She's Only Happy in the Sun...

Port Douglas, Australia

June 2, 2007
S 16°29.234
E 145°28.099

After a full week in the same city it was time to move onto a new adventure. We enjoyed all seven nights, not just waking up in the same place, but Sydney overall is a gorgeous city; a must see for any traveler. Of course big, beautiful cities come with a big price; however, Sydney is worth blowing the budget for a few days.

Since it was our last Friday night in Sydney, we had a late night for us and rolled into our hotel lobby around midnight after drinks with Ben, Myles and Elise (aka Turtle). The original plan was to have dinner and maybe a beer or two. However, after three beers at their apartment, another round at a nearby pub in Surry Hills, yet another schooner along our path looking for food, and one more round at a swanky underground wine bar, we finally gave up on the idea of food and called it a night. Thank goodness Myles and Ben had to work on Saturday morning or we may have been grabbing a cab to the airport straight from the pubs since our flight was at 7:00 AM.

We tracked the weather in Cairns since our arrival in Sydney and it had been raining nearly every day. Expecting to arrive to warm showers and high humidity; we arrived to high humidity and sun breaks—perfect. When we walked out of the airport, with the mountainous rainforest in the distance, the weather reminded us of Hawaii and Fiji.

As we headed north, with the water to our right and rainforests to our left, we kept our eyes peeled for some of the creatures Australia is known for—crocodiles and kangaroos. We did spot a kangaroo in the middle of a horse pasture, but no luck on the crocodile—I think I am fine with that!

Port Douglas is about an hour from the airport and a hot-spot for celebrities and vacationing Ozzies. In fact, an open audition for 18-40 year-old men was taking place in town for a Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg movie. I told Marc to give it a shot since he came in right under the maximum age. He decided to keep his hidden acting talent under wraps for awhile longer; we’d rather die than live in LA or Hollywood anyway.

Acting career behind us, we took a short stroll down to Four Mile Beach. Unfortunately, due to strange weather conditions (i.e. Global Warming), stinging jellyfish, which are normally not a problem this time of the year, were still lingering along the shoreline. This made it unsafe to swim outside of a safety net strategically placed along part of the beach. The stingers, or jellyfish, in this part of the world shoot venom into their victims and are taken very seriously—we adhered to all of the warnings.

The weather was a perfect 27C (84F) and the water in the Tasman was 23C (76F). We relaxed on the beach, soaked up the sun, dipped our feet in the Tasman and read our latest books. It was a perfect way to spend our first day in Port Douglas and a good way to work on a base-tan before cooking ourselves in the Vietnam sun next week.