After a nice relaxing time in the Gold Coast, it was time to turn it up a notch. For this portion of the trip, my parents flew in to join the excitement of our Honeymoon! Okay okay, remove those puzzled looks from your collective face, this was a retirement vacation for them as well. It was still fun to tell people they were enjoying our honeymoon with us 
First up on the agenda in tropical Cairns was a boat trip out the the outer Great Barrier Reef — A UNESCO World Heritage Site, and a CNN Natural Wonder of the World. Here’s a snapshot we took from our plane heading into Cairns:
Our vessel was a large catamaran which had me bullish on small odds of sea sickness. Oops. It turns out this was perfect weather for an adrenaline junky Captain to launch the boat off the incoming wave swells as we headed out to sea. My wife being the smart one, took some Dramamine before we set out to sea. No Worries as they say…the sickness passed and I was ready to experience the reef after our 2 hour ride.
Nicole and I booked 2 scuba dives, and my folks snorkelled. Incredible experience!
I typically hate those preset photo-ops that a tour company has you pose for on the chance you’ll pony up a small fortune for a photo that probably costs them on average less than $0.01 to produce over the lifetime of their equipment (ignoring human labor cost). But this was a special occasion: A day with a perfect blue sky backdrop, blue water that stretches as far as the eye can see, and vibrant, colorful sea life just below our feet. Plus they had an awesome underwater camera they used while we were diving:
This one just shows how blue the entire day was: amazing!
Oh yeah, and on the way to the boat dock in the morning, we came across these chirpy smelly creatures: the mango-eating flying fox fruit bats!
