Port Douglas
Well, I am still falling behind on my blogs. This one was about a month ago. Some friends of ours who 
we knew in Oman decided to make their way down to Australia for a visit. While they were in the neighborhood, we decided to meet up with them. We flew into Cairns, which is in the northern part of Queensland, and then, drove on to meet them in Port Douglas. Now, that whole sentence begins our lesson in Australia. First subject, Australian pronunciation . . .Cairns . . . For those of you who are reading this and pronouncing that in your head as "Cay-erns" or the one syllable equivalent, you would be wrong. It is actually "Cans." Go figure! Next subject . . . Australian geography, for those of you who have no idea where any of those places are . . . Queensland is an Australian state in the northeastern corner of Australia, the same state where Brisbane is located, and it is about 2 and a half times the size of Texas. Cairns is on the coast of Queensland up north. Port Douglas is about a 45 minute drive north of that. And none of that is anywhere near Sydney or Melbourne, places you may have actually heard of. Got all that?! :) Anyway, we met our friends up there for a bit of R&R. I can go into details of the whole trip, but I must say that the main attraction of the trip was watching Jason bungee jump! Yes, he actually got up on a platform 164 feet up in the air and thought it was a good idea to jump off! 
I don't get it, but he did. The most amusing part, for those of us watching, was that the people tying the cord to his feet decided to give him an extra thrill and made the cord just long enough to dunk his head in the water. So we got to see him get absolutely soaked! Hee hee. As for Jason's take on the whole experience, it depends on when you asked him . . . For the first 5 minutes after he got his feet back on the ground, he said he would never do it again in a million years. Ever since, though, it was apparently loads of fun, and he is plotting to try it again when we go to New Zealand. (Yes, we have a trip planned to go to New Zealand!) The other bit of fun from the whole bungee experience was watching other people jump off of this platform. Did you know there are different ways to actually jump off? There is the basic jump . . .face forward and fall off. Then, you can graduate to falling backwards, jumping off, and all sorts of nuances of that. But the best was . . . if you are really experienced, which is to say you have jumped twice before, they were willing to tie you to a bmx bike and you could ride off the platform! Who thinks of this stuff?! Anyway, it was all a nerve racking/entertaining afternoon. As for the rest of the trip, for those that may want to know what the 
heck you do up in northern Queensland, we took a trip up to the Daintree Rainforest. This is a beautiful rainforest right at the beach, with beautiful hikes that took us about half the time to walk than they told us they would and random wildlife that, if you believe the nature guide, includes ants where you can lick their bum and get a nice high! We reckon that was just a story the nature guides made up to see how many tourists they could actually get to lick an ant's bum, but you make the call. And in the category of things you can do up there but we didn't (so no we didn't try licking the ant), Cairns and Port Douglas are easy jumping off points to hop over to the Great Barrier Reef. But alas, we didn't make it to the Great Barrier Reef on this trip, but we did 
make it to a cane toad race and that's just as good, right? Don't ask . . .
we knew in Oman decided to make their way down to Australia for a visit. While they were in the neighborhood, we decided to meet up with them. We flew into Cairns, which is in the northern part of Queensland, and then, drove on to meet them in Port Douglas. Now, that whole sentence begins our lesson in Australia. First subject, Australian pronunciation . . .Cairns . . . For those of you who are reading this and pronouncing that in your head as "Cay-erns" or the one syllable equivalent, you would be wrong. It is actually "Cans." Go figure! Next subject . . . Australian geography, for those of you who have no idea where any of those places are . . . Queensland is an Australian state in the northeastern corner of Australia, the same state where Brisbane is located, and it is about 2 and a half times the size of Texas. Cairns is on the coast of Queensland up north. Port Douglas is about a 45 minute drive north of that. And none of that is anywhere near Sydney or Melbourne, places you may have actually heard of. Got all that?! :) Anyway, we met our friends up there for a bit of R&R. I can go into details of the whole trip, but I must say that the main attraction of the trip was watching Jason bungee jump! Yes, he actually got up on a platform 164 feet up in the air and thought it was a good idea to jump off! 
I don't get it, but he did. The most amusing part, for those of us watching, was that the people tying the cord to his feet decided to give him an extra thrill and made the cord just long enough to dunk his head in the water. So we got to see him get absolutely soaked! Hee hee. As for Jason's take on the whole experience, it depends on when you asked him . . . For the first 5 minutes after he got his feet back on the ground, he said he would never do it again in a million years. Ever since, though, it was apparently loads of fun, and he is plotting to try it again when we go to New Zealand. (Yes, we have a trip planned to go to New Zealand!) The other bit of fun from the whole bungee experience was watching other people jump off of this platform. Did you know there are different ways to actually jump off? There is the basic jump . . .face forward and fall off. Then, you can graduate to falling backwards, jumping off, and all sorts of nuances of that. But the best was . . . if you are really experienced, which is to say you have jumped twice before, they were willing to tie you to a bmx bike and you could ride off the platform! Who thinks of this stuff?! Anyway, it was all a nerve racking/entertaining afternoon. As for the rest of the trip, for those that may want to know what the 
heck you do up in northern Queensland, we took a trip up to the Daintree Rainforest. This is a beautiful rainforest right at the beach, with beautiful hikes that took us about half the time to walk than they told us they would and random wildlife that, if you believe the nature guide, includes ants where you can lick their bum and get a nice high! We reckon that was just a story the nature guides made up to see how many tourists they could actually get to lick an ant's bum, but you make the call. And in the category of things you can do up there but we didn't (so no we didn't try licking the ant), Cairns and Port Douglas are easy jumping off points to hop over to the Great Barrier Reef. But alas, we didn't make it to the Great Barrier Reef on this trip, but we did 
make it to a cane toad race and that's just as good, right? Don't ask . . .
posted by DaKleins in Oman @ 7:32 AM
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