August 14th - 21th, 2010, the Whole Family in Cairns, Queensland ...
As we quickly changed our holiday from Phuket to Cairns, we "Germans" met at Brisbane Airport with Jared to fly together to Cairns.
We arrived on Saturday afternoon in Cairns, checked in our central hotel and relaxed a bit ... in the evening we strolled downtown ... here a nice fountain in the night ...
... and had dinner in a restaurant ... not too good the food, but everybody enjoyed it (somehow ;-)
After an early night, we decided to have a relaxed day at the pool ... here the three girls having stress ;-)
Some photo experiments ... Cynthia coming out of the water ... needs some practising (taking the photo!) ...
Monday, we had our first big tour out to the Great Barrier Reef. Fantastic weather (27 degrees, that what they call winter), water temperature at 24 degrees ... i. e. just warm enough for Cynthia ;-) ... here Jared and Carola getting prepared for jumping into the water and for snorkeling ...
... Natasha jumping in ... followed by Claudia ...
It was a fantastic experience ... if you had never done it before (like Cynthia, Jared and Natasha) or again (like the rest) ...
That night we had a really good dinner at a local Pizza restaurant ... in the middle of the esplanade ...
After another relaxing day at the pool (watching fast birds sipping water from it) ...
... we decided to follow a suggestion of Jared to go Bowling after dinner ... here the man in full action ...
We had a lot of fun, Cynthia had her usual series of strikes and it was a good time!
Next big tour was the scenic train to Kuranda, which we took from Cairns station ... here in full length at the start of the slope ...
All of us in the train ...
... with some fantastic views of the coast ... here towards Cairns ...
... typical outfit for working up there ;-))
... just all these bloody tourists were annoying ;-) ... here at a stop in-between ...
We followed all the Japanese tourists and got our photo taken ...
... here clearly to be seen, that some members are mentally on the level of 5-6 year olds ...
In Kuranda itself, we were starving for some real food ... so we went to the German Tucker ... a real nice guy from Cologne ...
... had an original German wheat beer ...
... here mother and son ...
... and all of us with the "bratwursts" ...
On the way back we used the skyrail ... slowly moving over the rainforest ...
... with two stops in-between to have a closer look at nature ...
... where this ape was coming from we don't know ...
The evening we finished off with a dinner at the hotel, which was underwhelming but at least overpriced ...
Next day we hired a car and drove North to Palm Cove for breakfast ... and then headed for Hartleys crocodile farm ... we first jumped on a boat to watch live feeding ...
... amazing how high they can get out of the water ...
... to catch their food ...
Here the designated smoking area of this park ... super!
On the way to the next feeding show we saw this hyper-active Koala scratching ...
... and then more feeding ... food between the jaws and then ...
... gone!
We found some wallabies ... Natasha here (in the background) ...
... here one with a Joey ...
Here another baby ... sleeping in mummy's arms ...
On we went by car ... and on the way to the Atherton Tablelands we found a tropical fruit winery ... sign says "No it's not sweet and sticky" ... we didn't know, that wine from tropical fruits is being produced at all ...
we had another stop at an amazing fig tree ...
... and stopped again at lake Tinaroo to watch the sundown ... here with a swarm of birds flying by ...
... Jared found a new friend there to play with ... the fisherman's dog ...
... and another nice impression of the sundown there ...
On Friday we had another "unbusy" day ... and we finshed that off with some drinks in the hotel ...
Saturday we had to pack and made our way to the airport. It was not easy this time to say good-bye to Jared. Everybody safely arrived at home. A memorable holiday!