May 9th (Saturday) - Day 69 - Mission Beach
After checking out of our hostel we walked to the bus stop and found our bus. Metres to go it started to rain really hard but managed to not get soaked. We arrived in mission beach 2 hours later where it was hammering it down. Luckily the hostel owner was there to met us even though it was only 250 metres down the road. He told us about the free bbq later which was a nice surprise. We went into 'town' (when I say town it's a tiny little place) and booked an activity for the next day (keep reading on to find out what!). We then didn't do a lot that afternoon. We wandered down to the beach in our rain jackets and the only other highlight was when Sarah released she'd left her purse in the internet café (luckily it was handed in). That evening we had our free bbq and got chatting to loads of people who had been where we were going and vice versa. The best bit is there was a bottle shop right outside the hostel so topping up was quick and easy!

May 10th (Sunday) - Day 70 - Mission Beach (Tully River)
We had decided to do white water rafting today so got picked up about 8am and headed down to Tully. Once there we had to sign our life away (literally) we had to sign so many forms stating that if we die it was not the companies fault. Once done they drove us up the valley and dropped us off half way up. This was so we could do the small rapids first. We got suited up in life jackets and then carried our boat down to the river. We were in an all English group of 6. 3 blokes and 3 girls. We joined the river at very smooth point and practiced the basics, such as forward, back, left, right and get down (which means hang on for dear life!). As soon as we'd mastered that we were off down our first rapid. A really small one (on reflection) but really exciting at the time! We got thrown about the boat and got soaked! Soon we had built up to some massive rapids. Navigating them was really hard but our guide was shouting instructions the whole way. We made it through the morning session with no mess ups and no one had fallen in. We pulled up on the side of the river and grabbed some lunch before being taken up to the top of the river where it was a lot more mental and a higher class of rapids. The very first rapids were one of the best of the day. We set off and got drunched straight away. Then close to the bottom the girl sat in front of Sarah lost her grip and took Sarah out as she fell of the boat. As I was sitting at the front I did not even notice until about 10 seconds later. Sarah had still not surfaced at this point, but did shortly afterwards. The best bit is the pictures show exactly what happened. First the girl lost grip, fell backwards onto Sarah, both went over backwards and then the best picture shows 4 feet sticking out the water!! Things went down hill for the group after that. Maybe some of them lost confidence but we kept getting stuck or missing the correct path. Nevertheless this made things even better. Going down the wrong path was far more exciting, or having to get off from a rock was great. We did about 15 rapids that afternoon including some that could only be done backwards, we saw some magnificent sights including huge waterfalls and even a waterfall we were guided under that chucked it down with so much force it nearly sank us. Finally at the end the guide wanted to show us what it was like to fall in (for the few of us that had not fallen off). Basically they sent us down a rapid that was guaranteed to flip the boat. Of course we all fell off and had to swim to shore. We then had to all get changed in a car park before heading back to the rafting base. There we chilled out for a bit and as we left I left my towel behind! Grr. That evening we chilled in the hostel and watched some TV.