This is our second trip to Cairns 🙂 Looks like we are destined to be here again. Our friends from India asked us to join them on their Great Barrier Reef trip and we were okay with that idea, as we had some leaves left in December. My friends’ Australia trip got cancelled unfortunately and we ended up in Cairns, as we booked flight tickets already. It was a sad trip to start with, as we missed our friends along. We decided to cheer ourselves up by taking up a challenge, to plan a perfect trip without touching any of those places on our previous trip.

Day 1: Great Barrier Reef Scenic flight

We took a morning flight from Sydney and reached Cairns by lunch time. After having a yummy pizza, we went on to explore the helicopter options to explore Great Barrier Reef. During our last trip to Cairns, we laughed looking at the helicopters, wondering how they would be able to see the reef from air. It felt very funny that we added this as our first thing to do in Cairns ;). We were curious on what we will be able to see from air and didn’t want to miss it. We realized that helicopter trips are costly and found an alternative in the form of scenic flights over the Great Barrier Reef, which offers a similar experience to a helicopter. We chose GSL scenic flight which costed us around 219A$ pp for 40mins of trip to outer reef and back. https://gslaviation.com.au/cairns/reefhopper

The scenic flight is a private chartered flight which has a capacity of 7 passengers. As we were getting ready to board the flight, we got to know that the four other people who were supposed to be on the flight couldn’t make it and that we got lucky to fly on a private flight for just two of us 🙂 We felt very happy for the upgrade and that we get to spend more time on the reef! I was extremely excited to explore the GBR from air.

The flight took off pretty smoothly, and our first sight of reef was at the Green Island, the famous heart shaped island of the reef. It was an extremely beautiful island, located at around 27kms from Cairns. It is a pretty famous island with many boat tours.

An extremely colorful coral cay appeared after the island and it was completely breath taking 🙂 It felt like a perfect canvas painted by nature. I couldn’t take my eyes off this place and hands off my camera.

Then I witnessed something magical, a huge reef (Arlington Reef) appeared below and it felt as if two different oceans merged at that place. I couldn’t resist clicking photos, but none of them looked closer to reality.

We flew over the outer reef (Hastings reef) and turned back to reach Cairns.

It was an amazing journey, it was rightly named as scenic flight which felt completely worth the cost. The Great Barrier Reef can be seen from outer space and is the world’s biggest single structure made by living organisms. I could imagine how it could have appeared from space 🙂

We returned back to the Cairns airport, said good bye to our pilots and started our journey to Palm Cove for our night stay.

After an evening walk at the Palm cove beach, we relaxed for the day. It felt like a perfect start to our Cairns trip 🙂 Tomorrow, we will be exploring the reef by boat.

Day 2: Outer reef day tour by boat

We booked a day trip from Cairns to Flynn reef(outer reef) via Silverswift operator, located in a different direction from the previous reef that we visited.

The boat stopped at three different places on the outer reef for an hour each at each place for snorkeling.

This experience is similar to the one which we went on our last trip, just that the coral reef structure is a bit different. The special part of this trip is that we hired an underwater camera on the boat and tried to click pictures. You can find more details about my snorkeling experience here: https://lifetravelfantasy.com/2019/12/16/snorkellinggbr/

We returned back to Cairns by around 4:30pm. It was an extremely hot day and we were completely exhausted by end of the day. We reached our hotel in the evening and relaxed for the day.

Day 3: Fitzroy Island day tour

After a lot of contemplation on what should be done on our 3rd day, we decided to go on Fitzroy island day tour, as it was recommended by many locals. This one was a flexible tour with multiple start time options. We decided to go leisurely after two hectic days and booked the 11am ferry.

There were multiple combos available on this tour: 1. Just transfer 2. Transfer + glass boat 3. Transfer +Glass boat + snorkeling equipment. We decided to take the complete package including glass boat and snorkeling equipment for around 100A$. We packed our own lunch as we didn’t much like the options available on the island.

Fitzroy island earlier used to be a part of the main land and got separated by increased sea water levels. It has the rain forest similar to the forest on the main land and bonus reef around the island.

It took around 45mins to reach the island, after which we immediately took the glass boat tour to explore the reef around.

