Poor Dylan got a wicked stuffy head on the plane's descent into Cairns and couldn't hear for the rest of the day, so his introduction to the tropics was a bit dodgy. Our promised ride to our hostel never happened either and the hostel itself left us singularly unsatisfied. I suppose we really shouldn't have expected too much for $35 a night! The room was small and smelly and way too much of a communal backpacker hangout for our tastes (the sort of place where 21 year olds hang out all night outside your room because to them it is still cool just being up at 3 in the morning). I guess we should have just ate the cost and found somewhere else to stay, but we figured we wouldn't be spending much time there and stayed out of cheapness. Cairns is also one of those places where accommodation seems to fall into two catagories: upscale, resort style high rise hotels with a big price tag for the wealthier set exploring the reef, and backpacker dives for the younger set who just want to party and hook up. So it didn't seem worth our time to wander around looking for another joint, and in all fairness the guy who owned it (very much a hippy) did seem to be trying.
Cairns itself is very tropical with lush rainforest covered hills coming right down to the ocean, and a big sweep of harbour. It was closer to the equator than I had ever been and I was very glad to be there in the winter. The air was drenched with moisture and would sprinkle off and on as if the clouds simply couldn't contain the spillover anymore. In the summer the temperature doesn't get too crazy (90's) but combined with the incredibly high humidity before "the Wet" (monsoon season) it can make people nuts (literally! they call it "going troppo"). Their average rainfall for February is 456mm! (The highest average rainfall in a month for Boston by comparison is 100mm).
The town itself is pretty small and seems to be a tourist town in which the tourists never leave. From what I gather it wasn't that long ago that this was just a sleepy Queensland town, (I also take it that Queensland was considered rather backward until recently....sort of like we Yankees think of the South) and now it is the jumping off point for all things related to the Great Barrier Reef. Most of the streets in by the docks where the reef tour boats go out are full of establishments catering to the tourist trade: book-an-adventure outlets, restaurants, trinket shops, bars, a casino...that sort of stuff. You really can book a tour to do pretty much anything imaginable from fishing to white water rafting, scuba diving to 4x4 rainforest adventures. If you came prepared with lots of extra cash you might get bored of Cairns, but never of all the outdoor adventures it has on offer. And that's sort of the problem with the town - most people (including us) seem to be there to catch a boat or their tour for the day, and not actually to spend time in Cairns.
Part of the reason for that is that there is no beach in Cairns despite the fact that it is right on the water and hot year round. The town has built a beautiful esplanade along the harbour, except the harbour is a half mile of mudflats when the tide is out and not somewhere you would want to swim when it is in (even disregarding the crocodile signs and box jelleyfish season!). You can't really tell, but the picture above is a sign warning people of crocodiles and other nasty reasons not to swim. While we were there the newspapers were actually covering a story of a man who had been eaten by a crocodile, so I guess it really does happen. To compensate for all this unusable swimming real estate, a giant public pool has been built right along the harbour. It really was pretty cool. It is shaped so that it looks somewhat natural (not a normal square pool) and has a real sand beach in parts as well as sculptures and places to just sit and put your piggies in. There are also public BBQ's all along the esplanade, for this country takes bbq'ing seriously.
Once you get outside of the main shop area though, it quiets down incredibly quickly. Our hotel was just a few streets away from the central area and it felt as removed as if we'd jumped on a commuter rail for an hour to the suburbs. It was sort of neat in a way. Different anyway, with all the crazy rainforest birds screeching in the palm trees and big pelicans stalking the mudflats. A town where the local hospital looked like a tiny middle school, but which swarmed with people from all over the globe.
