After a late flight out of Perth and a two hour time difference we didn't land in cairns till around half 4 on Wednesday morning! We went to get a cab and just heard a young lad saying Gilligans to a taxi driver so we jumped to the case and shared a cab with him to the famous Gilligans hostel that we have heard so much about! The taxi driver was giving us all sorts of advice about North Queensland, warning us about getting stuck in the outback, crocodiles, deadly jellyfish, snakes and spiders, pretty much scaring the crap out of us, but don't worry were all good….. so far!

We arrived at the hostel only to find out we were not allowed to check into our dorm until 2pm! So that meant a lot of time to kill! We were all knackered so went to one of the common rooms to have a nap, not that we really could as it was boiling hot in there! The weather is completely different to Perth in Western Australia, it is a lot more humid, sweaty and clammy in Queensland!

We gave up trying to sleep at around 9 ish and went to a café to get some breakfast before going to a travel agents called Peter Pans to plan our East Coast tour!

We had a Dutch girl called Shanty help us out and she was really helpful! We told her everything we wanted to do and that we needed to be in Sydney for New Years Eve then she sent us away for half hour so she could check availability for everything! We agreed to her itinerary and paid the money, Lloyd paid $2699, Danny paid $2599 and Tim paid $2399. The prices ranged as Tim didn't want to do another Sky Dive, well he did want to but thought of the money for a change! Danny was slightly cheaper as well as he wasn't going to do scuba diving! She told us to come back the next day so it gave her a chance to get everything booked and sorted!

We went back to the hostel to check in, once we were In the room and in the air conditioning we all had a well needed nap! Later on three English girls, Becky, Abbie and Emma, who were already in our room came back and introduced themselves! We arranged to meet them out later for drinks and headed out to cook dinner and explore the huge hostel! We all agreed it is the best hostel we have ever stayed in, it's just like a hotel really but you stay in dorms! It has a huge bar, a night club, restaurant and most importantly a giant penis-shaped swimming pool! After we had cooked our own food that night we realised that you can get a free meal if you buy a drink at the bar, or you can pay $10(£5.50) for a massive steak and chips which is really cheap for Australia!

We met a group of Irish lads at Sterosonic and one of them, Dean, lives in Cairns and was actually on our flight so we arranged to meet him that night as well. Gilligans is literally where everyone in Cairns goes out, whether they are staying in the hostel or not!

The girls came and met us a bit later and we also met a couple of young English lads called Sam and Will, they are 18 and 19 and had only been away from home a week or so, so we ended up taking them under or wing for the next few days! Even the little German lad from our airport taxi joined us! We ended up having quite a big group and obviously all got very drunk together! We went to another club a bit later called the Woolshed, they had a wet t-shirt competition, this turned into a 'no tshirt' competition so we didn't enjoy that at all…

The next day we collected our large amount of paperwork from Shanty in Peter Pans, she ran through everything with us, where we had to be and when so we can't muck it up really! Included in the money we paid we had all of our accommodation, transport, scuba diving, rainforest tour, sky dive, boat trips, island trips and some meals! So we were all pretty happy with what we paid!

The rest of the day we spent wandering around Cairns checking out the city, a very small city at that! There is a massive public swimming pool called the lagoon with a man-made beach. We were to spend a day here a few days later! Later that night we met up with the whole crew and had another night out, yeah I guess it's going to start to sound like Bali and Gil T again, not doing much during the days and getting smashed every night! We had heard from a lot of people on our travels that you can't stay in at night, while staying at Gilligans, and they were so right! After one more day of dosing around, catching a tan and yet another night out it came to Saturday and our first proper activity!

It was an early start, up at around half 6 and a short walk to the harbour. As we boarded the boat we were welcomed with some breakfast of fruit and different pastries which was good as obviously we were nursing another hangover! After about an hour cruising on the boat we arrived at the first snorkel and scuba dive site of the day on the Great Barrier Reef, the largest living organism on the planet! During the first stop the staff all talked about where we would be going and when. Then split us into groups of snorkelers, introductory scuba divers and qualified scuba divers, although everyone could do the snorkelling whenever. We were all given separate briefings on what we would be looking for under the water etc.

All three of us went for a snorkel first, and it didn't take long before we saw a huge fish! The biggest we had seen before…a large barracuda with huge teeth! We went in after a while as Tim and Lloyd were to get kitted up for the first dive. It was a lot more casual than last time as we weren't being trained up we were just going diving as qualified divers, so we had no tests or anything under the water. We were a little worried before we started thinking maybe we won't remember everything but it was surprising how much everything came flooding back. As we submerged to around 1516 metres deep we started to take in how amazing the reef is, it didn't take long to see a sea turtle, a big one at that, the biggest we've seen, until about half hour later and we saw an even bigger one! It was huge! In between those two sightings we all saw a massive sting ray, maybe a metre and a half in diameter, we also saw a few smaller sting rays. The other cool thing we saw that we haven't before was a giant clam, this was also massive, but its kind of in the name I guess… the tour guide brushed her hand over the shell and it snapped shut! Pretty cool to see! When we surfaced, we found Danny, and spoke about what we saw! Lloyd and Tim were saying to eachother how much we love it, then agreed to do a second dive for an extra $35….bargain! After another snorkelling session we kitted up again to go down for our second dive. We took a different route this time around the reef, they had seen a shark in this area a few days before so we were hoping on that, no such luck though. We did get to pick up some sea cucumbers though, they feel really weird, like hard and soft! Lloyd was running low on air so had to surface 10 minutes earlier than the others in the group, which was a bit annoying, as Tim saw a big blue starfish that he was allowed to pick up.