I expected to see only fishes on the glass bottomed boat and to my surprise, I found different kinds of coral reef structures underneath. It felt very tempting to get out of the boat and put the head below water to check the coral reef, as the actual color is reduced through the glass. After the snorkeling experience yesterday, the glass boat trip felt a bit underwhelming.

We went on snorkeling again at the island near the shore for an hour or so. We couldn’t find much coral at the place near the beach. As there were no instructors monitoring us, we decided not to venture deep into the sea and just swam near the beach.

It was extremely hot in the noon and we decided to get into the forest to escape the heat.

After a small track walk, we returned back to take our 4pm boat. It was almost a half day tour and we got very little time to explore the forests.

We were extremely ambitious in planning a trip to Fitzroy island, but we couldn’t even cover half of it and were tired due to intense summer heat. It was a bit disappointing day, but we couldn’t have done much under the strong sun. We reached our hotel in the evening and relaxed for the day.

Day 4: Cairns Aquarium, back to Sydney

We have our flight back to Sydney today around 4pm and so have time to explore Cairns in the morning. After yesterday’s ambitious plan failure, we decided to keep ourselves indoor and go to Cairns Aquarium. I didn’t have much expectations from the place and thought we could spend an hour easily there. The aquarium was very well organized and it contained all the species seen around Cairns. This place felt like a perfect summary of our two trips. It contained four different sections: Rainforest, Rivers, Reef and Oceanarium.

We got to know many interesting facts about the formation of rainforest and the reptiles in it. It felt scary to know that the world’s largest crocodile resides in Australia, particularly in the area near Cairns. We saw symbols of warnings about crocodiles along the beaches of Cairns and I could understand their seriousness now 😀

We got to look at all the different species of fish and marine life in the reef section and the aquarium. Although coral reefs comprise a tiny proportion of the Earth’s surface, they are home to around a quarter of all marine species. The coral reefs provide a perfect shelter to all these species and create a perfectly balanced ecosystem where in all these can co-exist.

The reef became very famous for the Clown fish (Nemo) and the surgeon fish(friend of Nemo) after the movie “Finding Nemo”. Though some people who went on snorkeling spotted those, we couldn’t spot them. The Oceanarium felt like a perfect place to see all those species that we missed during our snorkeling.

Finally, we got to know the history of coral reef formation. Around 20,000 years ago at the end of Ice age, the former coastline of Australia was flooded, creating the shallow Great Barrier Reef. As the water levels rose, islands far out to sea were completely submerged under the Coral sea.

That is how the reef runs parallel along the Australia’s coast. I initially thought that the reef can be seen in many Pacific islands too, but it is completely clear now.

In Australia, we are never disappointed with any sort of museum/displays. They offer a lot of knowledge and artifacts in an engaging way. Overall, Cairns Aquarium felt like a perfect place to be and a must recommend for anyone planning on a trip and it exceeded our expectations.

We had our lunch at a restaurant in the Cairns city center and started our journey back to airport. We parked our car near this strange tree and when we returned to the car, we observed a group of birds on the tree making strange sounds. That was when we observed a board below the tree that those are flying foxes. They looked scary when they fly, their face looked like a fox, but they have wings like a bat, which got their name flying foxes I guess.

We boarded our flight back to Sydney and then something unexpected happened. I could see the reef from the flight, which was what I hoped to see during our first landing. Finally, my wish of watching them from a regular flight also got fulfilled 🙂 It lasted for a long time and the plane flew parallel to the coast line of Australia treating us with great views of the reef from the window! Though these views are not as clear as the ones from the scenic flight, the colors below fascinated me. The Jet star flight on our previous journey didn’t take this route, Qantas airlines this time flew along the reef.

It felt like a perfect ending to our Cairns trip 🙂 I loved the trip and absolutely enjoyed every minute of it. I was more attached to this place because of the natural beauty and various marine species there. I wish the coral reefs continue to grow and provide shelter to many more fishes.

We landed back in Sydney by sunset. Btw, we got to learn an interesting thing from a lecture in aquarium that fishes can remember our faces. Ever since I got to know about that, I waved at all the fishes in the aquarium hoping that at least one remembers me 🙂