The Great Australian Adventure, Part 1!

Wow, Australia! What a wonderful time we had. First, I'm happy to report that I spent absolutely zero days in Australian hospitals this time around. I know, that's a lofty accomplishment for me and my guts. Second, Australia is absolutely amazing (especially outside a hospital bed) and we could not have had more fun. Third, as much fun as we had, it feels SO good to be home!

Turns out we took about eight million photos on our trip, so I'm going to break up the trip post into several smaller, more manageable posts. I promise to update every other day until the whole trip is posted, ok? Pinkie promise.

Without further adieu, I present to you the first Geib family vacation to Australia. And I say first because we loved it so much, we're sure we'll go back!

Our first morning in Australia, we awoke to a beautiful sunrise with the warm, golden rays of sunlight on our very sleepy faces. In all honestly, we would have been perfectly happy staying in bed but the Great Barrier Reef awaited us. We threw on swimsuits and sunglasses and headed to the reef terminal to board the yacht that promised to cart us off to the magical reef. In luxury of course. But the ocean had other plans for us.

See, the weather was a little bit hairy so to speak, and to say the waters were rough would be a severe understatement. The boat was rocking so hard due to a combination of it's high speed with huge waves. We were rocking so hard that for one second, looking out the window, you would see nothing but sapphire blue water and the next moment you'd see cloudy skies. Up, down, up down, over and over again. Benjamin and I are usually not prone to seasickness but even we felt a little rough. And Caroline... oh poor, Sweet Caroline. She apparently gets seasick. No, we weren't aware of that. I was made aware of that fact as she projectile vomited down the front of my dress. I folded my dress over while she laid her head down on me and slept the rest of the trip, which was an hour and a half. So Caroline suffers from seasickness... NOTED.

Luckily, once we made it out to the reef and the boat was anchored, Caroline turned from sheet white to pale green to soft yellow to creamy beige. She was ready to play! We spent the next couple of hours playing in the water with Caroline while Benjamin and I took turns snorkeling the reef. The reef, by the way, was amazing! There were fish everywhere (some bigger than us) and so much beautiful coral to explore. The storms had passed for the most part and we had a great time. But then it was time for the yacht to take us to the next coral reef. Yikes!

This time the ride was only ten minutes in relatively calmer water. Caroline still turned several shades of green, but she didn't lose her lunch. (My dress and I were both very relieved.) Snorkeling ensued, Caroline laughed and played and we had a lot of fun. Before we knew it, it was time to head back to Cairns. But fortunately, instead of taking the boat back, we had booked a helicopter back to land. I was thanking my lucky stars for that booking because I couldn't imagine tormenting Caroline with another long boat ride!

The helicopter made it's way to the helipad next to the reef we were snorkeling and we eagerly boarded.


Off we went, into the beautiful skies, to see the reef from a whole new perspective!



Yours truly served as the copilot! Er, that's what I called myself at least, but I think I was formally known as a front seat passenger. And I did no actual copiloting. Formally. Fine, actually.

Here are backseat passengers number 1 and 2... at the start of the flight....

and here they are again maybe ten minutes later. Caroline obviously inherited my ability to sleep anywhere.

Here Caroline and I are, back on solid ground, with a nasty storm rolling in!

A family shot in front of the helicopter:

We made our way back to hotel, got cleaned up, marveled at how beautiful the ocean was from our balcony and promptly fell into a coma-like sleep.

Day 2 of the trip arrived before we knew it and we were off into to a wildlife safari about an hour northwest of Cairns for Breakfast with the Beasts. I think the three of us Geibs can safely say that we never want to be in the middle of a pride of hungry lions again! We stood in between two fences, each keeping lions licking their chops from totally devouring us. The pride has 25 lions and they were truly magnificent animals. Gorgeous, wild, hungry, animals.

The zookeeper threw chicken pieces over the fence for them, which between growling at each other, they happily ate. Check out the video... it's worth it! You'll notice that four of the lions are separated on a different side of the enclosure than the rest of the pride. That's because the pride leader (who has fathered the entire pride) would likely attack his un-neutered adult sons. They're not meant to live in the same prides their entire lives. However, if the sons are neutered, they aren't perceived as a threat and are allowed to remain in the pride by their father. It seems like a pretty sweet deal for all involved, as they don't have to worry about being hunted and enjoy some pretty awesome living accommodations and seem very content.

Here's what Caroline thought about being surrounded by a pack of hungry beasts:

For you eagle eyes who noticed that the four lions on the left side of the sidewalk never got chicken, here's why: one of them had an injured paw and the veterinarian needed to examine him. The best way to entice him into being examined is with food, so his (and his brothers') snack was coming as soon as the vet got there.

After feeling pretty low on the food chain, we enjoyed a delightful breakfast and explored the rest of the safari. We were lucky enough to see the hippos being fed. We were also lucky enough to watch them poop. Did you know that when they poop, their tail fans in a continuous circle pattern so that their poop is sprayed out in a projectile-like fashion? And that they can fart through their nose? Us either. The more you know, folks.

