Marc & Nora ROUND THE WORLD 2005/2006 - Join us!

When we got back to Airlie Beach it was raining like cats and dogs. NONSTOP! everything was flooded, the sail trips for the next day were cancelled due to heavy winds! it was horrible, especially when you camp! everything was wet, nothing dried, all driers on the campsite were full, the 2 minutes walk from the van to the toilets was a disaster as you d arrive soaken wet!

the next day same scenario. kat, eleanor, marc and i left for cairns. hoping for better weather up north but all the locals told us that the more north we are heading the more wet it gets. apparently there was a cyclone over cairns and nobody was sure about its development.

up north in tropical queensland you only get a weather forecast for 2 days max as everything can change so quickly.

on the way up we still had rain. for 3 days it hasnt stopped! the more north we came the more crocodile warnings we saw. some signs were hardly visible as the roads were so flooded!!

kat's auntie karline and her uncle michael are running a campsite in townsville and we were invited to stay there with kat and eleanor. when we arrived dinner was ready. Oh man, what a feast! it is quite handy to have a chef as a son. Brock (the son) cooked a fantastic mediterranean chicken. the next day we were pampered again with some great seafood dinner: prawns, squid, fish - even sushi was served! i havent eaten anything as good for a very very long time!!!! karline and michael were so lovely, they even offered us to stay in a cabin!

Another funny surprise was that Troy, their 2nd son is engaged to an Austrian girl. I got to meet Ingrid, a really cool Viennese girl with even less Austrian roots than me. She met Troy Christmas 2004, fell head over heels in love and packed all her belongings and moved to Oz 2 months ago. Coming July her and troy get married!

The 2nd day in Townsville the bad weather stopped. We had sunshine - yeah! We decided to check out Crystal Creek, a freshwater pool with waterfall etc.

The creeks were great! so much freshwater and some cool streams where you could simply lay back and you would slide from one rock to another.

The next day we went to town and visited the Aquarium in Townsville (Reef HQ) which was very impressive! (it has the world biggest living coral reef in the aquarium).

After a coffee with Troy and Ingrid we continued our trip North.

We stopped for one night in Mission Beach and the day after we arrived in Cairns.

Eleanor had her belly button pierced and kat, marc and i booked up a 2 day diving trip later that week.
as eleanor was leaving the next day we went to the atherton tablelands to see some more impressive waterfalls.