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Afternoon everyone,
Time for another update from down under. We're now in Cairns, Queensland, Australia. We left Alice Springs on Friday, after spending the day wandering about the town. Jo and I bought a didgeridoo! It was quite a small one, but we thought it was really cool, handpainted and authentic, with a crocodile on it and some art like the rock art we saw in Kakadu. We had no problems with our flight, arriving in Cairns two and a half hours later. Our hostel of choice was unfortunately full, but they hooked us up with their sister hostel down the road, Tropic Days, which is an awesome place. It's got a really relaxed and friendly vibe, and has loads of character. We've got a 'dorm' all to ourselves and there's a movie room and a pool with hammocks around it in big gardens.
On our first full day in Cairns we went into the city centre to do a spot of window shopping, and then spent most of the day at the Cairns Foreshore Promenade, sunbathing on the grass and going for swims in the manmade, saltwater lagoon. We've already decided we love Cairns. It's still completely laidback, but has more of a big city vibe to it than we have experienced so far in Australia, with more going on and loads to do. It's definitely not just a launching pad! Later that afternoon Joe and I spent some time having a swim, before playing a game of pool, whilst Jo read her book on the sun lounger. That evening we watched the film 'Ali', in which Will Smith stars as the boxer. The hostel's curfew is 10.00, but the film overran until 10.45! We got a few dirty looks from other guests who were obviously getting ready for bed!
On Sunday we got a shuttle bus down to Marlin Wharf nice and early, and then checked in for our boat, the Osprey V, ready to spend a day scuba diving and snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef. We sailed out to the reef, which took about an hour and a half, passing through some quite choppy waters. This made it quite amusing trying to use the toilet - you were literally hurled all over the place! We were the second group in the water out of nine to do our introductory dive, and both Joe and I felt quite nervous (Jo was fine!), which didn't bode well for the events to come. We went down and down, linking arms with our instructor as it was an introduction, and equalising our ears every metre or so. We started to see some pretty impressive coral and multi-coloured parrotfish. Going down a bit further we spotted a clown fish (Nemo!) in its anemone. It was at this point I got into trouble! I spotted a turtle, shouted for everyone to look, and by doing so managed to get a load of water in my mouth. I took my respirator off while blowing out, as we were told to do so, but trying to put it back in my mouth, I couldn't get rid of the water in it. Our instructor ended up ramming it back in, as I was running out of breath, and I swallowed a lot of sea water before being able to carry on! I really scared both Jo and Joe, as well as myself, but by the time we got out they were laughing at me! The 25 minutes seemed to go really quickly, but it was amazing, and we were all wanting to have another go by the time we'd got out.
We sunbathed on the top deck for a while, and then at our second dive site (Hastings Reef) we snorkelled, as we'd only paid for one dive. I think the snorkelling here was better than the diving could have been though, as the reef was so close to the surface. There were literally huge shoals as soon as we got out the boat, and a giant maori wrasse called Wally, an absolutely huge thing that flung himself towards you in the hope you had some prawns for him. You were even able to stroke him! We saw some cool clams, and loads of different fish, all different sizes, shapes and colours.
Today, our last day in Cairns, we visited Kuranda, a village up in the mountainous rainforest nearby. Here we strolled through some market stalls, ate our packed lunch on a picnic bench and then visited the Australian Butterfly Sanctuary, a fun enclosure filled with gigantic butterflies. When we held brightly coloured objects up, they flew towards them, thinking they were flowers. Some of them were as big as small birds, and it made for some good photos. We took a boardwalk through the rainforest for about an hour and a half, emerging at the Skyrail Rainforest Cableway, the world's longest gondola cableway, to head back down to Cairns. It gave some really good views over the rainforest, and a stop on the way back enabled us to get some pictures of the Barron Waterfalls. We joined in with the Tropic Days barbecue this evening, which turned out to be good fun. For $10 we got to try kangaroo, emu, crocodile (which tasted like fishy chicken) and barramundi, as well as having sausages and loads of salad options. There was also a didgeridoo playing competition between three of the hostel guests.
We've got a long and tedious wait tonight for our Greyhound bus down to Airlie Beach, which doesn't leave until 12:25am! But hopefully the Whitsundays will be worth it when we get there!
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