Busy times

Hello everybody. Sorry we haven't been blogging much lately. Things have been busy around here getting our lives in order. We moved out of the hotel and into a beautiful report type apartment. Right now I'm sitting on our ground floor patio with my laptop on the table listening the pools. It's a dream. But it's also been hectic. We don't have internet yet (I'm logged onto somebody's wireless), but we did finally get our phone hooked up. If anybody ever feels like giving us a call you have to dial 011-61-7-4041-7991.

Tara has been gone for a couple of days now. She started her Dive Control Specialist course with Cairns Dive Centre and is on an 8 day stint aboard the Kangaroo Explorer. It's a big boat that stays out on the reef all the time. Pretty exciting.

It looks like I'm going to be taking a flight out to Brisbane next weekend to pick up a 4 wheel drive. The flights in the country are cheap, but it'll be about a 24 hour drive back (road trip). Sadly I won't have time to really look at anything because it's going to be a lot of driving in a weekend. I haven't been able to find any vehicles up to my standard around here for a reasonable price. Found a good deal and I get to make a trip out of it.

When we moved into the new apartment a coworker borrowed us his car for the day. It was very nice of him but it was intimidating. I had to quickly learn how to drive on the right side of the car, the left side of the road, and shift the manual trans with my left hand. Surprisingly a lot easier then I thought it would be. Here's a picture of the car he borrowed us, it's worth a laugh.

Other than that, weather is awesome, 25 degrees is starting to feel cool. There has been a few days with high humidity which gives us an idea of the wet season. Looking forward to it. Cheers.

Cairns tropical zoo

If you haven't been to the zoo of a city you haven't truly been there. That's what I say, I love the zoo. Yesterday Tara and I went to the Cairns Tropical Zoo to check out the fun Australian animals. We don't have a car yet so this meant that we had to take the bus. The bus system works pretty slick around here. There are zones that are mapped out. The city is a zone, the area just north of the city is a zone, and a whole bunch of other areas around. Then when you ride the bus you pay for how many zones you're going to be traveling through.

At first I though, that sucks because you don't have to pay more for going farther in Winnipeg. But the nice thing that makes it worth it is how far you can go. The zoo was a decent ways north of the city. It was definitely not in the city at all. So you can ride the bus from Cairns up through about 6 small villages north of the city. This is where the zoo is.

It's not the biggest zoo, and it cost a fair bit more than the Winnipeg zoo. But really, the Winnipeg zoo is almost free. We got to see a pretty cool variety of animals. Most notably kangaroos, koalas and crocodiles.

That's right. It's a kangaroo eating out of Tara's hand. I did it also. So cute. There was about a million of these little guys jumping around the kangaroo sections. Then there was the crocodiles. First we saw a couple little ones and thought they looked freaky. But we realized they were small after we saw this guy.

Sorry the pictures isn't that clear, but trust me, it was amazing. It's also impressive how the guys works the croc. He said that their brains are so small that everything they do is based on instinct. So when the croc is in the water he just slaps his stick on the water and the big buy lumbers over to where the splash is. They he holds the chicken over it's head and waits for the monster to open his mouth. He said it's extremely easy to not get killed by a croc. You just stand at least 5 meters away from the waters edge and he won't be able to reach you. They are not fast. Really cool, I recommend seeing these things up close.

I added a new link. It's the dive company that Tara is going to be doing her training with. If you want to dive and watch Tara at work, that's the company you should book with. Now it's Sunday evening and we spend a nice afternoon sitting at the lagoon getting some rays. Later.

Nick

Fitzroy Island

Aussie Sun 1 - Nick + Tara's Skin 0. So I learn a lesson today. When it feels like your skin is getting hot, it's too late for sun screen. Today me and Tara grabbed the Fitzroy Ferry down to Fitzroy Island for a day on the beach. We figured it was about time we got our feet wet in the actual sea. The ferry loads up at the marina and takes 45 minutes to get to the island.

At first it seemed like we might have picked a bad day. It was so windy and the sea was a little chopped. Luckily when we arrived, the island protects it self from the wind on the beach side, and the day got better as well. It's about another 15 minutes to hike a little train through the forest which places you down on Nudey Beach. The name suggests that there would be naked people, but there were none. The beach isn't made of sand, it's all dried up pieces of dead coral. Beautiful.

After getting burnt and snorkeling around in the corals we went for a walk. We walked from the beach back to the jetty and then out around the corner. Here it was just a whole bunch of big rocks that we climbed all over.

All in all a wonderful day at the beach. Last night we went to the Cairns Underwater Film Festival. Every year in France there is a huge film festival featuring only underwater film and photos. Then the winners of the festival are featured in Cairns. This was also a really fun night of sweet films and hanging out at the theatre with a bunch of dive buffs.

Nick

Temp apartment

I'm a little behind on this whole blogging thing. I find it difficult to come home from a day of working on my computer at the office just to sit down and blog. But it's a new thing so I need to get used to.

After our 30 hour journey around the Pacific to get here we landed in a relatively simple tropical city. It's amazing here. Everyday I'm excited when I walk to work at 8am in the sunshine and fresh 20 degree winter air. Mid day it gets up to about 28 usually, but I don't notice it right now because I'm in a building. I think it's safe to say that the dry season is as perfect as you can imagine the weather to be. I'm told the wet season is a little less pleasant.

This is a picture from the patio at the Cairns Central Plaza Apartment Hotel complex. I don't know if you notice, but that's the ocean in the background. The first few days that we were here it was kinda rainy and damp. Now it's back to beautiful, but it was a little wet for awhile. 

The first Saturday that we were here happened to be company cricket night. It's a day when the guys from the office organize a cricket match with a bunch of clients. It was probably 350 times more fun than I expected. We played cricket on a soggy afternoon, drank some delicious Aussie beer, and had a tasty BBQ. It was a great way to meet the guys I work with, as well as the clients I'll work for.

Since getting here we haven't done a lot in the way of sight seeing, aside from walking around the city and the coast. Most critical things have been needing our attention. We opened an account at the local credit union, applied for and got an apartment which we can move into on 20 August, and tomorrow we hope to pick up our Queensland drivers license.

All is going great. Once I get some more pictures on my computer and once we get out there to do more stuff we'll be posting all sorts of stuff in the blog. We'll only put a few select pictures in the blog, to see the whole albums just check out Facebook. Cheers.

Nick

Let get this thing stared

Hello everybody. I suppose it's time to get this blog up and running before people start to forget about us. Some of you are probably wondering what happened to that website I said I was building. The truth is I'm no longer in an environment that encourages html code editing. With so many things to see and do, warm evening that require walking down the boardwalk, and pools everywhere, we've decided to just start up a blogger.

Needless to say, we've arrived safely and we're getting things moving. I've begun work and we're in the middle of hunting for an apartment. More in-depth blogs are coming, so welcome to our site and thanks for being interested.

Nick