February 2014

In February Michal visited Cairns (where she was working part-time for the past year) for the last time. The mosquito experiments are completed. Just a reminder, Michal has been working as part of a project with the goal of eliminating dengue fever (a viral disease) transmitted by mosquitoes. The idea is to artificially infect mosquitoes with a microbe that blocks their ability to transmit the deadly virus. Mosquitoes are reared in the laboratory and released in large numbers to replace local mosquito populations. To make sure this is likely to succeed, it is important to check whether the microbe has any bad effects on the mosquitoes (in addition to blocking the virus). So Michal's part was to make sure that male mosquitoes carrying the microbe are successful in courting and mating with females. Results were encouraging…

Moran and the kids took advantage of the occasion and joined Michal in Cairns. In the evening we celebrated the completion of the project with mosquito lab members

The next day we went out to the Great Barrier Reef. After 1.5 hours on the boat we reached the reef and spent the day snorkeling and sailing on a glass bottom boat. It was wonderful!

We spent the second day in Daintree NP, a World Heritage area with one of the most ancient rain forests in the world. It is towards the end of the rainy season so the rivers are gushing with waters. Therefore, we avoided swimming in the main river (Where later we heard that someone had drowned the same day!) and instead dipped in a lovely creek.


We saw plenty of fish and an eel

On the way back home we camped at Mission Beach

	Trying to get Zoe to fall asleep


On a morning walk

Finally we stopped at Wallaman Falls- the highest falls in Australia. We descended 300 meters to the bottom of the falls. It was very impressive! It was also very wet on the way up, while rain was pouring. We could see why the waterfall was gushing!

Moran flew to Perth in Western Australia. As usuall, he spent half of his time working and half traveling. Without kids that get tired and a pressured wife, he managed to do a lot of things: from climbing on Karri trees (largest eucalypt trees in the world), through snorkeling with dolphins, to sand-boarding


	Stromatolite – the most ancient record of life on Earth

	Click to see a movie of Moran sand-boarding

Additional events:


Reptile lovers meeting


Zoe is being diaper trained and her dolls are taking part in the process.