Hello,

So we arrived at Mission Beach Shack at around 6pm after our 9 hour killer journey! Its really nice actually condsidering how cheap it is - its like a massive house! Watched the tennis (come on Djokovic) with 2 lads we met on the Greyhound up here and then hit the bed for an earlyish night ready for tomoorows plans :)

We got up on Saturday 26th (Australia Day) ready for our 7am pick up for RnR Rafting. Yep thats right - today we went white water rafting. We arrived in tully about half an hour later, and after a free cup of tea and a safety briefing video (plus the hiring of some gorgeous reef sandals not!!) we were ready to go. After about another 30 minute journey we arrived at Tully River and collected a life jacket, safety helmet and a paddle. We then got into agropu of 6 - we were with an english girl and boy and a new zealand guy who were all pretty cool. Our raft guide was called Lisa and from the moment go she was a bloody nutcase!! We set off on our 12km journey in our rafts hitting rapids of grade 2 - 4! The rapids had very unusual names - We hit two grade 4 raids one after another... and i kid you not, the first was called Foreplay and the second Wet and Moist (sorry mum and dad). Otehr names were Corkscrew, Minefield, staircase, Double D cup and Two Incher (the last two had meaning sbehind them which I am sure you can think - it involves teh losing of swimmers....) There was a guy shooting a video of us all as we went down and a few pics too so Lisa (who was crazy) told us that if we reached the bottom of the rapids when he was there we were to do a dance. So we did this everytime we could and even pulled moonies when we got to the bottom of one! One part was a bit worrying as Lisa was shouting at us directions throughout and when we got to the top of a grade 4 rapid the word sout of her mouth were as exact... "Oh s***, erm stay up, no go down, do whatever the hell you can". so quite scary but we made it :) On on eof the rapids, as we droppe down the raft literally folded in half and Loz's paddle hit me on the hand which is still quite sore now but its all part of the fun :) As i said, Lisa was crazy and almost every rapid made us go down backwards without looking. Also on anothe rone she made the right hand side of the boat stay facing forward and the left side facing backwards and we literally span around loads of times through the grade 4 rapid - was so much fun!!! There was also an opportunity to jump off a 4metre high rock into the river but as I climbed up there I couldn't do it so I just swam round... On the very last rapid we went the wrong way by accident and got into trouble...we got stuck on a massive rock and almost flippe dover onto some other big rocks which would have hurt but it was fine in the end! .At the very end of the ride Lisa flipped the boat over on purpose on top of us which was so much fun (although steph literally dived off teh other side just before we flipped as she was scared! bless her).

White water rafting was absolutely amazing - apparantly Tully river is Australias most famous rafting adventure. Today was so much fun and is on par with the best thing we have done in Australia. Its so much fun and I really would recommend it to anyone!! We got back to the cafe where we started in the morning about 5 hours later and watched a preview of the dvd. We bought the dvd and pictures of our raft team so will show everyone when i get back!

Anyway - now we are back in Mission Beach and are staying here til Monday when we head up to Cairns.

anyway I am absolutely exhausted from today so I will catch up again in Cairns before hitting New Zealand. The pictures of us rafting will be put on in Cairns as these computers at the hostel in Mission Beach are so slow.

Love to all xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx