Hi everyone,
Our Australian adventure continues..
On Friday, our first real day in Cairns, we took it easy for the most part. We walked downtown and grabbed some coffee. On our way downtown we stopped strolled down the parks lining the ocean, which were very nice. They have a mini water park for kids to play at and several outdoor fitness things, such as a rock wall (picture below) and some pull up bars. Although this area is all on the water there are signs everywhere warning against swimming due to the presence of salt water crocodiles. No one was in the water.

Also, we saw some jelly fish in the water which were fun to watch. There's a picture but its a little hard to make out, so that picture of the water with that white blur in the middle is actually a jelly fish.

After grabbing coffee we walked over to the lagoon and checked it out before getting some lunch (pictures of our food below and Shan posing w/ the lagoon) at a place called the Raw Prawn. It was a good lunch. After lunch we checked out the local casino..nothing too interesting there and then went for a swim in the lagoon before just laying out by it and reading.

After reading we headed over to a local bar and grabbed a few drinks before heading over to the pier for dinner. The pier is pretty cool... there are 6 or 7 different restaurants all next to each other so we all walked down the pier and looked at the menus of each place before settling on a restaurant that I think was called M Yogo. It was a Japanese seafood place.. the food was good but the service was quite bad. We sat for almost half an hour before finally flagging down someone to bring us our bill.

After dinner we checked out the night market, which offered all sorts of terrible tourist products (no one bought anything) and then got gelato before walking back to our hotel room and falling asleep.

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12-24-12
Merry Christmas Eve!
Today Shan and I went rafting down the Tully River. Clay and Shea decided against it so it was just the two of us on this trip but we had an awesome time! We got up early and the bus to head out there picked us up a little after 6:30 AM. After taking care of some paper work we headed out to Tully, about a two hour bus ride from Cairns.

We got into groups and we were grouped with two cousins (both girls) from Finland and a husband & wife from Texas. Our guide was named Ben and we all got along very well. We started off by getting some quick lessons from Ben on how to properly follow his instructions and how to hold the paddles properly. He asked Shan why she looked so scared, but he just didn't realize that she has big eyes :).

Then we headed down the river! This was my first time doing rapids like this and it was really a great time. We hit some pretty good sized rapids where we all had to duck in the middle of the boat as well as others that were a little surprising. One of the Finnish girls fell out at one point but she was the only one of us to take a (not planned) spill during the day.

There were lots of stops down the river. We floated through rapids a few times without the boat, which was pretty intense. We jumped off a couple rather tall rocks (once while holding hands). We stopped for a barbeque lunch of burgers and sausage sandwiches. We swam in the river a lot, and of course tipped our raft a few times for the camera.

All in all a really great day. Unfortunately no pictures because it would have cost us $100 (!!!) to buy them so we decided against it. It was super tiring and Shan is sleeping right now as I write this. We've got a big day ahead of us tomorrow. It's Christmas and we will be diving and snorkeling on the reef. Then we are going to try and go to a 'modern Australian' restaurant for Christmas dinner when we get back..I'm not sure we will make it judging by how tired we were today.

Merry Christmas everyone and root for my fantasy football teams! Two championship games tomorrrow!

Love
Craig + Shan