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Jess’ Travels
Cairns
We were excited about our first night in Cairns as we had booked a popular party hostel and a few friends we had met on our travels north were also in cairns that night. We coordinated with them and booked onto a party bus bar crawl that started and ended in our hostel. It was a great night with good music and full out dancing. It was so nice to meet up again with people we had met travelling. We formed a good group of us some we had met in different places and we stuck together the whole night. The bar crawl itself consisted of going to a range of bars and clubs with free shots at each and occasionally free food. We got taken to each venue on a party bus which was like a red London tour but but with lights and music.
The next day we were all shattered. But hungover days in Australia are so much better than in England. We all met up at the
Atherton waterfalls tour
We had to be up nice and early to wait outside the hostel for the bus. It pulled up quite late but that was all part of the laid back approach to Australia. We hopped in and the driver was chatty and lively for such an early time in the morning. We loved the tours and the sense of fun and bringing people together. When we were all in we had to introduce ourselves to the rest of the bus. What was different about this tour was that there wasn't an age restriction, so there was a family with a young child on it. We found out later that it was rare to have children on the tour but they seemed quite happy tagging along. There was also an interesting Chinese woman who sat at the front asking lots of questions.
Our first location was a small lake and a series of small waterfalls. We walked up to some viewpoints where we saw different points of waterfalls which were composed of very large rock structures. Quite different to some of the streams we had come across before. We went swimming in the lower part of the stream and it was very cold! Lovely and refreshing but not what you would expect in the Australian heat. We quickly got to know other people on the tour, many were English and had similar plans to us. I met two people that had lived in Melbourne and the more we talked about the city the more excited I got about working there. I'm building such anticipation to go there as I coke across more English travellers that love the city.
The next destination was a bigger composition of waterfalls and water flowing fast over some big rocks. There was lots of other people there and everyone was climbing up to slide down the rocks. It was great fun and we went in groups all linking up to slide down into the water. Our tour guide took loads of pictures of us all.
We then went to the famous Milla Milla Falls where the music video to mysterious girl was filmed. It's also the location of the herbal essences advert therefore we all had to get a picture of doing a hair flick in front of it. We also bumped into a few friends we had seen in Cairns. We intended to see them again before we left Cairns in a few days time.
Finally we went to a large lake for another swim. There was a part where we could look down and see small turtles. This was my favourite location to swim in. We could jump and dive off the ----- into the water. It was 80m deep in the middle! But what made it was the size of the lake and the surrounding rainforest towering over the sides. It was beautiful and I could spend ages just swimming out and admiring the surroundings. This was our last stop for the day so we had to say goodbye to most of the group who were only staying the day.
We got taken back to a hostel in the middle of no where. It had a cabin type feel with a dog to complete the look. The guy who was in charge looked like your typical outdoors hardcore fitness type. He owned the dog that lived there and it was a crazy obedient and intelligent dog that listened to his every word. Dee sat down with us and explained the next days activities. First of all we were going to do mountain biking. Jess had done it before in France so got given the opportunity to upgrade her bike to a better quality one. I also got in on it as I wanted to give it a good go. We were lucky enough to get 2 out of the 3 available expensive and god quality mountain bikes.
It paid off, the next day we were tearing through the mountain terrain at the front of the group. It felt so good to be doing some exercise but also thrilling to be going so fast through the twisty turny tracks. At points I felt like I was going to come off the bike as the track was full of rocks and gravel. But you had to be confident in the bike and just keep going straight over the rocks. It was a great morning and we all really got into it, breaking out into sweats as we worked hard to get up the first half of the route. The second half was all down hill which was almost more tricky as we were going a lot faster and there were a few jumps set out along the way. I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge and was so glad I had upgraded. The tour guide even prided Jess and I as the fit ones in the group. Apparently he often had people drop out of the cycle or fall off. I thought he was such an interesting character. And when someone's bike broke he gave them his while he ran the whole route meeting us at check points.
After the hardwork of the morning we were taken back to Lake Eacham for a quick dip. The afternoons activities involved canoing along the river. Little did we know we were taking a longer route than usual as the tour guide wanted to move the canoes to a different location. It was a beautiful and relaxing canoe ride at first but we soon got tired and it became harder to keep the pace up. It didn't help that our boat had a hole in it and the wind was against us. But after a couple of hours and a struggle toward the end we made it to shore. It was a full on active day but we felt a lot better for it.
