Another day in rainy Cairns! We had a nice lie in until around 11.30am, before heading to the Lagoon for another day of attempting sunbathing. The sun didn't even bother trying to come out, and after some rain started we headed to a nearby cafe for a cup of tea and to read our books. I had also treated myself to Cosmopolitan magazine in Woolworths so I savoured every page - at over $7 a pop magazines aren't something we can afford every week here! Whilst at the...

We actually managed to get to sleep quite quickly despite the banging of the music downstairs in Gilligans. I woke up very slightly at 4am when some American girls in our dorm left to fly home, but other than that I slept solidly until about 9am - probably 9 or 10 hours sleep. We had to get up to check out and headed with our backpacks to the Greyhound office to see if the buses were running - they still weren't so we needed to find somewhere to stay tonight. We...

I didn't get loads of sleep because we had to pack and check out of our room by 10am. We couldn't go to our new room until 2pm which was inconvenient, so we just waited in the tv area. I sat by the pool for a bit but it started to rain. At 2pm we got the keys to our new room - it is much the same as the last one but with no balcony and an extra bed. We met a guy from Manchester who has his laptop with him and lots of films on it, so the three of us squeezed into...

The morning started off as planned, and we woke up on time to walk to the bus station. We were supposed to be getting the 7.45am Greyhound to Townsville, where we had accommodation booked for a night, and were planning to visit Magnetic Island. Unfortunately, however, 7.45am came and went, and it soon transpired that the bus had been cancelled due to flooding in Townsville. Oh dear. We were told that there were definitely no buses running all day, so we went to ...

We visited the Great Barrier Reef today! We had to get up really early to be at the harbour for 7.30am. We had chosen to go with a company called Passions of Paradise who have won loads of tourism awards. They have a fairly small catamaran as opposed to a huge boat like the other companies. It had a room with a bar and lots of tables inside, and out the front were two trampoline type things for sunbathing. The sky was a bit cloudy but we went to sunbathe anyway...