I’m currently sitting at a computer at the beautiful Shangri-la Hotel in Cairns, Australia with a glass of sparkling wine. I have some free-time to say hello, because Ironman wanted $45 for me to attend the welcome reception/athlete briefing with Kirk. Nevermind they already have over $500 for a race I’m not competing in this weekend. I elected not to pay for that ticket. I have to say that ticked me off just a little, but the rest of our vacation has been AMAZING, so I’ll let it slide.
While I have a few minutes, let me catch you up on just some of the fabulousness that has been our vacation so far.
You might have seen on Instagram (where I’m posting way too many vacation photos) that we had a little visa trouble to start our trip. Apparently, since my Australian visa was still active when we originally purchased a new one in April, my new visa was cancelled. I called to confirm my Visa on Thursday before we left and they told me everything was good…but apparently that wasn’t quite the case. Thank goodness for the amazing gate agents at Virgin Australia who helped me reapply for one during final boarding in LAX, or I might not be in Australia today. Talk about stressful!
We saved our skymiles for years for this trip, so we could fly business class both ways. I don’t even get to do that for business trips! After watching a movie and eating a delicious meal & drinks, we slept through most of the flight and woke up in time for one final movie & breakfast. This is the way to travel!
Once in Cairns, we enjoyed the day wandering around town and a nice dinner overlooking the marina. We also saw the very early stages of Ironman setup, thrilled to see how close the venue was to the hotel that we’d return to later this week.
Now for the first part of our trip – a 3 day liveaboard dive cruise with Mike Ball Dive Expeditions.
I was a little worried when I booked the trip, as I tend to get sea sick on smaller ships like this. But I LOVE scuba diving and was determined to make it work. The result? 3 days of sea sickness with some good food and amazing diving in between!It was a little rough for me, despite the pills I was taking throughout the trip. It was a rough several days with 30-40 knot winds each day, which meant very rough seas. But the diving made up for it and you feel SO much better under the water.
I won’t give up and I will try another liveaboard again, even though I must have seemed so anti-social to everyone else on the boat. When things got too rough, laying down in bed was the only thing that helped. At least I got a little extra sleep, right? The chef onboard was great about accomodating for me and I often had a special meal waiting. I am eating eggs now (I owe you a post on this), so that made breakfast a lot easier, but I had a special non-dairy pancake and several other special meals throughout the trip. It was very easy!
The diving was incredible! We got to swim with Minke Whales on the first day — AMAZING!! — saw sharks on almost every dive, and so many other fish it’s hard to keep track. I’m sure you’ll see more photos of diving to come, but I also posted a few on Facebook earlier this week for you to check out.
After 3 full days on the water, I had mixed emotions about returning to land. SO incredibly happy to not be sea sick anymore, but also sad that our diving part of the trip was over. It was a great way to start the trip and head back to the Shangri-la and Ironman Village completely relaxed and ready for the next part of our trip.
I think this is a great place to close this part of the recap. You can keep up with my adventures on instagram throughout the trip (still have over a week to go!) and I’ll drop in again if I have a few more minutes to spare. For now, I’m off to be an awesome Ironman Sherpa (trying to live up to legacy Lindsay has created) for my awesome hubby Kirk!!!
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Questions for you:
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Best part of your week?
- Annoying part of your week?
- Not a question — but wish Kirk good luck, so I can share it with him. His second Ironman is on Sunday!!!
