After a short drive up from Paronella Park we arrived in Cairns. This is the furthest north we are going in Queensland and the first thing that hits you when arrive is the humidity! Its only winter here so its the coldest and lowest humidity you'll get, but since we've been here its been a pretty constant 28c during the day and never lower than 18c at night! Its humid as hell during the day but its so nice as the same time that by the end of our time we have almost gotten used to it.......almost.

Once we arrived in Cairns, not knowing the layout too much, we ended up in the centre right near a giant mall which we went into as we knew they had a Muffin Break. YEY! Ended up having a massive food court with loads of GF options so we ended up going back here several times during our stay in Cairns. From here we found our bearings and went exploring.

Cairns itself is a really nice place, very low level and spread out but makes everything easy to get to. The main beach area isn't really a beach because the tide goes quite a way out during the day, but to make up for this the local council has built lagoon swimming area right on the esplanade. Really smart looking swimming pool with plenty of grass around with free BBQs and seating, which was always packed everyday with people relaxing and sunning themselves. Gives the place a great relaxed vibe, something which we both loved!!! The rest of the area is full of palm tree lined streets with loads of different shops (Baskin Robbins is here though yeah!) to wander around and we pretty much went here every day of our stay as it was so nice.

On our first full day in Cairns we went to the Cairns Skyrail which is a cable car which goes up and over the rainforest for 20km. Looked good on the brochure but was actually crap, and not cheap crap either! $110 for the two of us and all you could see were the tops of trees. There were a few stops on the way for you to take a walk of the rainforest, but these basically looped round the cable car building so it was dam noisy, plus the staff were rude as hell so it wasn't a great experience overall, except for seeing a cool waterfall.

For Saturday we decided on the tours we were going to do after reading a lot of brochures, booked them in and then went and wandered round the beach markets. We saw lots of cool stuff as the market was full of local craft people and I'm sure if we were on a 2 week vacation we would have brought loads of things to bring home, but instead we just looked as Bolt doesn't really need loads of frog models, rugs etc. We did however buy a Baskin Robbins which goes down pretty good in this heat!!! Other highlight of the day was Em got to cut Andy's hair as he finally got sick of having such long hair as its been nearly 3 months since we left the UK now! WOW!

Sunday was the first of our excursions to a place called Fitzroy Island which was a 45min ferry ride. We knew we'd been sold a duffer when we boarded the boat to find a huge group of backpackers carrying nothing but crates of beer and fags, but we thought the island would be big enough for us to avoid them. Wrong. The island was a dump, building work everywhere and the only beach was tiny, plus it ended up being a 30 minute seriously steep and rocky hike through the jungle to get to it, but they seem to have left that bit out of the brochure.....wonder why? But it wasn't all bad, we had a good time snorkeling over the coral by the beach and lounging in the sun. Its hard work this traveling lark you know! Plus we saw a MASSIVE grasshopper about 4 inch long. Cool!

Monday was frickin roasting!!!! Didn't do much as it was just too hot so we ended up at the mall where Em had her first haircut too before we got more Muffin Breaks, more Baskin Robbins, and then lounged around at the lagoon by the beach watching the giant pelicans look for food in the sea. Not bad.

Tuesday was the best day though. Not just of Cairns, but probably our best day ever, apart from the wedding day!

We had booked on Reef Magic which was a full day trip out to the Great Barrier Reef to another pontoon like what we did in the Whitsundays. When we boarded the boat the crew were super friendly and we actually recognized one of the girls there as she was on the TV program back home, Wanted Down Under, about people coming to start a new life in Oz. She was part of a couple about our age who came to Cairns but couldn't find work, but after the show had finished she did find work and has been here since. Her and her fella both love it her so we talked to her for a bit which was cool, good to speak to someone who has done what we are doing now. Anyway, back to the day. The trip out of the reef was only 90 mins this time and a lot smoother and while on the way out we had a briefing by a Marine Biologist about all the fish and coral there, plus we had our scuba briefing. Yes.....Scuba Briefing!