But - like most of the folks there - we were there to see the reef! So we set out early for the docks (actually we were picked up by the tour company which is just how they do things there and incredibly annoying since you end up sitting on a bus for an hour when you could have walked to the spot in 15 minutes. We had to ditch them on the way back, it was just too silly). The boat we had reserved a spot on was a huge catamaran which we had chosen especially because it wasn't too huge, moored at a cay instead of dropping everyone at a huge pontoon in the middle of the ocean, and because it was a sailboat. Well, the one thing I was let down on was that the darn thing never sailed (false advertising!), but other than that we had a simply awesome day. It was just one of those once-in-a-lifetime days and by the end of it I was really kicking myself for not doing a live aboard tour where you go out for one or two nights. It was really that cool.
The water was plenty warm (at least for New Englanders like us), wicked clear and full of amazing aquatic life. Even Dylan, who normally I have to beg to go in the water, was loving it so much he didn't want to get out. I really didn't expect the coral to be as cool as it was and so full of fish and giant clams. The fish were all sorts of crazy colours and not remotely shy. One nibbled at Dylan while another swam right into my head. We were disappointed not to see and giant turtles or manta rays, but relieved not to see any sharks. The coral itself was huge and of all different varieties. I remember reading a description of the experience comparing it to floating above mountains and valleys which was rather apt. I had seen a reef in Key Largo which had been pretty astounding, but this was as if someone had enhanced all the colour and thrown in more variety of fish and coral. Maybe it was just because we were snorkelling and not seeing it through a glass bottom boat. Either way it was wonderful.
It was low tide for the time we were there which made the need for scuba diving pretty much nil (which was lucky for us since they scuba instructors refused to let Dylan try it out on account of his having asthma). I do suppose that going further out and deeper would be well worth doing (more rays!....more sharks....), but the human obsession with making things even better was easy to quell on this day with such cool sights so close at hand. The tide was actually so low that some of the coral was emerging from the water and we had to be really, really careful swimming over it so that we didn't touch it. Not only does this injure or kill the coral, of course, but the stuff is also laden with bacteria, so you really don't want a cut from it. Unfortunately I did see some people knock off some of the coral and it wasn't really surprising since some weren't the best swimmers or familiar with flippers. It makes you wonder about how much longer such tours will operate and whether or not they should. Everyone was trying real hard to be careful but.... Australia does take the health of the reef very seriously though. The whole area is a marine park and only so many permits are given out to tour boats. They are also restricted to specific spots on the reef to visit so that they don't all congregate on the same spot. This is good for visitors too so that there aren't tons of people.
The actual time spent on the reef (off the boat) is only 4 hours, which sounds like a fair amount of time but wasn't nearly enough. The time just went by waaaay too fast. We spent the whole four hours in the water except for a brief stint where we went back to the boat to cram down some fruit and bread for lunch. Dylan, despite wearing a wetsuit, was shivering by the time he finally got out of the water and we both had severe prune hands. I jettisoned most of the snorkeling equipment halfway through (floatation vest, snorkel, mask....flippers for a while) since it seemed so unnecessary with the clear water and I wanted to be able to dive down (with water that clear the bottom is much farther away than it looks!), but I still found it fun to use off and on.
We were sad to leave and made declarations of our plans to return before we left. There were some humpback whales breaching and cavorting along the way back, which helped us get over our sadness at leaving a bit. For the record, I've been on whale watches before, but never have I seen whales jump this high out of the water! At first when the captain mentioned whales had been sighted, and everyone was running from one side of the deck to the other trying to see them, I just rolled my eyes figuring it was one of those things tours get tourists to do....maybe there would be a tail on the horizon...but, as I've noted before, Australia is not a place for exagarration. There is no need.
The next morning we were picked up by a van to take us to the Kuranda "sky rail" (a sort of gondola that goes up a mountain). We had sort of been cannoodled into the van pick up since it is very hard to do things tour free in this town. This ride wasn't so bad though as we were the only passengers and the driver was interesting. At first he was a bit surly and mentioned something about "spending daddies money" which further confirmed my idea of this as a backpackers town, but once it was established that we were older than we looked and only staying at the backpackers because we were cheap, we got on right as rain. His mum had died a few years ago and his dad was coping by travelling the world!
