Cairns, Australia

It was a really smooth flight from Singapore to Darwin and from Darwin to Cairns. Jet star was a surprisingly good airline as it is the Qantas budget option. We were chuffed as we thought it would be like Easyjet (Sleezyjet!). We flew into sunny Cairns around 8am and got picked up and taken to our hostel, called Castaways. We couldn't believe how clean this hostel was and it had its own kitchen and TV room, but we are now paying 4 times the price we were in Asia, so we are a bit gutted not to be in the land of the cheap anymore. The first evening we caught the free bus to town and went to a backpacker haunt called the Woolshed, where we both got very very drunk and ended up in some club dancing until 3am, quality tunes!

The next day with a gruelling hangover we took a walk along the esplanade into town, this was a gorgeous walk (sadly there is no beach, and also watch out for the saltwater crocs!). We were surprised to not be sweating, the air was lovely and cool. Ads put a jumper on for the first time in almost 3 months!

The next day we woke early and went for a run along the esplanade to try and burn off some of the calories we had consumed on alcohol a few nights previously! It felt amazing to finally be cool enough to do some exercise and we can really see how OZ is geared around sport and outdoor activities as there is a free outdoor pool, volleyball, skate park, and free classes such as yoga and aqua aerobics. That day we did lots of walking around town and started thinking about what we wanted to do in OZ. We booked a trip around the great barrier reef came back to the hostel and watched Finding Nemo for further inspiration!

We woke early the next day walked into town, grabbed a coffee and caught our boat to the reef. As soon as we got out of the harbour it was ridiculously choppy and a lot of people required sick bags! We dived at 2 points in the outer barrier reef and saw lots of fish including clown fish (Nemo) and our favorite the Sea turtle. The water was not as warm as Malaysia so we had to wear wet suits and it was still pretty damn cold, we were so pleased that we chose to snorkel and not dive as the waters were quite shallow so we could see just as well with our snorkels. Plus diving is twice the price! Overall an amazing experience at the Great Barrier Reef and we would definitely recommend it to anyone.

We had a nightmare booking a campervan as the one we wanted wasn't available for a week, but we managed to find the only available one in Cairns believe it or not, as it is peak season here at the mo. The van is super sweet with a Toyota 2.4 litre engine and is a Hi Top camper with a big fridge, sink, microwave, awning, table and chairs and loads of storage and even a CD/MP3 player which we can plug the I-Pod into. We couldn't be happier as we thought we would be given a crappy one for the price we paid. But it has all the mod-cons and from here we start our camping adventure for 48 days down the East coast to Sydney