It's time for another update from northern Queensland.

My last email was from the small city Bundaberg.  It was a really beautiful city - lots of flowers, trees, and birds.  In fact, the birds were so numerous and loud in parts of the city you couldn't hear yourself think.  I wonder what the locals think of all that racket?!

The next day I got up early and left by 7 AM to ride the 500 miles to Airlie Beach.  The weather was good, and the roads were decent 2-lane.  I made it to Airlie by about 4 PM and found the same tourist park I stayed in 7 years ago.  I got the same little cabin with my own peacocks, toads, and countless geckos climbing on everything.  Not a bad place to sit outside my door and drink a beer. 

Yesterday I booked a snorkeling trip out to Blue Pearl Bay.  What an awesome place!!!  We snorkeled right from the beach.  Right at the start I was amazed that the beach looked like white sand, but it was really just piles of white coral!  Quite lovely, but painful on the feet.

Right off the beach the coral piles went out a few feet, then the live coral began.  All different shapes and colors.  And there were thousands of fish.  At one point they threw fish food into the water around us, and the fish went into a feeding frenzy, jumping out of the water, bumping into us, it was crazy.  This bay was definitely more lively than my last trip out to the Barrier Reef.

In the evening I went into AB for dinner.  On the ride into town I saw a flying fox (a very large bat) fly right over me and land in a palm tree near the road, hanging upside down and swaying on the branch.  This thing was the size of a real fox!  Very cool!

Today I got up early again and rode 400 miles up to Cairns.  The morning ride was kind of boring through fairly flat fields, but in the afternoon I got into the tropical forests and mountains.  The weather was nice but started getting warm (mid 80s I'd guess) in the afternoon.

I managed to get sunburned yesterday, even though I used sunscreen.  So I decided to take a tour up to the Daintree/Tabletops rainforest tomorrow instead of more snorkeling.  This is supposed to be an excellent tour where we'll hike and look for platypuses (is that the plural of platypus?!  Close enough I guess)  I also expect to see lots of birds and maybe some kangaroos.  I'll let you know how the rainforest is.

So far I've ridden 1,800 miles and the bike is running excellently (knock on wood!)

I'll talk to you all soon.  With my love,

Story