The morning after our stay at the Capricorn Caves campsite, we drove the short distance down the road from the campsite to the caves themselves. We signed up for the first tour of the day and were soon being led up to a great crack into the nearby hillside and into the interesting dry limestone caverns.

There were some great features in the caves, my favourites being the long roots of fig trees growing above the caves, which pushed through the rock and grew down to the floor of the caves in an attempt to reach the water table. Some of these long, dangling roots stretched from floor to ceiling and were over 18 metres long. We also got to see the Cathedral Cave where weddings and concerts are performed, and listened to a rendition of Amazing Grace to show off the caves excellent acoustics, accompanied by various coloured lights around the cave. After that, all the lights were turned out so we could experience 'cave darkness' which I have to say was the darkest darkness I have experienced.

From the Cathedral Cave we followed a narrow, zig-zagging passage through the rocks then across two swinging rope bridges across areas of collapsed caves to return to the outside world.

After the tour we were back in the van and on the road straight away, keen to cover some more ground on our way north. We got back on the Bruce Highway, again, and carried on up the road through some attractive but very monotonous scenery, much the same as the previous day. Wide flat grasslands dotted with trees stretched out on both sides of the highway and, although pretty at first, we soon tired of seeing exactly the same thing out the windows.

We passed through the town of Mackay, and continued north before turning off and heading back to the coast, to the small but buzzing town of Airlie Beach, set around a pretty lagoon. This little place is the gateway to the Whitsunday Islands, where all the backpackers boarded the various boat trips out to the islands and the Great Barrier Reef beyond. It is also a real party town with loads of bars lining its one main street.

We drove through the town and carried on a few kilometres until we found a nice looking holiday park. We arranged to stay that night and to store the van there for 3 days while we went on our boat trip around the islands. With the van parked up in our spot, we got some laundry done and made some sausages for dinner. We had planned to go into town to meet Lucy's friend Claire and her sister again, but by the time we had eaten and done all our chores, we were pretty tired out and in the end, didn't bother.

We got a good sleep then in the morning, sorted out our stuff to take with us on Anaconda III, the yacht we'd be sailing around the Whitsundays on. We parked up the van and caught the bus back into town before checking in for our boat around lunchtime. Although we had checked in, we didn't have to meet at the boat until the evening, so we decided to take a seat in the massive beer garden of Magnums, one of the big backpacker hostels in town. As we sat down in the sunshine with a beer to watch the world go by, I spotted Lukas, one of the German guys we had met on the Castaway trip, just up the road. After nipping over to say hello, I persuaded him to come and join us for a drink.

Somehow we ended up spending the whole afternoon in the beer garden chatting and watching the various characters of Airlie Beach going about their business. Eventually Lucy and I decided we'd better go and get some dinner so we said goodbye to Lukas, with plans to meet up in Cairns for his birthday, and made our way to a bar at the other end of town to get a cheap dinner with vouchers we'd picked up at our campsite.

After a quick munch we had to find our way down to the marina where we were to meet. We lugged our bags quite a distance along a boardwalk around the lagoon and through the marina until we finally found th cafe we were supposed to meet at. We got speaking to a welsh guy, Nathan and an English couple, Mark and Sophie, who were going to be on the boat, and over the next while the rest of the 28 passengers turned up, including the Dutch group and the French couple we had met on our Castaway adventure.

After getting a quick briefing and picking up our stinger suits (basically wetsuits, designed to protect you from deadly jellyfish although it wasn't the season for them) we were given our cabin numbers and directed to the boat, ready to start our sailing trip.