Cairns and the Spirit of Freedom

Hello from the Great Barrier Reef!

We survived the 17 hour flight and connection to Cairns with no hick-ups!  Funny running into our investment advisor (friend) in the Sydney airport - it is a small world for sure!

Cairns was HOT! The temperature was 97 but with humidity it was 111F.  Crazy!

We went to the Cairns aquarium, it was very nice and got us excited to experience the GBR and the Coral Sea.

We boarded the Spirit of Freedom on Thursday, setting out for the reef around 1pm.  We had our first dive that afternoon.


Some sights on our two early dives today:








We did "find Nemo" yesterday but did not have the Go-Pro with us.  I am sure we will see more clown fish and get a picture.

The boat and crew are amazing and the food is delicious and plentiful!

The reef is super colorful and teeming with life! 

More later,

Sheri & Carsten

PS - the boat uses StarLink - making this blog possible!



Comments

  1. ulfFebruary 2, 2024 at 3:12 AM

    Great pictures, thank you. t seems like you have all comfort one could ask for. Enjoy your outstamding journey, Omi & Opa.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Christmas Letter

Image
Hi!  I have developed an allergy to stamps and licking envelopes but wanted a way to reach out to our family and friends far and near ... then I realized that the blog might be just the ticket! Carsten and I have had a wonderful 2024! If you follow the blog you know that we have literally been around the world! In addition we are blessed to have spent many hours making and delivering beds to kids in North Houston. We did our first Swing Event in San Antonio, joining with hundreds of volunteers to make almost 800 beds in four crazy hours! Our final delivery of the year will be on Christmas Eve. Sleep in Heavenly Peace (Houston North) will deliver 2,000 beds in 2024. With a backlog of more than 800 we will be busy for a while!  If you are interested in helping by building and/or delivering beds, please check out https://shpbeds.org/chapter/tx-houston-n/ to sign up.  It is a lot of fun. Austin and Jamie had plenty of visitors to keep them company their first year in Detroit....
Read more

Iceland in Winter

Image
Hello from Reykjavik! We are here with my (Sheri) cousins, Christie & Chester, primarily to see the Northern Lights! Leaving Houston a day early to make sure we did not miss our flight due to the big winter storm, we had a little time in Virginia (near Dulles airport) to see the Air & Space museum. This was an unexpected pleasure. Among the 250+ aircraft was the Enola Gay, a Concorde Jet and the Space Shuttle Discovery. As Marieke informed us, there were many cancelled flights out of Dulles and delays were pretty standard. Our 7:40 pm overnight flight to Reykjavik finally took off at about 11:00. Apparently there were only two baggage handlers to unload and load AND shovel the snow that had accumulated. Once loaded, the de-icing took a minute as well.  We arrived at 10:00 am, got our car and headed to our walking food tour. Our guide's name was Burgersagdjckeuegvcn (sic) but we were to call him "burger". We stopped at five different places and enjoyed an appetizer...
Read more

More of Iceland

Image
On Friday we had a free day to walk around and explore Reykjavik. We started, as one must, with Hallgrimskirkja . Daytime Night time  Views of inside and from the top: Not sure what the hurry is but worshipers here get their praying done quickly! The streets are lovely this time of year with the lights ... and surprises like this one Santa's washing!. The Sun Voyager is lovely looking over he harbor. The stores have lovely things to offer, we bought a lovely Icelandic Wool blanket. Not sure how useful it will be in Houston?! There were some more useful items (for someone): We walked (trugged) through a sculpture garden. This one, entitled "Grief" was particularly moving. We had some fish for lunch and went back for a little rest. Dinner was pizza, followed by gelato. Early bedtime because we have to be up early for our next adventure! Ok. Next adventure is a trip to an Ice Cave. In general when I see 8+ hours I am not inclined to go. However, my cousin Christie had her he...
Read more