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Hello
We arrived in Cairns on Saturday afternoon to a much better temperature - about 30 degrees!
At the end of January we fly from Brisbane to New Zealand so we have just over two weeks to fit the east coast of Australia in. So when we arrived in Cairns we booked two trips straight away to make sure we didn't miss out on anything!
Our first trip on Sunday was to dive the Great Barrier Reef. We paid for 1 dive and all day snorkelling. It was a good day out but we were some what disappointed with the dive area we went to. We should have researched which reef to dive at as the one we went to wasn't what we were expecting - not much marine life and poor visability, we actually saw more snorkelling!! We put it down to experience and decided to do another dive further down the coast!
The next day we set off early for a day trip to Cape Tribulation which is where the rainforest meets the reef. We hadn't realised that Cairns was so full of rainforest and we later learnt that its actually the largest rainforest in the world - it even beats the Amazon.
The drive up to Cape Tribulation was spectacular. Our first stop was at Mossoman Gorge for a walk around the rainforest and then into the Gorge for a cool off. it definately cooled us down as it later started to rain - we were in the rainforest after all!!
We stopped at the Daintree River and did a boat trip to go Croc Watching - Andy was in his element! We spotted 4 crocodiles in their natural habitat, which obviously beats seeing them in captivity. They were only small, the largest being about 2 metres, but it was still great to see them.
Cape Tribulation itself was stunning - we were basically the only ones on the beach - we felt like we'd been ship wrecked!!
The following day was our last day in Cairns and so we decided to make the most of the rainforest by going up to Kuranda which is a little village in amongst the rainforest. To get to Kuranda you can either take the train or go by sky rail. We decided to go up by sky rail and return by train. The sky rail was amazing - you go over the tropical rainforest in a cable car and its only when your up there that you realise what a massive rainforest it is. After an hour and a half of being in the cable car looking at water falls and the landscape we arrive in Kuranda and visited the village. We spent some time looking around and then returned to Cairns via the Scenic Railway which was fantastic - the railway over one hundred years old and climbs more than 300 metres up throught the rainforest. A fantastic expreience.
Tonight we'll take the Greyhound bus from Cairns to Townsville and then onto Magentic Island for a few days.
Love Claire & Andy xxx
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