The beach

"I'm sick. It's beautiful. People are friendly. We had a great bike ride yesterday. I'm just throwing out ideas. We got our bags. At 9 o'clock last night. I haven't shaved in like three days."

-I asked Jamie what we should write about and that's what he said.

Let me expand a bit for you on that synopsis. Yesterday, our bike ride was absolutely amazing. We rode Jon and Monja's bikes about 3-4 miles down the beach on a bike trail. The sun was so hot but it barely mattered because our bikes made it breezy.

To the right of the trail were these short, thick-trunked trees that slanted heavily to the left of right or twisted both ways. They looked like trees from the Chronicles of Narnia or some other movie that involves mystique wildlife. Next to the trees was a small slope that below it led to the beach. The sand here is a deep golden yellow. And the beach, of course, looks like it stretches for thousands of miles. The water is fairly cold because it comes from Antarctica.

On the other side of the trail were trendy beach homes with massive, magnificent windows to overlook to the beach view. Each had a deck, too. The kind of place you would dream of waking up in and eating breakfast on the deck.

Perpendicular to our trail were more narrow roads with similar beach-house type homes and also boutiques, ethnic food restaurants, convenience stores, and more.

When we arrived to our destination from our ride, "Black Rock," my jaw dropped and eyes lit up. People say Australia is untouched, and they certainly don't lie.

Along the sandy beach was a cliff of volcanic looking rocks in orange and red colors. The natural beauty in the thousands of shapes in the cliff is nothing short of amazing.

Medium-sized rocks also sat in the ocean, giving the vastness of it a lot of shape. Jamie and I sat on one and chatted for an hour or so while observing the fungus (ew!), clams (gross!), and critters (sick!). Yes, I said those words outloud several times.

Anyway, we rode back on our backs after a bit and then went browsing around the uptown-like area. A man told me I had an accent, but I corrected him and said, "so do you." (In a joking manner of course!) We talked to all the clerks in the shops because each wanted to start a conversation with us and asked about our "holiday." (Holiday means vacation here.) They told us all the great places to go and how to get there, and etc.

We're going to go out and get coffee and a map this morning. Jamie needs medicine, too. Also, important to note, we're going to lay out by the pool today in between repacking for Port Douglas.

(Yes, our bags came at 9 p.m. last night.)

We leave for Port Douglas Saturday morning and are gone for a week, so we probably won't be giving you this same play-by-play while we're there. But we'll try to hand write it in Jamie's blank dairy that I got him for his birthday so that we can recap it for all of you!

Anyway, we got to go. Jamie's contaminating the house with his little sneezes.

Bye!