Cairns

The last port of call up the East Coast was Cairns, the hottest and most tropical of all the places we visited! A week or two prior to us reaching Cairns, the weather had been so bad that people were stranded there! So we were quite lucky to escape with just a few spells of rain over our 4 days! During these rainy spells, I was being overly keen and was trying my best to persuade Rich and Han to come with me to see the waterfall where Peter Andre's - Mysterious girl, was filmed.....but failed, Han was a proactive bean and applied for about 6 different jobs in Brisbane and even got one of them as a door to door saleswoman, and Rich was being a fitness nut, trying to make up for his lack of fitness by going for 2 runs a day! Here are the main activities we got upto:

1. Cape Tribulation Tour - We spent $100 each to go on a day trip to the Cape Tribulation National Park. It is an area of rainforest in the outback, home to Australia's indiginous community. Many aboriginies lived, and still live, out in the rainforest so it was quite nice that our tour guide was an actual aboriginal man. During the tour we heard many strange stories about whales swapping penis's with kangaroos and other bizzar myths with anticlimatic endings making you think "what did we just hear??...". It was interesting to hear about their beliefs though and their strategies to survive, like the way they keep fish fresh by storing it in green ants nests! During the tour we went swimming in a freezing cold river in the Tableland Mountains, walked through a rainforest and saw a family of cassowary and a bearded lizard, had a walk on a beach where we had some snap, saw some great views of Cape Trib from a couple of viewpoints and took a boat down a picturesque river where we spotted some salt water crocodiles. At the end of a trip I grabbed a photo of our aboriginal tour guide to see if the theories of Zoolander were real.....if they were he let me take one anyway.

2. Tommy and Rosie - We met up again with Tommy and Rosie by fluke and spent a couple of days chilling out with them at the Esplanade (outdoor swimming pool). They were as funny as ever and it was great to see them again! We had a few nice days so the suntan lotion was out. Unfortunately we were all in the same boat with the low funds so in the evenings we just got a few beers from the supermarket and drank them in our hostel bar (cheeky!). We also met up with our Swiss and French friends who were really happy as they did a skydive!

3. Botanical Gardens - Me and Rich had a walk to the gardens one day when we were struggling for things to do which didnt cost an arm or a leg! They were actually quite good despite how sad the concept sounds (unless you are mum). We saw some crazily big spiders at the start of a little rainforest walk that we did, so for the next ten minutes we crawled along nervously incase we were attacked. We tried to provoke some crocodiles to come out of the river by throwing rocks and sticks and I recon we succeeded because something big definitely jumping in from the river bank! At the river we saw some mad crabs, mad fish that kept jumping out the water and some freaky fish that cound swim on land.

We really enjoyed Cairns for its nice weather and scenery (except for the muddy beach) with the Cape Trib trip a big highlight! We have done some quality trips all the way up the east coast with Fraser, Whitsundays diving and skydiving being some of our best. But we still have got other things that we could do if we wanted to come back to Australia again like the rainforest tour and great barrier reef tours in Cairns and loads of things on the West coast and the outback! Australia has been quality.
Thanks for reading!