Hello Traveling Friends,

My wife and I are planning a trip to Australia for a few weeks in July. We are interested in eco-touring.

Here are our ideas:

Day 1 We arrive from Los Angeles to Sydney
Day 2 Sydney rest and touring
Day 3 Travel to Carins
Days 4-6 Take three day cruise in the Great Barrier Reef (can you recommend one? wife doesn't swim so cruise might let us see somethings)
Days 7-10 Visit Daintree for three days
Days 11-12 Travel to Alice Springs
Days 13-15 Back to tour Sydney
Day 16 home
What do you think?

KSC

Hi KSC2003...Sounds good . I think there is a trip called Captain Cook Cruises but afraid I don't know anything about it.Ijust want to make sure you know Uluru (Ayre's Rock )is not in Alice Springs and quite a way away. If the Rock is the reason you are going there I suggest you might be better off flying straight to Ayre's Rock. Many people ( including myself previously) think they are one and the same place. Enjoy the trip ..it sounds great!

sounds good to me.
Peteralan's advice is sensible, too. Uluru is around 400km from Alice Springs.

Shout if you need more specific advice -we're a sad lot - we love taking over other people's holidays!

thanks for the help

From Carins, how do you get to Uluru?

KSC

From Sydney you fly , stopping at Alice Springs on the way. I think you probably do the same from Cairns . There are hordes of people who do Sydney-Cairns-Uluru so you shouldn't have any trouble.

KSC...

You may find planning a tad easier if you spell Cairns correctly C A I R N S !

Qantas has a couple of flights a day from Cairns to Ayers Rock (name of airport for Uluru)
qantas.com.au

Virgin Blue doesn't seem to fly from Cairns to Uluru

KSC,

Peteralan suggested Captain Cook for your request on a 3-day cruise from Cairns...I've done this cruise and can help there if you need specifics.

As you are interested in eco-type adventures while in Oz there are a number of specific type of experiences you can take if you can provide some more detail about your interests (bird watching, Aborigine, native animals/plants, that type of thing).

Regards,

Melodie
Certified Aussie Specialist

Peteralan and Melodie have already mentioned Captain Cook Cruises so I thought I would repeat the comments I made to another recent enquiry on the forum:-

We, as 'locals', can thoroughly recommend one of the 3- or 4-day Captain Cook cruises. A few weeks ago we had a short holiday from our own small accommodation business and took the 3-day cruise on their "Reef Endeavour" and enjoyed it so much that we would recommend it to anybody who would like to combine a relaxing few days on an extremely comfortable smallish ship (only about 160 passengers) with visits to Fitzroy and Dunk Islands, a full day snorkelling/diving/glass-bottom-boating at the Outer Reef and a magical cruise through the magnificent Hinchinbrook Passage. It's also a chance to make friends with other travellers (how many do you usually get to know on an independent holiday?!) and to visit different interesting places in comfort.

Their 4-day cruise takes you to Cooktown, a small coral cay, Lizard Island and one of the outer reefs - and we look forward to the day we can do that one too. The Captain Cook Cruises website is at http://www.captaincook.com.au/b_reef/index.htm