Greetings from Cairns!

After yet another 10 hour bus journey (the last one thankfully!!), we have arrived in Cairns. As we only had a couple of days here, we have whizzed around the city, taking in the shops, sights and casino ;o)... before you get worried about the fact we have visited casino's in Melbourne, Sydney and Cairns, we are only gambling on a very limited budget of 2.50GBP each...just to get ready for Vegas in a few months time (but don't let the manager of the Bellagio know Chris's card counting is practically pro! haha) ;o)

Yesterday we went on a boat trip out to the Great Barrier Reef, which was extremely rough but we managed to survive it without actually throwing up! We then spent five hours snorkeling the reef which was amazing! The coral beds were beautiful, all different colours and the fish were stunning. We were having a lovely splash about until one of the crew cheerily shouted shark! Which initially scared the pants of us until we realised it was a friendly reef shark...which was just as well since we were being circled by 4 of the things! Once i realised they were friend and were quite happy eating the prawns we were feeding them, i decided to see how close i could swim with Mr shark so i donned my flippers and set off in hot pursuit, while chris watched in disbelief... it was all good until the shark thought i was chasing it and spun round to look at me which scared the crap out of me so i paddled back very fast to chris who just looked at me like i was insane! hmm

All in all it was a great day, we saw green turtles (about 2ft in size) , Nimmo fish, parrot fish, Tevelli fish (spelling? approx 1metre long), and so many more... We arrived back at our hostel feeling very happy with ourselves until we assessed ourselves for sun damage and discovered that Chris is ridiculously brown and tanned whilst I apparently snorkeled with my bum in the air so now have the most ridiculous burns which provided chris with hours of amusement! grrr ouch!

We are spending today relaxing in Cairns and fly our to Auckland tomorrow morning bright and early so its a night sleeping at the airport tonight...the joy of backpacking!

We'll write again soon... in the mean time, hope everyone had a happy easter and enjoyed the bank holiday. Thanks for all your messages on the blog. xx