We said goodbye to the camper van on Monday morning (sob sob), and found our way to our hostel in Cairns. We got a great deal on a resort hostel with a pool so spent the first couple of days unwinding by the pool and topping up the tan. We also caught up with a Dutch guy we met on Fraser Island-Elmer- who was also staying in Cairns, and had a lot of fun playing frisbee, swimming, eating 50 cent Mcdonalds ice creams and generally relaxing by the huge public lagoon.

It was Elmers birthday on Thursday and we all booked to go on a days snorkelling and scuba diving to the outer reef with two of his friends. It was a huge boat and took about two hours to get to Saxon reef, the first of the day. Ali and I were in the second group of scuba diving so donned our stinger suits and had a quick snorkel while the first group went off. Next it was our turn. We got our jackets on and had to hold on to a bar on the back of the boat to do our skills (clearing the mask underwater, clearing the regulator and equalizing our ears). Luckily we did this in the Whitsundays and so had a head start on the others. We all descended and had a swim around, just taking in the atmosphere, thousands of fish and some awesome coral formations. Sadly its all over far too quickly, its around half an hour but feels like ten minutes, time flies I guess. We got out, and promptly returned to the water for another hours snorkelling before heading back to the boat for a well deserved lunch.

After lunch we went to Hastings reef and went for another snorkel. Ali and I were first in the water and headed straight over some shallow beds to a huge rock edge where the water was around ten metres deep. As soon as we got there it was teaming with loads of different fish and two of the things that we most wanted to see. A Ray (not exactly sure which type but pretty cool), and a shark!! It was awesome to see in the wild, it was a white tip shark and only about 4 feet in length but I followed it for about half an hour completely in awe of it.

Then it was time for our second dive. Sadly Elmer couldnt equalize his ears which meant he couldnt do it but they had hired an underwater digital camera and said we should take it down. We had two japenese people dive with us this time and they were useless so the instructor asked how confident we were and we said very so he basically let us do our own thing for the next half an hour (as long as we could see him) which was awesome. We just swam around taking pictures, going deeper than before and exploring the reef. We were the last in the water so when we got out we headed straight back to Cairns.

We arrived around 6pm, a really full day and were all wiped but we still had a party to contend with! We grabbed a pizza on the way back to the hostel, showered and changed then headed to Elmers house where we had a really great night with loads of random people we had met on the way up the coast. We all sat round til the early hours when Ali and I left and the boys headed out to a club (I'm way too old for that these days!!)

We chilled again the next day, packed our bags and got everything ready for the flight on the Saturday. We had a really fun few days in Cairns hanging out with Elmer and absolutely loved the scuba diving, we would like to do our PADI (open water divers course) in Asia but I think we may be watching the pennies by then!!

All in all, Australia hasn't really captured us but I guess we have been rather spoilt thus far. So off to Bali we go, really looking forward to some surf and hanging out with Guy and Pip who are coming over for a month.

love to you all xxx