The skyrail was pretty neat, even though we were stuck in our car with an infant (not by itself). It takes you up over the top of the rainforest so you can see the canopy, cockatoos, butterflies, waterfalls and lots of mist. It was, unsurprisingly, drizzling which I thought added to the effect, but apparently people usually take the train up and the skyrail back because the mist clears off a bit in the afternoon. The gondolas stop at a few spots so you can stop and wander a little way into the rainforest. I was sort of surprised at how similar I found the rainforest up here to be to the one we had seen in Melbourne. Considering how much closer to the equator we were in Cairns I expected it to be denser or more lush or something. There were different trees and a lot more vines and basket ferns (they grow in the upper nooks of big trees to catch some light, forming 'baskets') which Dylan adored, but overall it was not as different as I would have imagined. Of course I am not botanist and may have felt differently were I trying to forge a path through this fauna.
The skyrail ended up in the treetop town of Kuranda which was very quaint and pretty but a bit odd. It was mostly one main street of stores that were obviously tourist orientated. They were more artsy and crafty than the stores in Cairns, but I couldn't help but feeling a bit like the skyrail had been built with the express purpose of funnelling tourists to this outside mall in the rainforest. I really wonder what it is like there after all the tourists run back to the 5pm last skyrail or train. Outside of the main street it is very quiet and there are really only a few streets of houses before whatever more of the town there is disappears into the rainforest. We wandered around as many rainforest paths as we could and, yes, did some shopping. We were incredibly fatigued, and as much as we kept trying to tell ourselves it was just because we were coming to the end of a long trip, it was starting to be obvious that we were getting a tad ill.
We took the scenic railway back to Cairns past gorges and the same waterfalls we had seen from on high on the way up. It really was very scenic, but much too slow. I felt a bit guilty about it, but I fell asleep for a bit. In my defense I was coming down with a cold and other people nodded off too. There was an audio track telling the story of the miners and explorers who had built the railway, however our car was full of Japanese people and since their guide was busily interpreting everything the audio track said into Japanese, we got a rather skewed idea of the history I imagine. The last entry in my notebook for this day was: "our journey is nearing an end and we are getting very weary. This day was nothing compared to days past but we are tuckered."
And so we were. Our last day we so wanted to go back out on the reef, but money, tiredness and our stupid low grade cold kept us away. It was probably a good thing though since our "low grade cold" decided to upgrade that morning. It quickly moved into my lungs (I read somewhere that a very dry atmosphere (could it have gotten much drier than Alice Springs!) can cause colds to become bronchitis especially if you've had it before...which I had only a few months ago) so I prepared myself for a super long plane ride back. In the end our last day was spent puttering around Cairns and preparing for our trip home super early the next morning. We visited a pioneer cemetery and strolled the esplanade. I swam in the esplanade pool and we did some reading under some beautiful fig trees when the clouds overflowed. It was a very lazy tropical day. And as tired as I was....part of me was sad to go. 
Recommendations if you go to Cairns: Check it out but there probably isn't a compelling need to stay in the city itself. Many people on travel boards recommended we stay in Port Douglas and I only didn't take them up on it because we were only in town for 3 days and our reef trip left from Cairns. Also I wanted to be near the airport since we had a 5am flight (although it turned out we didn't. When we got to the airport we were told that flight no longer existed! Ah...no worries...we got another one). Port Douglas has beaches and is supposedly less tourist central. It is also a gateway to the Daintree Rainforest which, while I liked Kuranda, might be more worthwhile for the money.
I would also do a live aboard reef trip. These take you out on the reef for 1-3 nights (or more) and you get to sleep on the boat with possible night dives. I wasn't sure about the conditions of the seas (I'd been told they could get really rough in August but they weren't when we were there) or if we wanted to spend that much when I was planning this trip, but now I definitely wish we had done that. The reef needed way more time.