25 (12.50 UK pounds per day) but it's not normally something we would do.
It was great for Holly as she could wander off at night to call her fiancée Leon and catch up with her emails.
Will & Narena arrived early hours on the 11th July so we met them at the airport and then came back to the boat with so much catching up to do we didn't go to bed until the early hours! Needless to say everyone had an easy day the next day.
People were so friendly in the marina and often stopped bay to say hello.
One chap said to Holly that he liked my thongs, Holly was so shocked and came down stairs & said Mum there's a man perving at your thongs. So next time I spotted him I asked what he thought of them & he said he thought they were great!when I explained to the man what thong means in England he cracked up with laughter and Holly just cringed!
We hired a car and visited the interior of Cairns which was absolutely stunning with it's rain forests, waterfalls & lakes.
Narena at Mossman Gorge
We also went off to the Crocodile farm & Cairns Zoo. Great days out & lovely seeing the Cassowaries, Koalas, Red Pandas & Kangaroos which were so tame that you feed at pet them and Red Panda's.
Just chilling!
Koala at feeding time!
Cassawari
"Maude" has a severe case of PMT
The highlight for everyone was when we sailed off to Michelmas Cay. It's only 23 miles from Cairns it's just a tiny beach which is a bird sanctuary. Before we left a guy next to us in the marina said it's lovely but the birds will drive you nuts as they keep squawking all day, he was right!
The snorkelling was best that I have seen, huge clams, stunning coral and loads of marine life. Holly & I snorkelled with a 4 foot long & wide Humpback Maori Wrasse. Will & I snorkelled with a Loggerhead Turtle for quite some time. The icing on the cake was the Bat Fish that swam around the boat all day. We took it in turns to be in the water with them as Holly threw bread in to feed them, they bumped you out of the way to get to bread and didn't mind you stroking them.. All of us couldn't resist going snorkelling and had to take it in turns as we only had two snorkelling kits.
Batfish
Michelmas Cay Bird Reserve
Will with a giant Clam
We spent two nights there but had to make our way back on Sunday the 20th as Will & Narena where flying back that evening plus it was Holly's birthday.
Will & Nareena kindly took us all out to lunch and then they had to head off for the airport at 6;30pm.
Pete & I bought Holly a birthday cake with candles and the evening we just chilled out and watched movies... Happy Birthday Hols!!!!
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