Rainforests and Reefs.

My last week has been spent away in Port Douglas, visiting the Daintree Rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef with my friend Niki. We only spent a couple of full days there, one at the rainforest and one at the reef.

I had a little time in Cairns wondering around the streets in the early morning waiting for Niki to arrive on her flight from Brisbane. I couldn't say that I was that impressed with the place. It was basically a town made for tourists with loads of shops and restaurants. Nothing really noteworthy as far as I could see and I was glad that I decided to stay in Port Douglas rather than Cairns.

The Daintree Rainforest was quite impressive from what I saw of it. We basically took a one-day trip around the area, visiting many sites such as Cape Tribulation, Mossman Gorge, the Daintree River where we saw wild crocodiles and the rainforest.

Here is a picture of one of the great trees in the rainforest. The temperature wasn't that hot but it was very humid adding to the atmosphere in the rainforest.

I would have preferred to go for much longer walks deep into the rainforest, but Niki wasn't so keen on walking and didn't have as much interest in the place. Maybe next time...

The following day we went out to the Barrier Reef. I was a little apprehensive about this trip as I'm not a confident swimmer and wasn't sure how I would react to not being able to stand when out on the reef and snorkelling.

Here you can see me all decked up in my smurf suit, read stinger suit but we all looked like smurfs in them. Fortunately I had a black one while some others had bright blue ones. It should protect against any box jellyfish in the reef. They said that there shouldn't be many there but we may encounter one if we were unlucky. They are one of the most poisonous animals on the planet and their tentacles can cause immense pain so I wasn't going to take any chances.

Can you see the nervous look in my face?

As usual once I got there I didn't have any problems in the swimming in the sea. I just jumped into the water and managed fine. What really helped was the 'noodle' float that they provide you, which is just a foam tube. It allows you to easily float on the surface without having to tread water all the time. Quite good for me seeing as I can't tread water for very long, I tend to sink quite quickly!

I would smile for the camera, but smiling while trying to breathe is quite tricky for me. A wave will have to do.

The reef really was an amazing place to see. From only about fifty metres from the back of the boat you could see bits of the Barrier Reef only a metre below you. The view was quite magical, so many different colours and amazing fish. Since Naheed used to keep some marine fish I knew a little about the different fishes there.

There were all sorts of species that I recognised from Naheed's marine tank and trips to the marine shops. I even saw a starfish and a few goby fishes which are fishes that sit on the sea bed. Some of the corals were absolutely massive and I was quite jealous of the divers that I could occasionally see below me that were much closer to them.

I'm in the background of this photo of one of the larger fish in the reef. If you clicked your fingers at the fish it would come up to you thinking that you had some food. I managed to stroke the fish that this point which was quite special.

I would have loved to spend more time at the reef. We had three thirty minute dives at different parts of the reef and I was dying to stay out as long as I could. This is somewhere that I'd love to come back to, and possibly learn to dive as well.

I would thoroughly recommend that anyone who visits Australia takes a trip to the Barrier Reef as it was something very special.

Ouch, ouch, ouch!

I went mountain biking in the Blue Mountains this morning with Ian and a few of his friends. There were about eight of us in total.

We had to get up very early for a Saturday morning. Ian and I had to get up at 5am to get to Penrith for a six thirty train. A very funny thing happened on our way, along the motorway we were following a police car which was just travelling along. We then saw two cars parked along the hard shoulder and in front of the two cars were two guys who were fighting! They were shirt pulling and throwing punches. Needless to say the police car immediately put on the lights and pulled over. God know what the two guys were fighting about, Ian figures that they were probably drunk.

Once we started out on the bike ride, I was getting along quite well and flying down the track.

However, after about a couple of kilometres I came round a bend a little too quickly and came across some quite rough rocks. I managed to dodge the first few but ran into a bigger third one. My bike just gave way under me and sent me flying to one side.

Unfortunately the front wheel of my bike was buckled and a couple of spokes were broken as well. I was more annoyed that I couldn't go any further on the ride than of my injuries.

You can see the mess the fall made of my cycling shorts. Fortunately I didn't break any bones but I was quite badly grazed all over my right hand side.

I looked at my right arm after getting up and noticed the graze on the top of my arm and didn't think much of it. Ian then passed by and stopped to see if I was ok and then noted that the bottom half of my arm was bleeding.

I suffered a few more grazes on my chest, right side, hips, thighs and knees. Fortunately I didn't quite land on my head so there wasn't much damage to my cycle helmet.

My watch on my left arm was also a casualty. I managed to bend the clasp on the metal strap so had to have that repaired as well. I told Ian to carry on as I could quite easily walk back to the train station and then catch the train back home. Especially after we had got up so early, I didn't want to spoil his ride as well as mine.

I've managed to get my bike repaired already and that cost £60 for a new front wheel. They have replaced the old one with a much more sturdy wheel which should withstand much more punishment. My watch will take a little longer to repair as a new clasp will cost me £80 and needs to be ordered specially from Tag and won't arrive till Wednesday.

As Allen said to me later on at least the bike and watch can be easily repaired while I'll take a little longer to be repaired and can't just go and buy a new arm or hip.

I guess I'll have to take it a little easier over the next few days and be a little more careful in future. Still I was still lucky not to break a bone and don't mind the pain too much. Sleeping well tonight may be a different matter though!

Visiting Friends.

My friend Niki visited me in Sydney this week to see how I was getting on and take a long holiday to visit some of her relatives in Australia as well.

She really wanted to do the Harbour Bridge climb so I decided to go along with her, despite the extortionate price of the climb at £100.

To be quite honest I found the bridge climb to be quite mundane and boring. It was very relaxing and quite refreshing to be outside on the bridge but not "The climb of my life" as was advertised by the bridge climb people.

We paid for the sunset climb, but unfortunately the weather started out overcast and then turned quite rainy and windy. The occasional gust of wind did make the walk down a little more exciting though.

I booked a day of work on Wednesday and hired a car to visit the Blue Mountains for the first time finally!

Allen recommended that we visit Euroka Clearing if we wanted to see some wild kangaroos. Sure enough when we got to the clearing there were half a dozen grey roos in a clearing. I even managed to get quite close to one of them to be able to stroke it.

It was quite exciting to be able to stroke a wild kangaroo. The animal didn't appear to mind at all that I was right up to it and stroking it. It did get up afterwards and have a good scratch. Probably getting rid of the fleas that I had passed onto it.

We went to the main places around the Blue Mountains to see the Three Sisters rock formation and also the skyway cable car and train. We wanted to ride the skyway cable car which has a glass bottom across the ravine, but unfortunately it wasn't working for some reason.

Instead we had a short walk around the edge of the mountains. I wanted to do the longer walk into the ravine but Niki wasn't quite up to it really. I'll definitely have to come back to the place to explore some more as it's only about 90 minutes drive from Sydney centre.