Ay! there's that Rock

Awesome flight from Cairns to Ayers Rock. The Red Center of Australia, it's called this because it's red......wow. And this is where the alien rock they call Uluru lives.

In the "Uluru/Kata Tjuta" park the are two rock outcroppings, Uluru aka Ayres Rock, which is a single solid rock-and about 45km's away is a series of giant rocks called the Olgas or Kata Tjuta. Flat for 1000 of km's in either way around them. Both are very sacred places for the Aboriginal people, and should not be climbed! I was thinking a curse of the Pharaoh type scenario, so I did not climb. People do climb the rock though....pricks, they will get the curse.

The town only consists of 1 hotel, 1 store ($50 6 packs of beer), 1 restaurant, and home to the biggest spiders in the world....think you're hand walking around. Brooke being an awful arachniphobe was not keen on this feature.

So for the next two days we cruised around the desert in our little Hyundai seeing the sights, taking hikes and watching the sun rise and set. Really amazing place.

S.S. Puke

Finally, the Great Barrier Reef. This has been something I have wanted to do my entire life. Considering the GBR is diminishing tremendously by the day and may not even be around in 20 years, I feel very lucky to have seen it with my own eyes.

Being the pirates Micah and I are (or wish we were), we hopped onto the super tough ship that would take us out the the GBR. It was more like a luxury catamaran than a ship, and with a name like "Reef Magic", I guess we aren't such pirates after all. Anyways, the day was nice and sunny, the seas a bit rough, but we could handle it. Micah popped a couple of ginger pills to avoid sea-sickness and off we went.

Ok, so, have any of you seen the movie Problem Child 2? You know that puke scene when they are on the ride at the fair, where one person pukes then another one follows and it's just a giant puke fest? Well, I felt like I was smack dab in the middle of that scene about 15 minutes into the 1 1/2 hour ride out to the GBR. People were puking left and right, running towards the back of the boat with full cheeks and green faces. I know it sounds gross, but it was actually quite comical . . . I think because we were practically the only ones who did not get sick.

We finally arrived at "Marine World" which is an anchored down, big snorkeling platform that lays beside a part of the GBR. Our boat pulled up beside and it was time to get in the water!!!! With snorkels on and fins flapping, we were the first ones in the water and the first ones to get our photo taken with "Wally" the Maori Wrase fish. He lives in that area of the reef and is very friendly. He swam right up to us for his photo-op.

I cannot even begin to describe the beauty of the coral and fish. It was so beautiful and bright, I'm talking full on 80's under the water, not just the temp, but the colors. Everything was fluorescent blue, green, pink, etc. It looked like al the fish were wearing zinc oxide on their faces.

We took a quick break from snorkeling and took a ride in a semi-submersible boat where we got to see more of the reef, the really deep parts and a lot more coral. We stayed out there for about five hours and came back to port feeling great. We dropped off our amazing van and stayed in a hotel where we slept for a few hours, tomorrow . . . Ayers Rock!!

xo

Brooke