How did you spend your New Year’s Day? We spent ours on the beach. I honestly don’t know if it could get any better than that. 
We rode our bikes into town in the early afternoon and did some preliminary tourist shopping. Since we had made plans for Amanda to take us to the beach that afternoon, we went back to our hostel to wait on her. She picked us up and showed us where she lives. It was such a lovely house, and we even got to meet her landlord/the builder of the house (who also lives there). We started talking, and I’m pretty sure that we covered every subject from American politics, the school shooting, crocodiles, tourists, the rain forest…….and so, so much more. When we FINALLY peeled away from conversation, it was beach time!!
Clifton Beach was only a short twenty minute drive from Cairns and was exactly as tropical as I imagined it would be: palm trees where the sand met the grass, a gorgeous strip of white sand reaching out to the ocean, and blue waves rolling in. 
Anyone who’s ever been to the beach with me knows that I act about the same way a five-year-old acts at the beach. I want to run and jump into the waves, swim under them as they crash down over me, build sand castles, get buried in the sand, and dig a hole just for fun. (I’m from the land-locked state of Kentucky, so I blame my lack of beach time as a child for my current behaviors at the beach.) Since it was late in the afternoon, we didn’t get a ton of beach time, so we mostly stayed in the water, riding the waves. It was sooooooooo much fun!
One downside to the beaches in Australia are that there are things that will kill/injure you in the water, so you have to be careful. Next to the lifeguard station was a poster of each different type of jellyfish, how they can injure a person, and their size compared to an average human. Theses aren’t your average jellyfish that sting you, you pee on it, and move on with your life. These jellyfish WILL KILL YOU. For example, the box jellyfish, which is the size of an average human, will sting and paralyze its victim, causing the person to drown. In addition to the jellyfish, there are salt water crocs. While the name is misleading, most salt water crocs don’t go into the ocean……but that doesn’t mean that they can’t! They live in the brackish waters along he coastline. (Australians know that you DON’T go swimming in ANY water that isn’t deemed safe for this reason. I can’t tell you how many “Don’t swim here because of crocs” signs we saw next to creeks, rivers, and other waterways.) To combat any animal attacks, the swimming beaches have protective netting in the water that keeps out the nasty creatures and lifeguards manning those areas. That didn’t stop us from freaking out whenever something touched our legs or feet. Even if it was a leaf floating in the water, Melissa and I would immediately tense up and wonder if we were going to die. While 99% of the people swam in the protective netting area, it didn’t stop one or two people that we saw swimming in unprotected waters. I have NO IDEA what would possess someone to do this. 
Even when we were walking along the beach and I was hot, I didn’t dare dip my feet in the water for fear that some poisonous creature would get them. 
The following day we went to the zoo! Normally in the States I feel like zoos are lame and a waste of time. However, Australian zoos have new and different critters that I’ve never seen, making them worth it!! We weren’t sure when the bus would come, (Cairns buses are notoriously unreliable.) so we woke up at 6:30, ate breakfast, rode our bikes to the city center, and were at the bus stop by 7:30, which put us at the zoo around 8AM. The zoo didn’t open until 8:30, so we made Camp America on the benches by the front door and were the first ones there when the doors opened! Never in my life have I been so dang excited to go to the zoo!! For the first hour it almost seemed like we had the whole zoo to ourselves. Not counting the zoo keepers, we only stumbled across one other person as we giddily walked from exhibit to exhibit. We saw all kinds of native Australian critters….koalas, kangaroos, wombats, dingoes, cassowaries, kookaburras, and crocodiles just to name a few.
One of my favorite things about that zoo was that there were free animal shows throughout the day. We hit up each of them, not wanting to miss anything! Although we could feed kangaroos at any point in time during the day, we went there first. GAH! KANGAROOS!!! The zoo keeps the females separated from the males by a pen wall, and only the females are allowed to be fed by visitors. The zookeeper told us males are quite aggressive, and if they wanted food from us, it would be no problem whatsoever for them to knock us flat on our faces and take whatever they want. (PS- You don’t want to meet a kangaroo in a dark alley…..) After I saw one, I completely understood. Male kangaroos are RIPPED. They have a very broad and muscular chest and arms. I could literally see the muscular definition on their bodies! Yeah…..we really didn’t want to go anywhere near them…… However, the females were MUCH more passive. They let us pet and feed them. The zookeeper told us how to pet a kangaroo in a way that they would love: scratch right below their chin and on their necks. They can’t reach this part of their body, so scratching there is like scratching a dog on the belly….they basically melt in your hands.
