Day 1 – Port Douglas – Australia

It is well past time that I share our trip to Australia!  After the fun of so fun plane ride to the land of Oz.  We quickly jumped on a connection plane to Cannes…where we also had to jump in a rental car to go Port Douglas which is a great port city along the Great Barrier Reef.   At this point we were pretty tired and arrived around 5pm so we quickly showered, grabbed a bit to eat and a quick drink (to help with sleep) and went to bed early.  We had arranged a snorkeling trip for early the next day with our hotel the Le Cher De Monde.  Would highly recommend staying there if you are in Port Douglas!

We were excited (Shawn more so than me) to see the Great Barrier Reef for the first time.  Him being an scuba guy has always wanted to see this part of the world.  Our boat was extremely nice – the crew was amazing – and we head out.  I would be a complete failure at travel blogging if I said this was the more amazing snorkeling and reef we have ever seen.  It just simply was not.  I am not sure if we as humans are killed it but something is a miss there.  The marine life was magical but the coral was in rough shape.  

All in all it was a great adventure and we would do it all again!  I was able to squeeze in a quick run before the boat where I discovered trees full of ruin bats which we quickly became obsessed with.  So I took Shawn back there for some jaw dropping bat watching.

Ironically we had learned that a couple friend from Charlotte was going to be doing a similar trip to ours…so we went to meet them for dinner in Cannes that evening where we witnessed a full riot bat migration at sunset.  We had a wonderful meal with Joey and Lauren and got to explore some of the local seafood. I write reviews for most of the places we eat on Trip Advisor.  Feel free to check those out here.

All in all it was a great first day in the northern region of Australia.