We were excited about our first night in Cairns as we had booked a popular party hostel and a few friends we had met on our travels north were also in cairns that night. We coordinated with them and booked onto a party bus bar crawl that started and ended in our hostel. It was a great night with good music and full out dancing. It was so nice to meet up again with people we had met travelling. We formed a good group of us some we had met in different places and we stuck together the whole night. The bar crawl itself consisted of going to a range of bars and clubs with free shots at each and occasionally free food. We got taken to each venue on a party bus which was like a red London tour but but with lights and music.
The next day we were all shattered. But hungover days in Australia are so much better than in England. We all met up at the
lagoon which was essentially a large pool right by the sea. It wasn't safe to swim in the sea here so there were lots of people around relaxing by the lagoon. We lay in the shade and chatted enjoying a day of doing absolutely nothing. It was nice to be with a big group again and we discussed how lucky we were to be here. The day went too quickly and then it was time to prepare for our tour the next day.
Atherton waterfalls tour
We had to be up nice and early to wait outside the hostel for the bus. It pulled up quite late but that was all part of the laid back approach to Australia. We hopped in and the driver was chatty and lively for such an early time in the morning. We loved the tours and the sense of fun and bringing people together. When we were all in we had to introduce ourselves to the rest of the bus. What was different about this tour was that there wasn't an age restriction, so there was a family with a young child on it. We found out later that it was rare to have children on the tour but they seemed quite happy tagging along. There was also an interesting Chinese woman who sat at the front asking lots of questions.
Our first location was a small lake and a series of small waterfalls. We walked up to some viewpoints where we saw different points of waterfalls which were composed of very large rock structures. Quite different to some of the streams we had come across before. We went swimming in the lower part of the stream and it was very cold! Lovely and refreshing but not what you would expect in the Australian heat. We quickly got to know other people on the tour, many were English and had similar plans to us. I met two people that had lived in Melbourne and the more we talked about the city the more excited I got about working there. I'm building such anticipation to go there as I coke across more English travellers that love the city.
The next destination was a bigger composition of waterfalls and water flowing fast over some big rocks. There was lots of other people there and everyone was climbing up to slide down the rocks. It was great fun and we went in groups all linking up to slide down into the water. Our tour guide took loads of pictures of us all.
We then went to the famous Milla Milla Falls where the music video to mysterious girl was filmed. It's also the location of the herbal essences advert therefore we all had to get a picture of doing a hair flick in front of it. We also bumped into a few friends we had seen in Cairns. We intended to see them again before we left Cairns in a few days time.
Finally we went to a large lake for another swim. There was a part where we could look down and see small turtles. This was my favourite location to swim in. We could jump and dive off the ----- into the water. It was 80m deep in the middle! But what made it was the size of the lake and the surrounding rainforest towering over the sides. It was beautiful and I could spend ages just swimming out and admiring the surroundings. This was our last stop for the day so we had to say goodbye to most of the group who were only staying the day.
We got taken back to a hostel in the middle of no where. It had a cabin type feel with a dog to complete the look. The guy who was in charge looked like your typical outdoors hardcore fitness type. He owned the dog that lived there and it was a crazy obedient and intelligent dog that listened to his every word. Dee sat down with us and explained the next days activities. First of all we were going to do mountain biking. Jess had done it before in France so got given the opportunity to upgrade her bike to a better quality one. I also got in on it as I wanted to give it a good go. We were lucky enough to get 2 out of the 3 available expensive and god quality mountain bikes.
It paid off, the next day we were tearing through the mountain terrain at the front of the group. It felt so good to be doing some exercise but also thrilling to be going so fast through the twisty turny tracks. At points I felt like I was going to come off the bike as the track was full of rocks and gravel. But you had to be confident in the bike and just keep going straight over the rocks. It was a great morning and we all really got into it, breaking out into sweats as we worked hard to get up the first half of the route. The second half was all down hill which was almost more tricky as we were going a lot faster and there were a few jumps set out along the way. I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge and was so glad I had upgraded. The tour guide even prided Jess and I as the fit ones in the group. Apparently he often had people drop out of the cycle or fall off. I thought he was such an interesting character. And when someone's bike broke he gave them his while he ran the whole route meeting us at check points.
After the hardwork of the morning we were taken back to Lake Eacham for a quick dip. The afternoons activities involved canoing along the river. Little did we know we were taking a longer route than usual as the tour guide wanted to move the canoes to a different location. It was a beautiful and relaxing canoe ride at first but we soon got tired and it became harder to keep the pace up. It didn't help that our boat had a hole in it and the wind was against us. But after a couple of hours and a struggle toward the end we made it to shore. It was a full on active day but we felt a lot better for it.
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