Ahh Cairns! What a beautiful town! We arrived at the airport and called our hostel, JJ's Backpackers, from the freecall desk. They picked us up in their van and took us to town to check into the hostel. We had a twin room booked and to begin with we thought it was a bit small and that maybe there would end up being a problem getting to use the bathroom and toilet as there was only one to share between 5 rooms, but it worked out fine. The hostel was clean, if you dont count the many ants in our room! And the owners were the nicest people in Cairns....they booked all of our tours for us and helped us find the best campervan deal by ringing around loads of different car rental companies for us. The hostel included a free breakfast and on the Thursday night they put on a free BBQ. They even had a free shuttle bus into town and back throughout the day and provided everyone with free dinner passes for the Woolshed Pub in the town centre. We sussed this out on our first night after a walk down the esplanade; it was ok for a free meal, just rice and chilli or spaghetti bolognese or veg option, so we took advantage of that for a couple of nights. We finished it off on our first night with Baskin Robins icecream!

Our first day was spent lounging around the lagoon which was a huge pool on the esplanade with sand all around it like a man-made beach and it was surrounded by grass. A really nice sunbaking location and we were more than happy to waste the day away!

We had booked a tour to the Great Barrier Reef where we could do some snorkelling and also try an introductory dive for free. We were picked up from our hostel the next morning and taken down to the jetty where we boarded the boat and were handed a wetsuit, snorkelling gear and flippers. The young skipper who took down our names commented that we smelled like the English before asking where we were from. When we told him England he started laughing and saying he couldnt believe we were actually English as he had just been making a joke. When we asked what we were supposed to smell like he said "sunscreen"! We all laughed then and thought that was quite funny as we had covered ourselves in it from head to toe before leaving the hostel!

We were welcomed with a cuppa and a bacon and egg buttie before we set sail. The dive instructors gave us a quick rundown of what to expect from the trip and how to use our snorkelling equipment and the dive equipment for those of us who wanted to try an introductory dive. It was a lot to take in and we both started to feel a little nervous - I was already worried that I'd feel claustrophobic with the snorkelling gear on, never mind the whole diving get-up, so the talk beforehand did make me feel a little bit more comfortable, although not totally at ease. For the next half an hour or so, one of the girls on board who was a marine biologist gave a talk on what animals and fish we might expect to see during the snorkelling. She described all of the different types of coral and the marine life that we may come across, showing us photographs on the DVD screen at the same time. She was very entertaining and we had a good laugh with her. A few people were nervous about bumping into sharks in the water but she explained that the only sharks we may see would be reef sharks and they wouldnt be interested in eating us! And she got very excited when telling us about the turtles we may see and made everyone cheer every time a turtle photo showed up on the screen. She told us a funny story about clown fish - also known as 'nemo fish' from the film Finding Nemo. She said the film told a little lie because in real life, if a baby nemo fish's mother died, its father would become its mother - change sex and everything! Though her take on it was slightly more amusing - she said the father would start wearing the mother's clothes and shoes, dressing up like the mother and then have a sex change! Haha... was funny at the time :)

Once we got to the reef and the anchor was thrown overboard, we slapped on some more sunscreen(!) which was provided on the boat, squeezed ourselves into our wetsuits, donned our uber attractive snorkelling masks, pipes and fins and splashed into the cool water. As we stuck our faces under the water and started swimming away from the boat, we realised how vulnerable we felt being out in the big blue sea with nothing keeping us afloat, so we swam back to the boat to collect a floatable noodle each and off we went again to explore the beautiful underwater world of the Great Barrier Reef.

The underwater scenery was amazing. Like nothing we've ever seen before. The fish were so pretty and colourful and the coral was cool. We had to be careful not to kick our legs into the coral and damage it as it would stop it growing and each tiny part of it takes years to grow. We'd also end up with a few nasty cuts on our legs so we were careful to keep away from the parts which were nearest to the surface.

We were in the last dive group, so once all the other groups had gone and come back, we were called up to get our scuber tanks fitted. Once we were securely attached we were led to the edge of the boat where we were told to sit with our legs in the water while we got used to using the regulator (the mouth piece providing our oxygen). It was at this point that Rob was starting to feel a bit apprehensive about the whole thing and I was surprisingly calm. I thought I would feel really claustrophobic and be panicking at this stage, but I must have worried enough beforehand that I didnt have any worry left in me and I was totally looking forward to the whole experience.

However things quickly changed! There were four of us in the final group and, one by one, we were told to lean forward and drop into the water face first. We then had to sink down about a metre and hold onto the rope that was attached to the back of the boat. All communication from that point would be through sign language from the dive instructor.

Myself and Rob have completely different accounts of the next half hour so this is my story......

As soon as I hit the water and sunk down to grab hold of the rope, the panic set in. I did start to feel really claustrophobic then and it was such a strange feeling being under the water but being able to breath, albeit rather erratically. I tried to tell myself that so many people had done it before me that day with no problems, so I would be fine and would be able to cope. I tried not to think about the strangeness of it all.