Next up on the day’s events was the pelican feeding showing at 9:30. We learned fun facts about pelicans (They can hold up to 3.5 gallons of water in the pouch under their beaks. 
) before the zookeeper allowed volunteers to toss fish to the pelicans. Melissa didn’t want to volunteer, Ian was the camera man, so that left me to be one of the only grown adults volunteering to feed the pelicans. I don’t care…it was cool! The next show was a free birds of flight show, but since it was raining, they had to do it under a tent, and the birds couldn’t fly. Laaaaaaame. The next show was a snake show. While I don’t mind going to something like that, we made sure to sit in the BACK row. The first snake was a tiny green tree snake, and they showed and discussed varying snakes from that size to a giant python that required seven grown adults to move its body. *shudder* The next show was after lunch time and was the marsupial show. We learned all about koalas (which sleep up to nineteen hours a day and spent the rest of the time eating) and wombats (which are short, fat, long muscular animals that burrow in the ground). The next show was the much anticipated croc show. Goodness gracious. I would NOT have wanted to be the zookeeper feeding the salt water croc for the entertainment of visitors. No thanks! Salt water crocs are HUGE! Although they can grow as large as their environment allows them, the one at the zoo was over 400 pounds and not small by ANY means! It was darn right TERRIFYING. After the show, we did get to pet a baby croc that had its mouth tapped shut. It felt like really, really dry leather. Our final free show of the day was a repeat: flight birds. However since it wasn’t raining, it was incredible! The two zookeepers let the birds fly RIGHT over our heads. We could literally feel the feathered wings brush over the tops of our heads. Cool!
The zoo closed at 4:30, and we were there until about 4. Like I said, it really was the coolest zoo I’ve ever been to! Once we got back to Cairns, we decided to grab dinner and go to the water front park. We decided that a Chinese buffet was a good idea, but I think our eyes were bigger than our mouths. We each paid for a take-out container and could stuff as much food as possible into it. Melissa filled hers and waited for Ian and I. She asked if we wanted to leave any room on the top so that the lid could close. Ian and I both looked at her and started laughing. She’s so silly! You have to get your money’s worth out of a buffet! We carried our “buckets” of food to the park and ate…and ate……and ate. Thirty minutes later Ian and I were both feeling fat, disgusting, and regretting our food decisions. But that’s what a buffet is for, right?
Our wonderful day ended pretty poorly for me. Our bikes had been locked up all day in the city center. When we went to pick up our bikes the very first day, the bike shop guy warned us to MAKE SURE and lock up our bikes because people WOULD steal them. (We’re not in Japan anymore, Toto!) While we were diligent about locking them up everywhere we went, (even at our hostel!) we didn’t think too much about the helmets and would just leave them on the handlebars. Well, that turned out to be a mistake. When we got back to our bikes that night, my helmet was missing. I thought that maybe it fell off and rolled into the mangrove tree, so I searched there with no luck. My helmet was gone. I was angry!! 
Honestly…WHO STEALS A HELMET?!?!? If you steal something, you go for the gold and steal a bike, right?!? If you get caught riding a bike without a helmet in Australia, it’s an automatic $80 fine. Knowing that there was absolutely nothing that I could do about it until the next day, I rode home in the shadows, hoping that I wouldn’t get stopped for a fine.
The first order of business for the next morning was to go to the bike rental shop, explain the situation, and go from there. I illegally rode my bike there (I’m SUCH a criminal! ) and explained the situation to the front desk worker: I left my bike locked up at the central all day, and when I came back, my helmet was missing. He asked if I had locked up the helmet as well. I lied and said yes….because honestly WHO STEALS A HELMET?!?! He gave me a typical beach bum Aussie response of, “Whoa, man. That’s….like….weird.” No joke, buddy. I asked him what I needed to do. He said, “So, you remember that paperwork you had to fill out the first day? In the contract that you signed, it said missing helmets are $70.” !!!! WHAT?!? He pulled out the contract, and sure enough next to the “IR” that Ian had initialed, it said that. *gasp* I guess my look of shock took him by surprise because he called to the owner in the back who came to the front desk. I had to retell my story, adding in hints of desperation so that he would hopefully grant me leniency. He said that the helmets like mine generally cost about $30, so if I would pay $35, they’d call it even. In the States, I could flat out BUY a helmet for that much. Instead I “bought” a rental helmet (that smelled like sweat) for our last two cycling days. Blarg! To the person who stole my helmet, I hope you fall off your bicycle and skin your knees. GRRRRRRRRRR…..
Anyway, this is my stopping point for this blog. I’m nearing the end of our vacation, so I should have all of our stories wrapped up in the next blog or two. Hurray!
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