Cairns 13th-17th

Blogs will probably be sparse in Oz. Wifi is rarely available and when it is it's pricey. We need the money to eat not surf the web. But don't worry we'll still keep a blog, we just might upload a few at a time.

Anywho.

We waved goodbye to Singapore and South East Asia after spending half a day milling around the airport!! We had a flight into Brisbane which wasn't so bad, they fed us and we managed an hour of sleep. We then took a flight from Brisbane up to the north of Australia to a town called Cairns. Cairns was experiencing a mini boom in visitors when we arrived as there was to be a solar eclipse the following morning. This meant that we had to check into a pretty low grade hostel, as all our other options were full. We stopped at the ironically named Njoy hostel and hated it. More on why to follow.

So we got there in the afternoon and decided to go explore and sort out some business. We headed into town and straight for the bank to sort out getting Ozzie accounts!! Task 1 done. Task 2 was to find and price up some camper vans for our journey down to Sydney over the next 5 weeks. We found 1 shop with ease and got a quote from a very lacklustre Aussie, who was to miserable for us to give him our custom. The second place we found by pure chance as we didn't even know it existed. There was a queue so we got bored and left. The 3rd place we went looking for was quite far away on the map, however, even though we were tired, we trudged on. At one point the pavement disappeared and we were wandering over grass and trees. This long walk was not without incident, oh no. A bird attacked Dec! Full on flew out of its tree ,followed and repeatedly struck him in the head! Scary times we live in! Any way we found the building and were told by a lady that it had moved and merged, funnily enough to the 2nd place! We headed back there, waited in the queue and were then told we had to book online or by phone. We gave up for the day and headed back to get some much needed sleep before the eclipse. Our room was shared with another traveller called Jeneen. Jeneen was a 19 year old German girl who was a miserable little s*** and a slob.

As it happened we slept straight through the eclipse, this shocked and appalled anyone we mentioned it to. Cairns was treating the event like the second coming of Christ and people had flocked in their thousands to see it. One sign said 'it'll never happen again in your lifetime'. Utter tosh, anyone that listened in science could explain that it happens every year! It might never happen again in Cairns but it will happen again. We even said to someone that we had seen it before in Britain, "there all different!" Was the response. No, wrong again, same moon, same sun, get over it, it's not voodoo. Any who, we spent that second day avoiding people wearing eclipse t-shirts and ventured round shops looking for another camera. We haven't lost the first one like before, we wanted an SLR after some disappointing photos from Singapore. That night we headed to The Woolshed. The Woolshed is the backpacker bar of Cairns. Factoid, every Griffin that has entered has been chucked out for being to much fun. This time was different though as Dec didn't want to be ejected from the bar that gives out free dinners! We left after our free grub and headed to meet Mel's friend Gemma for a few drinks. As the night continued we started chatting to two Aussie bruisers. The one looked the spitting image of the notorious ozzie killer Mark 'Chopper' Reed. It's not everyday that 2 tanks start talking to people without an agenda, and we were getting weary. However it turned out that they were just two really nice fishermen, home from weeks at sea. They even bought us drinks with a seaman card, haha.

The following day was to be our lazy day. We ventured down to the lagoon in the middle of town. In Cairns the sea isn't safe to swim in because of all the saltwater crocodiles and jellyfish. So being outdoorsy people they decided to build a giant outdoor park, complete with entertainment, a huge pool and free BBQ pits. On our way to the lagoon we met up with Mel's family friend, over on holiday, who we ate lunch with. After lunch we went a soaked up the sun in the lagoon. Upon our return to the hostel after our free dinner we decided we had had enough of Jeneen. After trying numerous times to converse with her we decided to give up the ghost. Jeneen was a sheep. Around Cairns and our hostel we had noticed a lot of 'traveller' travellers. Now these people are just morons. They sit around the hostel all day calling everyone 'dude' , they all have ridiculous dreadlocks, they don't wear shoes and love a s*** tattoo. What makes them worse is that they think they are doing it a better way than everyone else. They're not. What they do do is sit around hostels surgically attached to their iPhones spending mommy and daddy's dime. We asked Jeneen what she was doing in Cairns, she said getting her PADI license, she had been there two weeks and had only been diving once! It's a three day course!!! Ergh, Travellers!! Rant over!

( if we get like that, shoot us!!!)

On our third day we went on a tour. The tour was a trip out to a coral island called Fitzroy island. We woke early and were deliberately loud to wake our favourite iPhone mule. After a brisk walk to the pier we boarded our boat for a 45minute sail across the Great Barrier Reef. When we arrived we noticed that the beach wasn't covered in sand but instead, large chunks of coral. Hence it being a coral island. This lack of sand was much to delight of one of our travellers and we took up a nice spot right in the middle of where everyone decided to walk. After about an hour we decided to go on a glass bottom boat tour. We didn't see any sharks, but we got a great view of the coral. The driver was a man from Derby and immediately noticed we were Brummies and told us all about the coral and the stingers. He explained that the big jellyfish are fine, it's the tiny ones, he size of a finger nail that will sting the hell out of you and do damage. When we returned to our spot on the beach we donned our stinger suits and went for a snorkel. ( see photos) After our lovely refreshing dip in the crystal clear waters of Fitzroy island we ate a bit of lunch and headed over to the other side. The far side of the island was a sand beach that was even clearer than the coral side. We went fish watching this time without the all in one suits. Luckily we weren't stung! After some more lounging around it was time to head back. After 3 nights of free dinners we decided to mix it up and we got a dominoes! We avoided Jeneen, and watched a film in the common room. We went to sleep knowing that we'd be roughing it in a van for the next month.

The following morning we went to pick up the van, stocked the fridge with meat and milk and began our travels along the east coast.