The Adventures of Jeanne B: Great Barrier Reef by Air

Cairns, Australia
Thursday, February 28

This was the day we were to go to Lizard Island, but the weather didn't cooperate. They offered a one hour flight seeing trip instead. It was $350 less per person, so that was one advantage to the shortened day.

They arranged to pick us up at 10:30 to go to the airport for an 11:00 flight. At about 10:35, a taxi pulled up and waited. We asked if he was there to pick us up. I didn't think it was going to be a taxi, but I didn't really know. He said yes and we got in. He asked, “Where at the airport was it again?” We told him. He pulled up in front of Daintree Air and waited. We went in, but there wasn't anyone there, just a number on the door to call. Jeff asked if we were to pay the cab. I said I didn't know so he did as there wasn't anyone else there to pay him. We finally did call the number and they said that their shuttle was waiting for us at our hotel. They had even called Sandra looking for us. She notified Liz. We had been scammed by the cab driver. The flying people said that it is a common scam there. They cruise along looking for people waiting for a shuttle and do the same thing they did to us. The only thing was, the guy gave us a receipt with his info on it, so the air people are after him. We are still out the $15 though.

Anyway, it all ended up OK. The shuttle came back to the airport with the other 2 people and our flight began. For about 45 minutes we flew over various reefs. We saw a huge area, once again very beautiful. The Great Barrier Reef is the only living thing that can be seen from space. We saw less than 5% on our flight.

This little sand Island had a yellow helicopter on it. We were told that some people take a helicopter out to some of these islands to get married.

We saw lots of islands and beautiful reef areas. We could see the trails the rays leave in the water with the sand they stir up. Once we could see the trails, we could see the rays.

I think we even saw the pontoon we had been on earlier it in the week.

Here are some pictures from our land portion of the flight. It was great to fly over a portion of the rainforest before our rainforest walk on Friday. The cleared areas with crops are sugarcane. We learned that they are doing a lot to pollute the areas with the reefs.