The instructor then came along the line and signed for each of us to blow the water out of our goggles by pushing on the top part to lift the bottom part from under our nose and blow out of our nostrils. He'd mentioned beforehand that he was going to do this so that we knew what to do if we did get any water in the goggles further into the dive. This I managed with no problems. Then he came along the line again and signed for us to take our regulators out of our mouths, blow a few bubbles, and put them back in again. I managed to take out the regulator and blow the bubbles, but when it came to putting it back in my mouth I ended up with a load of water in my mouth and started to cough. I tried to get rid of the water without having to remove the regulator again; we had been told beforehand that we could cough, sneeze and even puke(!) into it without it getting blocked up! But it wasn't working and I had to kick my way back up to the surface to catch my breath. The instructor came after me and asked if I was ok. I told him I'd just had a bit of water in my mouthpiece and that I was fine to go back down, so I stuck it back in my mouth and went back under the water to hold onto the rope.

The instructor then motioned for us all to turn around and give him the 'ok' sign with our hand to tell him we were ready to go down. At this point I started to feel really nervous and couldnt bring myself to give him the sign that I was ok. He could see that I wasnt feeling comfortable so he came up behind me and took my arm and pulled me futher down into the water so that I would be hooked up to him instead of one of the other divers. When he looked back at Rob and the others, Rob had somehow sunk down in the water and he motioned to me to stay put while he went after Rob to bring him back up. At that point, hanging around in the middle of the sea on my own, I really started to panic. I looked up to see the light at the surface of the water, then down to see the instructor swimming after Rob and thought 'I need air'! So I quickly kicked my legs and headed for the light! He came up after me to check I was ok and it was then that I gave up. My ears were really sore under the water and I couldnt equalise them. I also had a problem with my regulator, as I felt I was having to suck the air in and blow it out rather than just breath normally. I started to feel a bit suffocated so I decided I'd given it a try but I was safer back on the boat. I handed the instructor our underwater camera to give to Rob and swam back to the safety of the boat while Rob went off to explore the underwater world.

Rob's Edit:

For most of the morning, I was the excited one and Ruth was the nervous one. Then when it came to the actual dive, I was the nervous one! A few weeks before, I had heard of a terrible tragedy which struck a friend's mother whilst scuba diving and that is the only thing I could think of. However, once I got down into the water and was holding onto the rope one metre under the boat, I felt better. After the initial tests that Ruth described above, the instructor got us to turn around, still clinging onto the rope, then give the okay sign and let go. I noticed Ruth wasn't giving the okay sign so I asked her in the scuba diving language if she was okay and she said she had a problem. As I was meant to link her to be her partner, I notified the instructer "there's a problem with Ruth"! He instructed me still to let go of the rope so I did and left Ruth to decide whether to carry on or not. I was there, in the middle of the ocean, floating around, very happy to be able to see things and breathe. I was just in absolute awe. Then slowly but surely my ears began to get sore, then hurt, then really really hurt! I was so busy looking around that I forgot to kick my legs and of course with the weight belt on, once I'd let go of the rope and didn't kick my legs, I just sank like a tonne of bricks! I looked up and saw the rest of the group high above me and so quickly, thankfully before my ears started bleeding, started kicking my legs and in a few seconds got back up to their level and my ears returned to normal. It was a few seconds after this that I was handed our camera and was told to link arms with another instructor and I figured that Ruth sadly hadn't been able to carry on. So off we went, myself and another one of our group linking one instructor and the other lady from our group ahead linking the main instructor. The hardest thing to try and learn, in my opinion, is to equalise. Out of the water I can pop my ears without any problem, like when I'm in an aeroplane. But being underwater with a regulator in your mouth is a different story. However, I managed to get the hang of it and after a while, I was able to equalise every few seconds or when my ears started to hurt again. I am glad I got the hang of it because otherwise I would have been in a hell of a lot of pain, therefore, seriously ruining the experience. We swam around rocks, up close to coral, down onto the sea bed. Here we were handed round a sea cucumber which felt really soft and slimey! Throughout this I was snapping away like a crazy Japanese person, not being able to see the screen or through the viewfinder and so hoping I was capturing some good images. There is a picture on Ruth's facebook of me holding the sea cucumber! I saw lots of fish, including some clown 'Nemo' fish, lots of sea cucumbers and lots of rocks and coral. Unfortunately I saw no turtles and in a way i'm glad I saw no sharks! Even though it had been explained they were harmless to humans, I couldn't get the themetune from 'Jaws' out of my head! After what seemed like 3 minutes (but was actually about 20 minutes), we started heading to the surface where I could just laugh and grin with sheer exhilaration! I couldn't wait to get back onto the boat and tell Ruth about the experience and, of course, have lunch! Now back to Ruth's blog...

The next day we hired a car and drove up to Cape Tribulation to take part in some jungle surfing (flying through the jungle attached to zip wires and ropes). It was good fun, although a lot of money for what it was and probably more suited to a younger audience. But we had a good day anyway, and stopped at a little icecream shop on the way back to Cairns to try some weird and wonderful icecream flavours, mostly exotic fruits. Later that evening we went for a meal for Rob's birthday and for a few drinks.

Our last couple of days in Cairns were spent organising our onward travel and hiring a campervan to travel down the East Coast back to Sydney. The owners of the hostel were a great help phoning around loads of different companies to get the best price for us. We got a great deal for a hi-top campervan for only $19 per day as they needed the van back in Sydney by a certain date. That worked out great for us as it gave us 23 days to do the East Coast, which was only 2 less than we had originally intended.

Our final day, Sunday, was Robbie's birthday and we spent it lounging around the lagoon working on our tans before we hit the Bruce Highway on our 3 week long road trip back to Sydney.......