This is a bit of a delayed entry but I have it all down in my journal from the actual date so we'll just pretend this is actually from June 30th! Ok so today we went out to Green Island and did some snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef.

It's been boiling hot today, even as we walked to the ferry terminal on the esplanade at about 10am. Our boat was quite small - I think there were about 70 passengers - and called something like Reef Rocket. It went a lot faster than I expected it to, and as the winds were high, it was a bit choppy. The journey to the island took about 45 minutes, and we were given our snorkelling equipment on board.

The island is so-called because it is covered in rainforest, like Cairns, so we spotted it before we got close. It reminded me of how I thought the island from Lord of the Flies might look.

We disembarked to see people snorkelling around the jetty, and the water was a beautiful turquoise. The sand was white as well - it was like arriving in paradise. After dropping our bags off in lockers, we headed straight out to the jetty. The tide was right out, which had left a lot of the coral reef exposed. Still, we swam out a bit and snorkelled close to where the boats were moored, where the water was high enough. It was fascinating - I thought I'd struggle with the breathing and things, but it came quite naturally. I loved the feeling of being able to drift around just using the flippers, only using my arms to change direction. I saw some beautiful fish, all quite small, but that was good enough for me. I was pretty relieved not to see any jellyfish or reef sharks!

When we'd seen all we wanted to, we headed on to the beach for some sunbathing (of course). It got really hot though - I think it hit 30 celsius today - so we decided to move inwards, away from the beach to the shade of the forest. One of the guys working at the hostel had told us about a crocodile farm on the island, so we set off in search of that.

It was situated right in the centre of the island, and called something like Melanese Menagerie. As we walked in there was a pool which we crossed over a small bridge. We looked down into the water to see three huge turtles swimming about (actually called Giant Sea Turtles, and rightly so - they were massive). They were beautiful and graceful, but the pool was far too small for the three of them, plus there were other large fish sharing it. It seemed quite sad that they were being kept in those conditions when their natural habitat was so close by.

After the turtle part were the crocodiles - all different species of fresh and salt water ones varying in size and age. They look like statues - apparently this is to try to fool people into walking up to them so they can attack. The biggest of them all was called Cassius. He was almost 6 metres long, but he was sat in his pool with just his head sticking out, so you couldn't see all of him. But his head was huge enough, it was all scarred from all the times he'd attacked boats in the wild and got hit by the propellers. The cage didn't look strong enough to stop him if he really wanted to get out!

After we'd stared enough, we walked the wooden boardwalk through the rainforest, and that brought us out on the other side of the island to where we had arrived on the boat. The sand there is so white and the water is so turquoise that it really looks (and is) idyllic. We walked on the beach all the way around the island back to the boat.

That night, as it was Becky's last night, we had a farewell barbecue with Tom, Michelle and Gemma (names sound familiar?!), three English people we met staying at the hostel. We took all our food out to the esplanade and used the outdoor barbecues on the waterfront, which was cool. Only problem was that they got shut off automatically at 9 o' clock, halfway through our cooking!