The Australia Chronicles, Part 3: Heron Island

Thanks for being so patient with me, it wasn't nice of me to leave you hanging for so long. But I'm UBER excited to tell you about the next leg of our trip -- Heron Island. Be warned: you might get sick of all the beautiful blue in the following pictures.

Our trip to Heron got off to a bit of a rocky start. You see, Heron is an island resort on the Great Barrier Reef that is only accessible via boat or helicopter. We were to get to Heron via their boat, the Heron Islander.



Looks pretty nice, huh?

It should have been renamed the Vomit Comet.

Guys, the water was SO rough. It's a two-hour boat ride, and even though the boat was pretty big, everyone got so sick. The staff was great, passing out cool rags and ice chips, but it wasn't enough to keep me from finally tossing my cookies just 5 minutes before we got to the island.

During the ride you're thinking "what could possibly be worth this god awful boat ride?" And then you get to Heron, and you understand.

It's just beyond beautiful. I've never seen blue like that before. You just couldn't get used to it. Every time we walked out of our room, and saw that blue water, it took my breath away.

Heron is fairly small, and the only thing on island is the resort (with guest rooms, a restaurant, a pool and bar, and a dive shop) and a research station run by the University of Queensland.

There are no phones or TVs in the rooms, no locks on the doors and everything you buy is charged to your room, so you never have to keep up with a room key or cash.

Our room (a "turtle room") was super cute and quaint, with its own porch.









After settling in, we took a walk around the island.





We had our first ray sighting:

At any time on the island, you could go to the water's edge and spot rays, sharks or sea turtles.

Even the jetty was beautiful:



Then of course we had to hit up happy hour:



After showering, we headed to dinner. Dinner on Heron each night was a 3-course meal from a set menu, and was honestly a little too fancy for our taste. But we made up for it during breakfast and lunch, which were served buffet style and were delicious. After dinner, we headed to bed early to rest up for a day full of snorkeling, sun and fun.

Unfortunately, we woke up to pouring rain. And it stayed that way pretty much all day:



We were super bummed, especially since we only had 2 full days on the island, but tried to make the best of it. We went snorkeling, even though the water was COLD (thank goodness for wet suits). Since Heron is literally on the Reef, you can just swim off the beach (at high tide) and do some pretty great snorkeling, like swimming with this fella:





During low tide, we went on a reef walk, where you can use viewing tubes to look at the reef life.







The rest of the day was spent reading (I got so sucked in by The Hunger Games -- have you read the series yet??) and just generally lounging around and being bored. Heron is all about being outside, in the water and enjoying the island, so when the weather doesn't cooperate there isn't much to do.

So you can imagine our excitement when Day 3 dawned bright and blue.



We took full advantage with more snorkeling (with a shovel-nosed ray!, an eel, and some bright blue starfish)...













And an afternoon of sunbathing on the deck...



And ended the day with a fantastic sunset...

A few more random shots from Heron:

And I can't leave our time on Heron without telling you about the birds. They were everywhere. The black noddy terns (above) were nesting all over the island and little brown chickens begged for your food on the pool deck. But these were nothing compared to the mutton birds, who flew in to the island at night to nest.

There were earplugs in every room, and we soon found out why. Those mutton birds sound EXACTLY like crying babies, right outside your door. It's so creepy. They'd tune up around 2 or 3 every morning and they were LOUD. But it was nothing the earplugs couldn't solve, and even though I'm still not a big fan of birds, the birdlife definitely added to the natural, unspoiled feel of the island.

But all too soon, our time on Heron was up. Because we were leaving on a Saturday, our travel agent had to book us on a helicopter flight for our return trip, so we wouldn't miss our flight back to Brisbane. Even though it was MUCH more expensive than the boat trip, we had heard it was an awesome experience and worth the extra money. And after the nauseating trip to get to Heron, I was SO glad not to have to get on that boat again.

The heli ride turned out to be by far our favorite experience of the whole trip. We had never been in a helicopter before, so that in itself was cool. I'm sure any scenic helicopter ride would be great, but I'm not sure anything can compare to a helicopter ride over the Great Barrier Reef.

It was magical.

Our pilot was great. He explained what we were seeing the entire time and took us "cloud surfing," which he compared to being on a magic carpet ride. It was a bit dizzying but absolutely amazing.

And then we smiled and waved at the Heron Islander down below and thanked our lucky stars that we weren't on that boat:

All too fast, the 30-minute ride was over and we were headed to our final destination -- Brisbane. More on that later (and I promise not to make you wait so long this time).

Tightwad Tuesday: Web Deals

I haven't done a Tightwad Tuesday post in forever, but the holidays are approaching and there are some websites I need to tell you about.

(Side note -- I just slipped and typed "Tightwade" Tuesday. Flash of genius? Maybe there's a future for TightWade Tuesdays??)

Anywho, first up are local team buying sites. Each day, they email you a local deal that's only valid for that day:

• Groupon
• Twongo
• Living Social

The way most of them work is that the more people who buy the deal, the lower the price goes (until a limit is reached). Through these sites I've purchased a spa mani and pedi for $30, a $20 certificate to our favorite butcher shop for $10, Coldstone gift certificates, and a 2 hour house cleaning service for $36.

If you're not in the Raleigh-Durham area, each site offers lots of other (usually major) cities. Or, you might find a deal so good that it's worth the drive to your state's capital.

Next, there are shopping sites like Rue La La and ideeli. I'm new to ideeli, but am loving me some Rue La La. Each day you get an email telling you the sales, or "boutiques," starting that day. Sales usually last around 2-3 days, but good items will sell out fast. There are fashion brands, housewares brands, and travel/resort sales.

