We arrived at Cairns after another long bus journey, this time in the day! It seemed tog o a lot quicker tho. The boys were on our coach 2, but got off at mission beach. We had to miss a few popular stops as we run out of time in Oz. Rach and Han were on a diff bus but staying at the same hostel in Cairns- Serpent. When we met them there Han had bites on her, everywhere, on her face arms back. So she shot off to the medical centre to find out what they were, turns out they were bedbugs whihc she had got staying at Magnems hostel in Airlie beach. The hostel told her and Rach they had to wash and dry all their stuff, and leave it out in black bags in the sun to dry. Poor things, they eventually got to bed.

The next day Vik and the 2 Rach's were going on a boat trip the the great barrier reef to scuba! ( Luce already been there with Chaz) After they had left, Luce and Han discovered the other girl in the room had a few bites so the hostel staff told them they had to wash and dry all their stuff too! After a stressful few hours they treated themselves 2 a well deserved chinese!

Meanwhile the other girls were on the boat clueless to what was happening back at the hostel! They arrived at the first stop on the reef where they were doing the scuba dive. They were first up as Rach was getting an internal flight to Melbourne the next day, and you're not allowed to fly a certain amount f time after diving ( 12 hours for domestic). We all got clobbered up and headed to the back of the boat and jumped in the water. We swam round to a metal bar on the side of the boat where the instructor took us down one by one to another bar about 4 metres down. Vik was struggling a bit tho as the water kept creeping in to her facemask. We carried on a bit deeper but Vik was still suffering with her mask and the instructor sent her back to the boat. The 4 of us carried on down to the seabed seeing lots of pretty coral and fish such as nemo and gorgeous bright blue ones! The 2 Rach's got back to the boat and tried to find Vik to see how she was but she was off snorkelling! the girls were lying in the sun drying off when the crew called out for lunchtime- a tropical buffet! It was lovely-salad, potato salad, chicken, ham,prawns.. think this is what makes it tropical! Shortly after we headed to the second stop at the reef. It was a lot prettier, so much coral and there was even a random little sand island! Vik was lucky enough to get another dive for free here. The instructor gave her his mask, as apparantly the reason the water was creeping in was because of the length of space betwene her nose and mouth, and his was specially designed for him. She ended up having a longer dive than the original one, and her instructor kept picking up things from the sea bed and passing it to her such as star fish.

On the way back the girls got a bit curious and went to ask the captain how he knew where to sail on the sea, and he talked them through his gps and compass, apparantly they were on the highway to cairns! He was a scouser too, from shakeabush! When they were almost back they got a text off Luce explaining they'd need to do all their stuff too! What a horrible end to a lovely day!

The next day the girls were picked up early from the hostel and headed up towards the rain forest where they had arranged to go quadbiking and horse riding through the bush! They started with quad biking, all choosing one of the smaller quads as was advised by the instructor as it was the first time they'd rode a quad. After a quick safety brief they were off for a few laps on the practice loop to get used to steering their vehicles! All was going well. Once onto the main terrain we drove through bush, billabongs and past termite mounds. Luce was behind the instructor and he was making sure he covered her in as much mud as possible when driving through the wet areas. We were all covered in mud by the end of it though.

After quad biking there was a bbq lunch provided with burgers and salad. Then we headed up to a village in the rainforest called Kurunda which has cool markets and was nice just to wander around. We spent about an hour and a half here before the Blazing Saddles bus picked us up and took us back to the ranch for our afternoon of horseriding. After the quadbiking it was quite relaxing to take in our surroundings on horseback. The horses were beautiful but Lucy's wouldnt stop eating and Rachel's seemed to go to the loo a lot! We rode through the bush and made our way through rivers. We got the chance to do a bit of trotting although there was one lazy horse in the group which didnt seem to want to take part! We passed loads of huge termite mounds which changed colour along with the soil.

back at the ranch we were fed again, woo! We had the best cheese toasties we've ever tasted and i think between the 3 of us we polished off most of them before we were driven back to the hostel. We were covered in mud and dust a clothes wash was a must!

Rich and Graham were in our hostel and it was their last night in Aus together so we headed out to a few bars, one in which the girls were given free champagne, woo! At the end of the night Rach and Vik walked up and down the street looking for chips, cheese and gravy (a weird northen thing!) but to no avail!

We caught out flight to Brisbane the next day and stayed with Claire again . We had a great Indian for dinner and chilled out in a real house to watch some films!