Australia Part One: Cairns, and Balboa

Our original plan for the end of the trip was to fly from Bali to Cairns, cruise through a chunk of eastern and southern Australia and head over to New Zealand before flying to California, seeing my parents and heading home to the east coast in late spring or early summer. This plan was thrown out of wack when we received some news via FaceTime from our dear friends who had been watching our beloved dog Balboa. It turned out that he had been acting sick because he had a splenic tumor which had burst, and he was in very poor condition. This news came to us as we were leaving Indonesia; I was furtively texting on the plane pulling away from the gate at the airport in Bali for our overnight flight to Cairns. The most immediate decision to make was whether to euthanize Balboa or perform an extensive, expensive surgery on him. I asked for 4 hours and 20 minutes, the duration of the flight, to let caregivers and veterinarians know our decision. As Chris and Otis slept and did their overnight in-flight activities, I was consumed with figuring out Plans A-Z. As soon as the wheels touched down in Cairns, I was texting, calling and FaceTiming back to the States. We sat in the Cairns airport for over an hour going back and forth with everyone -- stateside and in our family. It was a hard decision. Balboa was incredibly ill and we in no way wanted to extend his suffering. We were willing to let him go. But we had seen him very VERY sick before and knew he could recover to have a very high quality of life. After talking with some vets, both at his hospital and others, we opted for the surgery, knowing that there was a decent chance it was a cancerous tumor but also that it very well could be a benign tumor.

Walking to gate in Denpasar, Bali...I was in a world of upset

We all love this boy!

While the dog went into surgery a world away, we picked up our rental car and headed into the small city of Cairns to get some breakfast. Welcome to Australia. We checked into our Airbnb condo feeling somewhat shellshocked but also hopeful and enthusiastic -- I mean, we were Down Under! I have always wanted to visit! The accents? Irresistibly fantastic. We immediately began amusing ourselves by doing our best attempts at adopting them ourselves which would be very embarrassing if others had overheard but we found ourselves pleased by our results. Ask one of us to say "beer."

The next few days were a bit upside down as we got our sleep schedules back to order, I caught up on work from not having had internet for a few days at our final stop in Bali (one of the few places on our trip that happened!) and then was hit with a bad UTI! I had never had one so didn't realize how soon I should have gone to the doctor but unfortunately I waited until I felt awful. Don't do this. Antibiotics righted me but made me feel differently crappy. In the meantime, Balboa made it through surgery, maintained his ability to bounce back and charmed everyone with his vocalizations. I set my alarm to call the animal hospital twice a day to check on him while he was there. He was soon sent home to recover while we awaited the pathology results which would tell us more about his future, and ours.

While I was working, worrying, resting and trying to feel better, Chris and Otis went out on a snorkel trip to the Great Barrier Reef. It looked so pretty and the pictures they took made me excited for our upcoming BIG snorkel trip to the GBR the following week. We also went on a great walk that we all enjoyed to part of Barron Gorge National Park. I wish I had felt better to go on more walks through this park. We also went to the movies and saw Hidden Figures, which we all really liked. Chris and I also needed a bit of time to adjust to the sticker shock of things. Australia is expensive, and extra expensive if you are just coming off of months in Asia. I had the sense that Chris enjoyed going to the mall food courts of Cairns but I could be off.

snorkel trip!

snorkeling in GBR

Scenic visita overlooking tablelands on way to Barron Gorge

bush turkey in parking lot

Super pretty rainforest walk, little knowing we are about to encounter a long, thin snake!!

TFW there is a snake behind me!

We ended up staying a few extra days in Cairns. It was easy living, and we needed to decompress and adjust. The Airbnb proprietor, Julie, was able to extend our stay without difficulty. I really appreciated that. We watched TV (this really helped us practice our accents), played some games, made some meals. The stuff of daily life that doesn't make for such exciting blog posts really.  One of my favorite things we did was go to the Esplanade and swim, as they have a big swimming area set up there next to the sea. Cairns was hot!

At the swimming area abutting the sea

Extreme UV

Bidding adieu to Cairns (or so we thought...yes, that is foreshadowing), we set off for Port Douglas, keeping an eye on the impending Cyclone Debbie, which was bearing down slowly but quite dramatically on the east coast.

There really are a lot of bugs, slitheries and crawlies in Oz. We found this guy in the parking garage.