We had booked ourselves on an Introductory Scuba Dive which we were both really looking forward to. Em had done a scuba dive in Cyprus before we both met, but Andy had never done one so we were both well excited to do it. Once we arrived at the pontoon we got our wetsuits / snorkel / mask / flippers and headed to the drive area. The staff here were awesome, super friendly and remembered our names the whole day. They made the whole experience super fun, especially an "interesting" way of putting the weight belts on (look at the picture to see what we mean), and it no time we were fully kitted up with scuba gear and made our way down under the pontoon to the moon pool. The moon pool was a platform under the pontoon where the water came chest deep and was so you could get used to breathing underwater, plus used to clearing your mask, removing and refitting your respirator etc before starting your dive. Once we'd both got used to it we swam off the platform with our guide and started our scuba dive on the Great Barrier Reef.

Speechless is the first thing that comes to mind. Amazing was next, quickly followed by oh my god! The water was so clear you could see all the way down to the bottom 10m below us and there were fish everywhere! Once we got to the bottom we all knelt down and a diver came over to take some photos, which is when Wally the Wrasse, a giant blue fish about 1m long swam past! AMAZING!! We then held a sea cucumber for more pics before all linking arms and going for a 20 minute scuba dive. We have never seen that many fish before and it totally blew away the part of the reef we saw at Airlie Beach. Amazing!! It was so good that when the dive was finished we signed up for a 2nd dive later on. Amazing!

After the intro dive we donned our snorkel gear and jumped back in the water for a snorkel over the coral. It really was amazing to see as there were fish and coral everywhere less than half a meter below in crystal clear calm water. Such a good experience that we spent about an hour doing this before getting out for lunch.

We'd actually spent longer than we thought snorkeling because we'd only been eating lunch 5 mins when we were called for our 2nd scuba dive. This time we were allowed to swim on our own, still with an instructor though, but we went for a lot longer and a lot deeper this time. Again, it was simply amazing! Wally the Wrasse came past at one point and swam with us for a bit which was brill, plus we found an Anemone (or as Nemo would say anemamameee) which was full of clown fish, aka, NEMO!! WE FOUND NEMO! YEAH!!! WOOHOO!!! Totally awesome and we also saw a giant clam was made it even better, such a cool experience and something we both will never forget.

After this dive, no rest for the wicked, we jumped straight back into snorkeling and were lucky enough to get some amazing photos of us with Wally the Wrasse. Still can't believe how big he was! Anyway, after another hour and a bit of snorkeling we came back on the pontoon only to realize the boat was boarding to leave so we had to quickly change and climb aboard. At least we got our moneys worth though eh

Without doubt the most amazing experience of our lives! Nothing really comes close to the Great Barrier Reef in that respect and has given us memories which we will treasure forever.

Once we got back to Cairns we took the digital camera which we had hired from a store in the city back to get our photos from it. This was a brilliant purchase as the single use underwater cameras we tried were crap, but we found a store who hired proper underwater digital cameras out which took brill photos and also took videos clips which came out brilliantly. We'll get some of these added to the blog at some point.

After the reef trip nothing much more we could do which would top it here so the last two days in Cairns were spent catching up with our washing, planning the rest of our trip, sorting stuff out etc. We took Bolt into the campervan place to get a few niggly problems sorted out like the leaky window, plus of course we crammed in as many Muffin Breaks and Baskin Robbins as we possibly could

Overall, Cairns scores a solid 10/10 with us. Even though its winter and still scorchingly hot and humid so god knows what the summer is like, we still feel this is a place we could live. Whether we would live here or not is something we'll think about in the future, but without doubt its one of our favourite places we have been to and we are sad to leave.

Next though we leave the coast (noooooooooo) and head inland towards the Outback! This should be interesting....