FRIDAY, FEB 12TH--CAIRNS, AUSTRALIA

Finally some nice weather. We docked in Cairns, Australia, at 7am today. Cairns is on the east coast on north corner of Australia. Tourism is #1 here with sugar cane production as #2 for local economy. The two big tourism attractions are The Great Barrier Reef and the Australian tropical rainforest. Our excursion this morning was to visit the tropical rainforest. Our tour bus took us west of city past some sugar cane fields to the base of a mountain where the rainforest was. There we boarded the “Skyrail” which is the world’s longest gondola ride at 4.7 miles long. It took us over the rainforest with a stop at the beautiful Barron Gorge and Falls. My pictures of the falls cannot depict the true beauty of the falls with rainbows formed from the sun shining through the fall’s mist. Then back in the gondola to continue over the rainforest to the little rainforest village of Kuranda. The tropical rainforest canopy was so dense below us that only 1 to 2% of the sunlight ever reaches the floor of the forest. The trees stretch over 100 feet up seeking the sunlight. There are over 1000 known species of plants down below us. At Kuranda we shopped (oh, boy!) for an hour before boarding our bus for the ride back down the mountain and back to our ship. On the tour with us were Carolyn & Allan from Dallas and Jane & Martin from Las Vegas. In addition to the six of us, Caroline and Don, our next door neighbors from Nashville, will dine in Compass Rose tonight. All 4 of our suites are close together on starboard side of deck 6. I have requested the chef prepare veal parmesan for all of us again tonight. Garlic bread too!! Anyway, we all loved our tour today and were thankful for no thunderstorms as forecast. This afternoon it is mostly sunny, 85F, and 80% humidity. Sure beats the record snowfall that Dallas had today. Our Pensacola friends say they were also having snow flurries today. Global warming???? Ok, now let me backup. We went to Wink Martindale’s lecture about game shows at 6pm yesterday evening. I got a picture of Wink and Rebecca that I will add soon. They are traveling with another couple from LA so we ask if the four of them would join us for dinner and he gave us his suite number and said to call and set it up. He had just refused that same request by couple in front of us. Last night we joined Allan & Carolyn up in the less formal La Veranda restaurant where Allan had arranged for us to have blackened salmon for dinner. Well, the chef’s idea of blackened was “burnt”! We all had a good laugh though. I ended up with lasagna. After dinner we went to the show. The seas FINALLY calmed down and we had a very smooth ride yesterday evening and all of last night. We don’t sail until 11pm tonight and will be at sea again tomorrow. Looking forward to show tonight as it is with the ship’s young singers and dancers. Seems I may be coming down with a cold, yuk!