Lee and I had talked about upgrading our food processor, and when Rue La La had a Cuisinart boutique, I snapped up a fancy one for half off. Yesterday, they had a Kate Spade and Kate Spade Home boutique. I was *thisclose* to buying sunglasses, but they're pretty hard to buy without trying on first. And it's a really good thing that the Kate Spade Home boutique didn't have any pieces from my china pattern or I might've easily dropped a paycheck there.

There's also woot.com. They do a single daily deal as well. Sometimes it's small stuff, like today's water leak alarms for $12.99. But a lot of the time it's tech related like laptops or flat screen TVs on the cheap. There are also home goods sometimes like kitchen appliances or Dyson vacuum cleaners. If it's a really good deal, they'll sell out pretty quickly. I haven't purchased anything on here yet but I've got my eye out for Dyson, Cuisinart and KitchenAid.

I'm sure there are thousands more of each of these sites, but these are the ones I frequent and can recommend. I should also mention, each of these sites reward you for referring friends (once your friend makes a purchase you get a $10 credit, for example). So if you decide to join any of them, make sure you use my links in this post, since I was kind enough to give you the scoop ;-)

And even though this isn't a deal site per se, don't forget Wishpot. I've found it super helpful over the past few weeks as I've been thinking of things I want on my Christmas list. I've also made a private list to store gift ideas for others. And they did send me an email recently saying that one of the items on my list had dropped in price, so that's pretty helpful.

Let me know if you luck up on any good deals, and happy shopping!

The Australia Chronicles, Part 2: Cairns

Our next stop was the tropical city of Cairns (pronounced "Cannes"). Cairns is a beautiful beach town surrounded by mountains.

As soon as we landed in Cairns and found it free of bugs and a comfortable 85 degrees, we were feeling much more at home. We checked into the Bay Village Tropical Retreat and headed down to the Esplanade.

The Cairns Esplanade is a waterfront section of shops, restaurants and public facilities like a boardwalk, pool, splash park, and skate park. This was where we went every night for dinner, shopping and to walk around. We loved the atmosphere of Cairns. Walking to dinner on a Sunday night, all of the public barbecue areas were packed with groups of people cooking and hanging out. Of the three cities we visited in Australia, if we had to pick one to live in it would definitely be Cairns.

One of the best parts about Cairns was happy hour. Our hotel had a great happy hour and we frequented it every night we were there, making friends with the bartender and soliciting restaurant recommendations from her each night. I think I drank at least 20 cranberry & vodkas at that bar. But we were on vacation, so it was ok.

On our second day in Cairns, we were booked on a catamaran cruise out to Michaelmas Cay on the Great Barrier Reef.

The weather was looking ominous and the ride out was rather rocky, but we manage to not get sick and the skies parted just as we reached the reef.

The snorkeling here was absolutely amazing. The pictures just do not do it justice. The coral was beautiful and colorful and there were fish EVERYWHERE. Big, small, colorful, gorgeous.

Lunch was a seafood buffet on the ship, followed by more snorkeling. Lee and I swam out further to get away from the other snorkelers and see a new part of the reef. By this time we had used up all of the film in our disposable underwater camera, and of course that was when we spotted a huge, beautiful sea turtle. Lee and I swam with him, all by ourselves, for about 10 minutes. It was amazing. We couldn't pull ourselves away. You could even hear him crunching on the coral he was eating underwater.

Finally we let him be and it was time to go on our semi-submersible boat tour, which is basically a glass bottomed boat that allows you to view the coral without getting wet.

Definitely not as fun as being in the water, but at least I did get my turtle picture:

The homeward sail was rocky again, but we slept some and champagne made it better.

Now, I want to pause here for a moment and talk to you about the bats. Australia has these huge bats, called fruit bats or "flying foxes." If you know that I don't like birds, you should know that I REALLY don't like bats. And these suckers were gigantic. And they all congregated in these certain tall fruit trees. Around 6:30 each night they would start flying around everywhere, usually when we were on the way to dinner.

Or one night in Kakadu when we were walking back to camp through the woods after watching the sunset. They kept swooping down at my head and it was getting dark. When we finally got out of those woods, the parents of the two young boys who were staying in the camp with us were telling the boys "you did so good, you were very brave."

Then Lee looked at me and told me the same thing. Then I looked at him and told him if he ever brought me to Australia and made me go walking in the woods at dusk with the fruits bats again, the marriage was OVER.

Anyway, of course Lee loved the bats and made the screechy bat noises the whole trip and took pictures of them.

Ok, no more about the bats. I'm getting worked up just thinking about them.

Our second day in Cairns was a tour of the Daintree rainforest. This was our ride:

Cape Tribulation:

Australia has some of the most deadly jellyfish:

Probably the coolest part of this tour was lunch, which was practically in the middle of the rainforest. Out of nowhere, they served us steak, fish, sausage, salads, bread and wine.

Then we stopped for ice cream at the Daintree ice cream company. The flavors that day (they all come from rainforest materials) were berry, jakfruit, wattleseed and soursop. I didn't care for it, but Lee liked it.

Next we did a cruise on the Daintree River where we saw more crocs:

And I put my zoom lens to the test on the boat:

The last stop was Mossman Gorge:

We had our final day in Cairns free to spend doing whatever we wanted. This was our first full day without a tour or a flight and we loved every minute of it (well, except the minutes I spent doing laundry, a necessary evil even halfway across the world). We went shopping, had NY pizza for lunch, went to the bank for more cash, went to a bottle shop (aka ABC store), checked email, lounged by the resort pool all afternoon, and of course hit up happy hour.

Then it was time to say goodbye to Cairns and head off to heaven on earth, also known as Heron Island.

P.S. -- If you're wondering why I haven't talked about any of the food, I've decided to leave that for a separate post.