The hardest part of our visit to Australia was trying to see as much of it as possible in the little time we had. We flew to Port Douglas and took a rental car to our hotel. As I’ve said before, I never know what hotel we’ll be staying at as Mindy does the booking and she likes to surprise me. She had booked us into the Sheraton Grand Mirage which I immediately fell in love with. In fact, I liked the hotel so much I’ll write more about it later.
We only had two nights in Port Douglas so we tried to make the most of our time. The first night we went to dinner at the Flames of The Forest. We always try to find out a little about the culture of the people in the countries we visit and the Flames of the Forest excursion offered a glimpse into the culture of the Aboriginal people. The rain forest was alight with multiple candles and candelabra and we were greeted with Australian wine, soft drinks and canapes. There was a six course dinner where we got to taste some unique Australian food. I have to admit I wasn’t a big fan of the smoked crocodile canape, but the loin of kangaroo was pretty good, and the pavlova was a great ending to the meal.
The best part of the Flames of the Forest excursion were two brothers from the Kuku Yalanji people who sang songs and told stories of their culture and played the didgeridoo. Of course you can’t learn all about another culture in a few hours, but we were grateful for the glimpse that they offered us.
The next day was Great Barrier Reef day. We took a shuttle from our hotel to the marina. We took off our shoes and boarded a catamaran. The weather couldn’t have been any better and it was relaxing to just sit back and enjoy the boat ride. At a certain point they anchored the catamaran and we boarded a glass bottomed boat that went right up to the shore of Lower Isles Island. Mindy, Jesse and the other members of the excursion went snorkeling along the Reef with the guides. I don’t swim so I had a beach day on the island.
I didn’t miss out on seeing all the sea life though because sea turtles and schools of little sharks swam right up close to the shore. After the snorkeling we had a little tour of the island. The island is home to 5 or 6 species of birds who nest there. We had to stay on the paths to avoid stepping on nests of ground dwelling birds. There was a lighthouse with an osprey nest on top. After the tour of the island we got back into the glass bottomed boat and went back to the catamaran.
Our time on the island was not the end of our bird watching that day. When we arrived back at the marina we were greeted by a great racket.. The noise was coming from multiple flocks of metallic starlings that were perched in every tree around the marina.
We really enjoyed our two days at Port Douglas and would have loved to have spent more time there, but we had to catch a flight to Melbourne the next morning.
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