Great Barrier Reef here we come!

Rainbow at Bondi Beach

I have to let you all know that we going to be off-line for a while – we have arrived in Cairns (North East Oz) and are about to embark on a 4 night dive cruise.  And the boat has no internet access.  In this day and age!  So, much to my dismay, I won’t be able to watch the Royal Wedding.  Sniff!  Okay, I’m sure they’ll re-broadcast it over, and over, and over again.  So, I’ll see it eventually.

Check out the tatoo!

The point of the expedition is to dive the Great Barrier Reef, something I’ve been wanting to do for a very long time.  And now the day has arrived!  We’ve been lugging our wet-suits all across the world, so they will finally be put to some good use.

We arrived in Australia 2 days ago, landing in Sydney.  Andy, having lived there back in the day, gave me a whirlwind tour of the city yesterday.  Scenes from “Finding Nemo” came to mind.  We managed to see all the famous landmark synonymous with Sydney: the Harbour Bridge, Opera House, Darling Harbour (pronounced “Dahling Haaba” if you’re an Aussie), Bondi Beach, the Fish Market, Sydney Tower etc.  (Weird to think that the first foreign settlers (including convicts) arrived in the late 1700’s!)

Sydney Harbour

It’s a really pretty city.  Very cosmopolitan, so probably not representative of the rest of Australia.  And freakin expensive!  The Aussie Dollar is currently costing us R7.20 (compared to R6.59 for the US Dollar).  A banana from the supermarket cost us the equivalent of R21 yesterday – what the heck??  And I thought the US was expensive.  Hopefully our Rand will go further when we reach South East Asia.

Okay, so, goodbye for a few days.  (Hope all you South Africans are making good use of all the public holidays!)