Here are the hungry hippos.... and don't worry, no projectile pooping or farting was captured. Caroline is in the last few seconds of the video, so if you want to hear her saying "hippos!" listen for it then.

Caroline got bored a few minutes into the feeding and she befriended the little girl pictured below. She talked away to this little girl and at one point I heard her saying "That Mama and that Dada" while pointing Benjamin and I out. I think my heart totally melted. Oh, to have her be at an age where we're still cool enough to her to tell her friends about! (By the way... see that yellow sticker the little girl is wearing? Story about that upcoming!)

These guys walked by, all the while acting like the humans were the ones being observed and not the animals.

We had a blast exploring the safari for a while with gems along the way such as realizing a bear was 5 feet behind me... literally. The conversation went like this: Benjamin: Wow, look at that bear! Me: What bear? Benjamin: The one right behind you. Me: You're such a liar... oh snap, it's a f^%$#@* BEAR! Thank God for fences.

We left the safari behind to go a little further east to explore the tropical rain forest. Upon exiting the car, we realized we could take our yellow stickers off. I forgot to mention it earlier, but we had to wear the stickers so that we could access the lion feeding and breakfast. The stickers peeled right off and Benjamin threw his away. I did what any mature adult would do and stuck my sticker to the nearest part of Benjamin to me... his leg. Haha, right? Yeah, except for the sticker... stuck. HARD. In between laughing, I apologized, but wow, that thing was stuck. Benjamin had to take the whole band-aid approach and ripped it off... along with a perfect square of his leg hair. Sorry honey. Like really, sorry. *Snicker.* We both laughed about it though and no one noticed my husband and his cool new geometric wax job.

We boarded the Skyrail, which is like a gondola-meets-ski lift contraption that takes you insanely high in the air for an aerial tour of the beautiful tropical rain forest below. In this next picture, you can see the Skyrail station behind me, where we had just departed from. Behind that is the ocean. Completely gorgeous, even on a cloudy day!

Here's Benjamin, looking so very modelesque. Or maybe that's a pained expression as he rubbed his leg, who knows.

The Skyrail lets you off at a couple of places along the way so that you can explore. At the first stop, we took a tour of the rain forest. The guide pointed out some really neat vegetation and animals. Turns out the jungle is a pretty unsafe place to be and you'd never know how dangerous half of the things around you are! (Benjamin probably wants me to add in that those dangerous things at times include your wife.)

Caroline really enjoyed the forest.

I promise.

No, she really wasn't terrified, I swear!

See?!

Here's an amazing tree we walked by. I can't remember what it's called because I was so amazed by how huge it was that I totally wasn't listening to the forest ranger. Oops. But it's one of the only trees that plants can't grow up, which is a huge deal (and survival mechanism) in the rain forest.

It was incredibly tall too. The pictures just don't do it justice. It was a monster!

We boarded the Skyrail after the tour and were honestly a little relieved to leave some of the forest's scary vegetation behind. (Seriously, some of the plants were horrible! The ranger told us about how if certain plants touched you, spikes from the plant would embed, become infected and randomly grow back out of your skin for months, all while burning with a horrifically bad pain. As parents of a very active toddler, we were relieved to leave that threat behind!) So off into the sky we went!

Our second stop was at Barron Falls.

We're totally not ashamed of the fact that sometimes we tickle our toddler to get her to smile for pictures.

We knew to expect some pretty waterfalls, but we both expected gentle waterfalls escaping down carved clearings in the forest. Not so, my friends. These waterfalls were violent and magestic, all at once. Don't believe me? Watch the video:

Here's a family shot of us at the falls. Caroline didn't get the memo to smile.

She did get the naptime memo though. As soon as we made our way back to the skyrail after gawking at the falls, she was out.

Thus, I was able to get a picture of her gorgeous new little freckles!

After departing the skyrail for the afternoon, we were left to explore the neat village of Kuranda. It's mainly known as a tranquil little shopping village with lots of aboriginal flair. Well wouldn't you know it, a full out street brawl between some aboroginals broke out and since we had shopped our hearts out at that point, we decided to leave. We took our newly purchased fresh honey ( Kairi Honey for Benjamin and Vanilla Honey for me) and hightailed it for the train station. Only when we got to the train station, it was... closed! Turns out that due to the heavy storms that had passed through, a huge landslide covered the train tracks in mud. The train was hit by the mudslide and six passengers were injured. We felt awful for the people who had been injured but were grateful to have not been on board that day. You all know how I feel about hospitalizations and Australia....

With a bit of time to kill before the Skyrail could take us back in leiu of the train, we did some shopping. Benjamin found a Crocodile Dundee style hat that he wanted to model for you guys. The picture is a little blurry because I was afraid pictures weren't allowed to be taken in the shop, but it's great nonetheless.

Once we made it home, untouched by the weather, the mudslide and the street brawl, we went to.... TARGET! Yes, there is a Target in Cairns. Unfortunately, it's nothing like Targets in the States and I left sorely disappointed. But we had Kangaroo for dinner and while I meant to snap a picture, there was none left to photograph. It was that delicious and cured me from the disappointment of Target!

After a night's rest, we boarded a plane and headed south to Sydney!

To be continued!!!!