Cairns

Despite heading to bed early, we didn't wake until 11am which was really late for us. You have to get up early here because it gets light really early and goes dark early too.

We started our morning off with a quick swim in the chilly pool before chatting to the receptionist Jessie about trips to the Barrier Reef. She was really helpful and we quickly whittled down our choices to two. There are quite a few different ways in which you can see the Reef and all the individual reefs can look very different.

You can go to the sections of reef closest to Cairns and spend a day on an island with lots of water sports activities and the chance to go snorkelling just off the island and this was a lot cheaper. However, Jessie advised us that the reef closest to Cairns are obviously more polluted so they don't look as impressive. We choose to go on a big boat that was quick that went to two of the outer reefs. You could just snorkel or you could upgrade to dive as well but this was quite expensive so we decided to stick to the snorkelling.

We also enquired about hiring an underwater camera for taking pictures while we were snorkelling and found a company that would drop the camera off our hostel and give us a quick demonstration then collect the camera the night of our trip before returning the following day with a CD of our photos. When we met the camera lady she said most people take around 300 photos but Rich thought that he could beat that number! Within minutes Jessie had booked our trip and our underwater camera and we were really excited. We were slighty apprehensive of the onboard entertainment provided by 'Elvis' and guessed there must be an Elvis impersonator but we thought we could grab the free wine, cheese and crackers that were provided then jump over board if he sang that bad!

We grabbed some lunch and dug out all our maps of Australia and various leaflets we had picked up to plan some of our first days in the van so we knew at least what direction we wanted to head in.

Time flew and it was dinner time again so we got our free voucher and headed to The Woolshed. Rach had the pasta napoltiana of the free menu while Rich upgraded to the chilli nachos for $5. The portion was huge and extremely tasty.
The Woolshed was decorated for the beach party that was to happen later that evening. There were some on our table and well as above our heads so we just took some garlands back to the hostel so we could decorate the campervan when we get it and make it more homely.

At dinner we met two guys from our hostel who we have named the Chuckle Brothers. We keep bumping into them when we are out and about and they are always arguing with each other and blaming each other for little things. They were going on a reef trip like us and they had also hired an underwater camera too. When the camera lady asked us both for credit card as a secure payment in case we damaged the camera, one of the guys headed upstairs and was a good ten minutes before returning with a passport. The lady tried explaining that she needed a credit card number not a passport while he replied with 'Hmmm' as if the camera lady was in the wrong. By this time, his friend had come down stairs and he started shouting at his friend again so we left and decided to get an early night as we had to be up at 7am for our trip.