Cairns

The flight from Alice was uneventful and i arrived in cairns. I got met by my pickup who kindly carried my ridiculous oversized bag (had my little bag zipped to my big bag making on mammoth backpack) and took my to my hostel,Travellers Oasis where I was reunited with Helen, and Meanwell/meaners (her boyfriend). We went out to the Woolshed (very important I mention this bar early on since it is the place to be) for dinner (huge) then back to the hostel for sleeeeeeep!
Breakfast curtesy of Whiteley, then farewells again as Hel and Meaners headed off on a road trip to explore up Norf whilst I sorted myself out. Now i put an 'add' up on the notice board to see if ppl were around who wanted to share a lift to explore north myself, then I went to see Helen (works at the hostel) who sorted out my life for the next week :-) I booked to go diving for 3 nights on a liveaboard boat! So that meant entertaining myself for the rest of the day and tomo so I headed to the esplanade to sunbathe my tan is building up nicely for those of you enjoying your white Xmas weather!! The hostel is really nice, chilled out and I felt like I was at home there! It has a pool but I had difficulty taking more than 3 strokes before my nose bumped the poolside! I was picked up by Prodive (its all in the name) early Friday morning and was taken to the boat which held 32 ppl. Introductions were made, rooms assigned the. We ate breakfast as we sailed to the outer part of the great barrier reef, 3 hrs away (Flynn Reef).

Some people took courses, others like me were fun diving...so many ppl to chat to,I met some wicked people, we had amazing weather for 3 days and the inside had aircon - fabulous! The food was amazing but more importantly so was the diving! I did 11 dives in 3 days, which included 2 night dives, one of which was swimming with sharks! Most incredible experience with grey reef sharks. Would I reccommend it? absoluey! would I repeat it? without a second thought!

Back on earth once diving was over, I moved hosts to Tropic Days, also owned by Travellers Oasis owners- where Hel and Meaners were.

I had dinner n went out with my new found dive buddies, so predictably the next day was spent in bed and around the pool lazing about! Somehow I manaed to arrange a car hire trip to Cape Tribulation with Veronica and Alex who I had met at the hostel (Phil on reception did it all to be honest!). So the next day, we collected the car n headed off, towards Port Douglas where we stopped at a few beaches on route to the Daintree forest (Palm Cove and Ellis beach). Then we did 3 board walks and stopped for ice cream in the Daintree whilst continuing up to Cape Trib beachouse, our hostel for the evening.

We left fairly early the next day, went to a lookout we'd missed the day before, then to the Blue Hole, a hideaway local pool through the forest of tree routes, down a trail off the main road. Not easy to find but the sun was shining so it was plesant.

Then we headed to Mossman Gorge where we swam in the ICE cold river and sat on slimy rocks before drying off n heading on to see kangaroos on the first tee of a golfcourse in Mareeba where we had lunch at about 3pm! Then we drove to Atherton to see the tree kangaroos (we didn't see any n it was getting dark so we had to hurry onto Milla Milla to see THE famous Peter Andre Mysterious Girl waterfall (also the Timote hair flick advert). However it wasn't meant to be because by the time we got there it was pitch black and I saw the waterfall in darkness. I could still see it but no camera could pick it out with flash. It was 9pm by the time we got back to Cairns, raining heavily when we dropped off the car n walked 20mins back to the hosel- tired!! Hel (who had been doing her own thing at the hostel) and I had a chillout day and booked Greyhound tickets to travel down the East Coast with. Next stop, Airlie beach for the Whitsundays. However I made this journey alone since Hel and meaners had done this already so I set sail on Saturday and Hel met me Monday when I returned.