We arrived in Cairns fairly late, just missing the free shuttle to the hostel. After a half hour wait at the bus station we got taken to the hostel (via just about every back street as it was the driver's first day), arriving just 5 minutes after they stopped the all you can eat buffet! (David was not impressed!) We instead had a quiet dinner around the corner before heading home for the night.
The next morning we woke up early and walked to the city centre. It was suprisingly small, but we had a pleasent walk around, for once not getting lost before sitting and relaxing by the city's lagoon. We had luckily chosen a good sunny day to go, and the area around was packed out. That afternoon, all those not on crutches booked up a diving trip to the Great barrier reef for the following day.
We managed t pick the worst day we had in Cairns to do the hour and a half boat trip to the GBR and found oursleves on the world's craziest boat! The mad Australian crew decided to push the boat as fast as it could go through the huge waves, and as we regularly became fully airborne and crashed back down into the waves, throwing most of the passangers into the isles (whilst constantly losing caualties to sea sickness!). As this was happening the crew were quite content making comments like 'i just saw Nemo, stuck all over the window!'. Still as soon as we arrived at our first location, after settling our stomachs, we went for our introductory dive and with minimal training (literally the 'im good' or 'im drowning' signs) we plunged into the choppy sea! This was however an incredible experience, seeing coral 40 foot high and plunging into the depths was a beautiful sight. The coral was riddled with beautiful fish, some were as big as a couple of meters and others surrounded you in massive shoals. We were lucky enough to find a huge sea turtle who was generally unphased by our spasmodic movements in tring to go in the right direction and just slowly went about his business, the sea cucumber was slightly less exciting, but the 20 min dive was a fantastic experience and a great start to see the GBR. Then after lunch we headed to our second location, a sheltered coral lagoon which made it easier to snorkel in. Again after a brief moment to reorganise our intestines we hit the sea with our rented camera to explore the lagoon, this is where we were lucky enough to sight a white tipped coral reef shark and Nemo! After a good two hours underwater and seeing all the brightly coloured fish of various sizes, we returned to the boat for a surreal trip back to the harbour! The trip home was probably the most crazy experience of the day, the sea had managed to get worse- and another screw had fallen out of the captain's head. The boat pretty much flew back to shore, only touching down in the sea to plummet until the front windows of the boat were fully submerged and then tossed back to see nothing but the sky. As you can imagine this created carnage in the lounge area, people had to crawl to the toilet or be thrown into the metal supports! While a series of cries echoed around the cabin as the passangers feared for their childrens lives (getting the lifejackets ready!) an eeire sound came across the loung-one of the staff had got his guitar and had started singing. Now this was a pleasent touch, if it wasnt for the choral screams and the crashing of the waves on the boat, and the words to a 'i come from a land down under' stangely changed including 'and the english chunder' and most suprisingly 'and skippies gay'. Still we reached the harbour, both thinking we had died in a horrific accident and gone to a strange pergatory- solid land had never been more welcome and a great day was had!.

The next day we flew from Cairns to start our adventures in Sydney