Hey everyone!

Glad to see you're all still reading this and enjoying my tales. Where i've spent the last 4 nights has had rubbish internet access so i'd better get goin and fill you all in now!

Ok well on thursday I was picked up and driven to Port Douglas- about an hour from Cairns, it's further north and gets tropical. Port Douglas is a proper millionaires town- Bill Clinton hangs out here sometimes apparently. It's a beautiful, incredibly safe, small town with amazing restaurants, a 4-mile beach (funnily enoguh called '4 Mile Beach') and some lovely pubs on a big marina. I got there in the morning and was sharing a room with two girls, one from Holland, the other from France, who were on the same bus as me. We got on really well and spent the next 4 days together. They had booked on to a tour of Cape Tribulation the next day so i jumped on that too.

So the next morning we were picked up and driven a very windy (or is that windey?) route to Cape Trib, which is really beautiful. Think tropical rainforest meets desert island. I saw a spider as big as a saucer (a golden orb) and we dipped our feet in beautiful green sea. It was pure bliss. On the way back our crazy guide lisa, took us to a place called Mossman Gorge, which is a bit like the Crystal Waterfalls, but bigger, and better. The water was so clear, you could see everything! I swam for a bit then sat on a rock in the middle of the gorge.

Eventually we got dropped off back in P.D outside an ice-cream shop that has 42 flavours of ice-cream (really really good ice-cream as well). Later that night, the 3 of us headed into town to find something to eat. We stumbled across a restaurant called salsa, which was about 50 yeards from the beach. We had amazing meals there- mine was something like butterfish on a bed of herbed mash with avacado mousse, washed down with a bottle of very nice wine, and it wasn't that expensive! Ok, so it was more than i have paid up til now to eat, but even so, for the quality it was great value.

Saturday was spent by the beach, baking ourselves, watching crazy people complete a triathlon in the mid-day heat (i had to lie down after watching them). The sea was prob around 22degrees, which made swimming there very pleasant- don't worry dad, stingers don't come til next month when its about 29degrees in the sea and there were no sharks that i saw. Sunday, the 3 of us made our way to the sunday market to have a look, then popped into the local pub for drinks and lunch. We sat and chatted while a guy played the saxophone in the background (he was really good, played all the old favourites), we were joined by 3 Chilean guys who were very funny, they couldn't understand why we weren't drinking and didn't want to have a pint. We had some lunch at a different table- seafood platter with prawns, oysters, salmon, olives etc, by the time we got back 2 of them could barely keep their eyes open! They were so drunk, ha! We left soon after that to pack and get ready to come back to Cairns.

I'd definitely recommend Port Douglas, but you have to be prepared to spend a bit of money- even the acccomodation is more expensive up there, 4 days was enough, and definitely worth a look.

Still haven't booked onto a tour yet- the weather at sea has been a bit ropey the last few days so will sort something soon.

In 2 days i've been away from England exactly a month, that's crazy! It's gone so quick! Hope you're all ok, missin you loads

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