I came to the land down under

Here we are in Australia.

(First of all, let me say that I was SHOCKED to see that I have not posted anything to this site for over 8 MONTHS! What is up with that? Have I really not been anywhere noteworthy since our trip to COPENHAGEN? That is pathetic! We have simply got to do better than that in the future. )

Anyway, after breaking up our trip with a few days visiting in California, we headed to Cairns.As it turns out we can still survive 30 hours of traveling (with 15 hours on one transpacific flight) in coach. But we don't much like it. And we only managed because Michael's status with American Airlines still got us (even without business class tickets) into the Qantas business class lounges. He will lose his executive platinum status this year unless I make him fly to Dubai or some such place for an overnight...and I'm beginning to think there is real value in that!

Anyway, Cairns is a quite enough little town where we came just to take a day snorkeling trip out to the Great Barrier Reef. The Reef is a huge - spanning about 1400 miles, 900 islands and almost 3000 different reefs. Our tour took us to Michealmas Cay....about 20 miles off of Cairns. A two hour boat ride out, a few hours there, and a ride back in. Coming from the Caribbean we were fearing ridiculously cold water, but with our wet suits on it was quite tolerable. And while the numbers of fish weren't that impressive the coral certainly was.....so many shapes and sizes and colors. Unfortunately the gopro camera photos just don't do it justice. The colors don't reproduce well, and the wide angle lens takes in so much more that what is right in front of you so that giant clams don't look that impressive at all. And the absolutely brilliant colors on the velvety edges of the clams are stunning in person but barely visible in my photos. So here's one of my images, but you'll have to trust me or google someone else's better representations.

















While you are googling, perhaps you can figure out for me why it's so chilly here at night. I checked and we are currently about 17 degrees south. Anguilla is 18 degrees north. That means that we are closer to the Equator here than at home. Now before you snort in disgust at the implication that I don't realize that it is still winter here and summer at home, I know that. BUT never, at ANY time of year, does the temperature in Anguilla drop to 60 degrees at night. How come?

Meanwhile, we are off to Sydney today....for now, G-day.