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 another 3 nights. I am looking forward to staying in one place for a little while, even if it is ridiculously hot!

I went for a run to explore the city this morning so I've already got a pretty good idea of where everything is. The city centre is actually quite small, I'd say the best parts are the marina, lagoon and esplanade. The lagoon looks very inviting in this heat, but there's no shade on it at all and unsurprisingly, the water isn't exactly cold and refreshing! The beaches are muddy and the sea is infested with crocodiles and dangerous jelly fish at this time of year, so the lagoon is very popular nonetheless.

Cairns seems more of a base to do day trips from, rather than being an attraction in itself. There are numerous snorkelling and diving trips out to the Great Barrier Reef, trips to waterfalls, white water rafting trips and many, many more. I spent today wandering around the town itself and visited the tourist office to plan and book what to do over the next couple of days.

Tonight was Leonie (from Leamington)'s last night so as it was the last time she, Sarah and I would be together, we went out for a farewell dinner and Dan (another guy from the trip) joined us too. The restaurants are so expensive around here! We spent ages going round checking out menus and finally found a more reasonable place called Mondo's on the boardwalk around the Marina. We had a lovely evening looking back on the highlights (and lowlights!) of our trip before saying our sad farewells.