When everyone was back on the boat, lunch was served. It was a cold buffet, southern fried chicken legs, prawns, pasta, salad etc. We set sail again to another snorkel site. After a feed we were all feeling a bit fresher! We went for another snorkel, and just at the back of the boat was a massive barracuda, named Barry! Apparently he hangs around the boat every day. One of the staff grabbed a few prawns and free dived a few metres down, holding the prawns in his hands he wiggled them around and the barracuda shot for his hand before he released it at the vital point and the fish snapped it up!

We noticed a lot of people about 150m away looked like they were in really shallow water so we swam over to check it out. It was amazing, the sand just came closer and closer to the surface before you could actually stand up in ankle deep water! We were like standing in the middle of the ocean it was crazy! We had a bit of a moment when we were out there…. Just taking it all in and realising how lucky we are to be experiencing one of the few natural wonders of the world!

When everyone arrived back on the boat we took a seat on the top deck for the hour trip back to cairns. Platters of fruit, cheese and crackers and cakes were passed around as an afternoon snack.

We had booked on to do a pub crawl that night, $35 for dinner, a few free shots, free entry and an open top bus to take us to each place, only thing about that was there was a huge storm! So everyone had to cram on the bottom deck of the busses! The lightning and rain was nuts, its rainy season here so when it rains it bloody rains!! We finished the pub crawl played a few of the games that were lined up then ended up back at Gilligans to finish the night. We had another small world moment on the bar crawl, Lloyd and Tim really recognised the photographer but couldn't work out where from so we said to him 'how do we know you, where did you used to work?' he replied, 'Hanoi' then it all clicked he worked in the hostel in Hanoi in Vietnam on like our second week traveling, 10 months ago! He remembered us as well!

The next day was another chill out day, sleeping for most of it, and believe it or not we went out again that night with Sam and Will, Sam is a singer and even treated us to a little song of Valarie in the room while we were pre drinking. This is when we were introduced to Vicky and Fran, who were staying in the room with Will and Sam, a couple of girls from Essex. Its always nice to hear the accent again.

The next day we were booked onto the 'Uncle Brains Rainforest Tour'. It's a long day, 12 hours but it was good, we stopped off at a few stops, walking through trails in the rainforest, swimming in the rivers, jumping of stuff into rivers (shock). At one of the places there was a natural water slide, where you slide down a rock which has fast flowing water going down it which is pretty cool! The tour guide, 'Cousin Brad' was really good, an absolute Nutter don't get me wrong but he made the day very entertaining, keeping us busy on the bus journeys as well. We stopped off for a decent lunch in a very random café, had lasagne and chips!

After lunch we went to the famous waterfall called Mila Mila falls. This is where Peter Andre filmed his Mysterious Girl music video, and where the Herbal essences advert with the hair flick was filmed! The water there was freezing, lets just say there were a feeeeeeeew nips poking through bikinis! We nailed a photo of the hair flick all at the same time, first attempt, yeah right it took about 50 tries! 189 likes on Facebook though, hashtag just saying!

The next stop was a giant tree that was the inspiration for the giant tree in the film Avatar, that was pretty cool, it's a tree that grows downwards off of other trees, but its huge! The second to last stop was to see some platypus', we waited around for about an hour all getting a bit bored to be honest just chatting to everyone, but then one was spotted, not going to lie it wasn't very impressive but it was a platypus nonetheless, never seen one before so I guess that was something. Finally one last stop was a hostel to all have a beer, didn't even get time to finish it before we were on the way back to Gilligan, it was about an hour journey but Cousin Brad kept us entertained with some classic tunes. He even had the three of us in the isle doing the Macarena in front of everyone, our bus was 15 girls and 5 lads, 3 of them were us so we weren't complaining there!

It was Sam and Wills last night so we were out again to give them a good send off, we all went to another bar tonight as it was $4 drinks until half 12! When that offer finished we went back to Gilligan but it was strangely dead so we went back to the lads and girls room and chilled on the balcony for a bit with some goon(cheap boxed wine). We said our goodbyes to the lads, we'll next be seeing them in Sydney, with a lot of other people, literally every one we meet will be in Sydney for NYE!

The next day, which was Vicky's birthday we just went to the Lagoon and chilled in the pool all day talking about love life and dreams, bit of sunbathing and ice cream eating in there at some point as well. As it was Vicky's birthday we all went out for a nice Indian and had a couple of bottles of wine which was pretty cool. We had all decided we wasn't going to crazy tonight as we were all up early the next morning for busses. There was a wet t shirt competition at midnight so we thought we'd all watch that then go to bed…yeah right, out came the Jaeger bombs, tequila slammers and lots of beers and 4 oclock in the morning bed times once again! We said goodbye to the girls, we will also be seeing them in Sydney for NYE!

Cairns was beaut, maybe spent a bit too much money on booze but it was all fun and games! Next stop is a two hour bus down the coast to Mission Beach for a bit of a detox!