We started our day with an amazing 30 minute helicopter ride starting from the Cairns airport with Nautical Aviation. The weather, sun and wind were all perfect; everything was so clear. We traveled with 2 other tourists, and Matt, our pilot. We saw the coastline, city of Cairns, where the rainforest water meets the ocean (Coral Sea), crocodile alley, and 5 reefs. There are 2900 reefs that make up the living organism of the Great Barrier Reef, the largest feet in the world. There are two portions of the reef, the inner and outer reefs. If you put all of the reefs together, it would make up size of Texas or Germany. Here are the reefs we saw:

• Green island – this island is closest to Cairns and is visited by 2000 tourists a day. The island is surrounded by coral reef and protected by the Green Island National Park. There’s also a resort on the island if you wanted to stay there.
• Arlington reef – right next to Green Island, this reef is in the shape of a horseshoe.
• Vlasoff Cay and reef – this small sandy island found on the surface surrounded my coral reefs. There are no trees, and its subject to tides, so will disappear at low tide. We could see birds on the island. The pop of white surrounded by beautiful blue waters was breathtaking.
• Michaelmas Cay – this is one of the most important bird nesting site in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area and the most significant around Cairns. Sooty terns, common noodies and green turtles breed and lay eggs here. Boating and snorkelling are also popular around here but we couldn’t fly over they cay because the bird sanctuary has restricted air.
• Upola Reef – we were quite excited to see the reef where we snorkeled yesterday, and our sailboat there too. It looked so different from above.

Yesterday when we were sailing home, we saw a person parasailing. The captain mentioned that they call that “crocodile bait”. We laughed, but I thought he was kidding. From the helicopter you had a better view of where the rainforest water meets the ocean. It goes from murky brown water to blue. Rivers and creeks around Cairns are all regarded as saltwater croc territory. But during the wet season, it means crocs that would normally be inhabiting these areas will also be on the move because of breeding season. Some of the Cairns beaches will close. We haven’t seen any, and I’m quite happy about that. If you want the full croc experience, check out this site. We passed. I’d rather be home watching Swamp People.

Our afternoon was filled with a nap, yummy food, a foot/leg massage, shopping at the Night Market, and heat. It’s 88 degrees today, and add the humidity, it’s too hot for me. When we arrived at the market, it was not fully open yet. So we found a Korean massage place to get a 25.00 foot massage. It was a little sketchy, and MyLisa was concerned. The good news is, the 30 minute massage was wonderful. Not quite as good as Thailand though. Then we found a gelato store, that we couldn’t pass up. That killed enough time for the shops to open. We both found a few things we couldn’t pass up. The stores felt geared toward Chinese tourists. You could buy anything from a a kangaroo leather purse, placenta cream, koala shaped chocolate, honey, crocodile jerky, jewelry, a necklace with a photo of your iris, papaw cream, and the regular tourist things. MyLisa considered getting the dead skin eaten off of her feet by fish, it since we just got the massages, she passed.

We decided to have Thai for dinner, IMM Thai Cafe, right outside the market. MyLisa had the hot plate pad cha with chicken, and I had the red curry with chicken. Both meals were delicious, and we’d highly recommend it.

Ruth explained their day as truly awesome.  She splurged on a marine biologist snorkel tour which was 6 people 2 guides more than an hour in the water….turtle, black tip shark, giant clam and the greatest reef snorkeling shes ever done.  She was glad to wear the stinger suit since she went through a slot of little jelly fish.  Somehow mom managed to lose her mask before getting into the water, and also lost her snorkel later. Fortunately a woman on their trip helped her out. Mom and Ruth took the submersible after lunch and saw a different part of the reef in that…another great experience.   Not many pics because they were just too busy. Tonight they went downtown and had a lovely dinner at a local restaurant.

The rest of our night was spent packing. Our plane leaves from Cairns to Brisbane at 6am. We had an amazing stay in Cairns, and look forward to visiting Australia again. There are still two states we didn’t get to see.