Day 1 – 9/1/17 – Flying to Cairns, and Port Douglas

I woke up early in San Francisco, with Jen heading out the door to get in one more day at work before our trip. I had laundry to do, and re-packing from the business trip to Vegas, so that everything fit in one suitcase that I would need in Australia. I began laundry immediately, and by about 10:00 AM I was re-packed, and ready to go. The only problem was the flight wasn’t until 11:30 PM… but I’m used to being ready early. We’d be joined that evening by Jen’s brother, Jon, and we would all head to the airport together.

I elected to walk over to Starbucks, and enjoy a drink. I couldn’t help but notice it seemed rather hot… and in the hours to come I realized just how right I was. Jen is currently without air conditioning, and as the hours passed the heat climbed and climbed. By the time we dropped off her dogs at the day care where they’ll spend the next few weeks… it was 105 degrees. It would climb to nearly 110 before the day was over, and I was just about dying in the heat. I’m a big guy to begin with… and this was not what I had expected!

Once Jon arrived, it didn’t take long to agree on dinner, citing somewhere with air conditioning as our only real requirement, and we headed out to The Grill House in Redwood City, a restaurant we’d been to before on one of my visits. I had the wings, something I knew would be dicey before a flight, but they taste amazing and it was worth the trouble it may cause! We wrapped up dinner, packed a bit more, talked and grabbed a few essentials, and suddenly it was time to head to the airport. We hitched a ride there with Uber, and we were on our way.

Having never flown before with Quantas, and having been told for weeks the flight was completely sold out, I was anticipating spending the entire flight in Economy with my knees jammed into someone else’s back and the poor soul next to me’s legs… but we were in luck! After speaking to the gate agent (Jessica, who was amazing to us!) we were able to beg our way into a “four-seater” for three of us, giving Jon and I (who are both six-foot, five inches) some room to turn sideways. This didn’t do a lot for Jen really, stuck in the aisle with me next to her, but it made the flight so much better than it could have been for all of us. I listened to TED talks, and to audio books (I’m re-reading The Golden Compass from the “His Dark Materials” series in audio-book form since The Book of Dust will be released soon!!!), and the trip flew by. I slept a little, and I’m also reading an e-book on my phone too, Red Rising by Pierce Brown, but more to come on that later in the trip. In general it was quite a good run of time! By the time we landed in Sydney however, I wasn’t looking forward to the 2-hour and 50-minute flight to Cairns, nor the hour-long bus ride that was to follow to take us into Port Douglas. As Jen put it, though, “pretend that at the end, you’re going to get to Disney World and that’s the only place you really want to be.”, we would press on!

It also helped that, in stepping off the plane in Sydney, Jen and I had officially set foot on all seven continents. The point of this blog… the point of my wanderlust… and a life-goal I have had since sometime when I was a small child came true in a matter of just a few steps. I’d thought about it over and over on the flight, maybe that was part of what made the time go by so fast. I was about to complete a goal three and a half years before my original planned date, I was about to achieve something that statistically fewer than one-million people in the history of the world have ever been able to do (the math here isn’t great here, but consider the number of people, since 1950, who have been able to visit Antarctica due to environmental restrictions and you arrive at this number.), and I had done it by the age of 31.

I’ll admit every time I think about it I get chills still, I’m not really sure my mind grasps it very well yet. There were high fives and hugs, though we still haven’t taken our “Seven Continents” picture yet (We’re probably going to do this tonight, 9/6), and I admitted to Jen something I’ve been thinking for a while: I never would have done it all without her.

In 2012, Jen and I met at work, and to quote the Golden Compass above:

“When he’d sworn at her and been sworn at in return, they became great friends.”
― Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass

Jen has been an inspiration for travel, the person that shared not only my goal for visiting all seven continents but one who said “Great! When do we go?” when I mentioned my harebrained notion to visit the bottom of the world. She continues to be my best friend, continues to be forgiving when I’m done walking after only about five miles and she could go another twenty or so, and continues to travel with me even after having to care for me on one of the most amazing trips either of us had ever taken. While the ship and crew of Poseidon Expeditions were out partying and getting to know each other, and we sailed the Drake passage into Antarctic waters, Jen spent her time bringing me bread, apples, and encouragement to fight through a combination of cold and seasickness. I couldn’t ask for a better travel companion, and friend. There are few people I can think of that I would say I could follow to the ends of the Earth, and there is only one person in my life where I have truly done so. I wouldn’t be here today, wouldn’t be stepping on my seventh continent, without her.

I thought about all of this as I watched the line on the right side of the plane moving faster than the one on the left where she was standing, and weighed my options. I could beat Jen off the plane just by taking the other line. I was still seated, and had I wanted to I could have stepped off the plane first and onto Australian soil first… but let’s count it officially when the plane touched down and say we both arrived at the same time. We’d made this journey, traveling to five different continent at this point, together. It’s fitting that we ended it together too, and I got in line behind her on the left, and followed her out of the plane. There wasn’t a first or second here, we had simply made it.

Free Range Hobo on a beach in Port Douglas, Australia

The flight to Cairns, by contrast, was uneventful, and after waiting for the bus for an hour in what we were promised was traffic (it wasn’t, but that’s a tale for our travel company and they did state we may “have to wait for other flights to land” so they’re really free of blame here most likely), we were on our way to Port Douglas. We arrived in the early evening, got settled into our room, and headed out to walk the town.

Port Douglas is small, to say the least. A coastal town with a pier, and six miles of public beach, the real attraction is the town’s proximity to the Great Barrier Reef, where we would be spending some quality time tomorrow, and the main street with a few shops and places for dinner. We walked almost the entirety of the main street, stopping here and there to check food prices (we all have reasons to save on this trip, life achievements outside of this blog that are restricting funds a bit), and settled on a restaurant called Rattle and Hum for a quick bite. I had spaghetti in a white sauce, and Jen and Jon both grabbed pizza while we shared a beer together. We toasted friends, travel, and for Jen and I achieving seven continents. Soon it was time to head back, and we did so with thoughts of the next day in our head already. It’s not everyday you get to visit one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World… even though on this trip… we’d be visiting two.

I’ll be posting a photo of our Seven Continents celebration the minute we have some time to put one together!