Cairns

Moromoro,

Here we are in Cairns safe and sound. We took back the campervan today and tomorrow we have flight to Melbourne where we are spending few days before going to New Zealand for a week. Driving to north along the coast has been great fun, and against all odds not at all too rainy. Lucy i admit that here in Cairns and down in Townsville it has been raining, but we were waiting the highway to open in Airlie Beach where the weather was more or less ok. And yepyep, the highway from Townsville to Cairns seems to be still closed due to all the rain and floods, but we did yesterday the strongly NON-recommendabe inland drive to get here. The road was two-way but one lane, but we were lucky enough that it wasnt raining too much so we saw early enough when a road train (truck with three trailers, scary...) was coming. so that we pulled over to dirt to let them pass. Interesting 10 hours of driving :)

We also finally saw the Great Barrier Reef, although our trip was cancedde twice due to rough wind. But once we finally made it there it was definitely rewarding. i could have been snorkelling for more than the three hours and look at the fish in all possible rainbow colors, lovely!

And also another awesome thign we did was in Mon Repos Beach where we saw sea turtles hatching, emerging up from the sand and running down the beach towards the sea and the waves. Incredible! It just hurt me to know that out of the 150 turtles we saw only one if any make it until htey are 30 and come back to the beach to lay the eggs - if they are females that is. The males never come back to the shore, they just spend all their lives swimming in the ocean and looking at all the fish in all possible rainbow colors - would be nice ;)

But honestly i will (one day) put here some pictures, we have plenty of them. The Australian part has been lovaly, cant wait to get to South America.

kisses to you all!