Hello from tropical Cairns, it only took a ten and a half hour train journey to get here yesterday! My G Adventures tour has now finished, although my two good friends, Leonie and Sarah are still here. I stayed with the group at Nomads Serpent last night, which is quite a good hostel with it's own pool - only problem is that it's a bit out of the way. I moved to the Northern Greenhouse this morning, (the top rated hostel in Cairns) and I'll be staying here for an...

I enjoyed another snorkel after breakfast at Blue Pearl Bay this morning, where we managed to find Nemo! I'm still not too comfortable with the whole swimming with fish thing - glad to have done it, but won't be desperate to do it again in future. Besides, I haven't been stung by a jellyfish yet so maybe I'll quit whilst I'm ahead! We then moved on to Langford Island to look for sea turtles before heading directly to our final destination - Airlie Beach. I had a...

I'm now on an 83ft maxi yacht called The British Defender, somewhere between Mackay and the Whitsundays. Since the disastrous weather on Fraser Island, I've been praying for things to pick up - two days on a boat in torrential rain does not sound like fun! For now, things are certainly looking up - the sun is shining and we are sailing away from the rain storms behind us. Apparently the British Defender was built in Southampton for the Whitbread Around the Worl...

The photo I've posted here shows the state of the "roads" we were travelling back to the lodge on yesterday, what a mess! We spent pretty much all of today travelling. I had been warned about it though, so I made sure I squeezed in a quick run before leaving Fraser Island this morning. It was still drizzling when I woke up, but seemed to be brightening up a little. There's a walking track through the rainforest that begins just along the road from our wilderness...

I woke up to the sound of heavy rain on the roof of our Eco-Lodge, not a good sign! Our 4x4 tour was scheduled for 7.45am and the weather looked set to stay miserable for the whole day. We lived in hope that things would improve anyway... I'm quite disappointed because so many people had told me how amazing the tour of Fraser Island is and in particular, how cool it is to be able to drive yourself. However, our tour was a guided one in a big truck with a driver ...