Canucks → Kiwis: Cairns!

Today we flew to Cairns, Australia! We had to get up at 5am to catch our flight, so we were pretty tired when we arrived. Except for Ryan, who was still jetlagged (lucky!). We checked into our beautiful apartment at Clifton Beach (about 20 min north of Cairns) and went promptly to the beach! Unfortunately it's not advisable to swim in the ocean, since it is jellyfish season. Our landlady assured us that the venom wans't deadly though. It's just that it's so painful that it will cause your heart to stop. Great...

There are special netted areas where swimming is safe, but the nets weren't out today on account of all the rain lately. Cairns has been getting a crazy amount of rain lately, but the forecast is looking up for most of our visit, woot! Anyways, it's still super warm despite the occasional shower, yay tropics!

While were were walking around the beach we came across a guy who had just caught something on his fishing line. Turns out it was a shovelnose ray! Totally cool and random! He let us hold it before setting it back free in the ocean.

We had another wildlife encounter later in the day: on our way to our car we spotted a kangaroo in the field behind the apartment! It was pretty shy, but we managed to get a good look before it hopped away. Sooooooo cool, I guess we really are in Australia :)