Monday 30th March

We flew into Cairns airport at about eight in the morning. The view from the plane was surprising, we had expected the ground to be brown and dry, instead it was very green. Coming into land there was very little in the way of buildings along the coastline. The second surprising thing was how small Cairns was. We had expected a large built up city and instead it was quite a small town with hardly any high rise buildings. We got a taxi from the airport to the hotel, the driver was a cheery chap and proceeded to tell us about all the nasty creatures there are in Australia.

The hotel had a pool and a washing machine, so whilst the clothes were washing we sat by the pool in the sun. Later we had a walk into the town, it was a great little town quite old fashioned in looks. The sea was very tidal and went out a long way so the beach wasn't up to much, there was a free lido on the sea front for anyone to use, this was really nice and very big.

We booked a boat trip on to the Great Barrier Reef for the following day. Then had a beer.

Tuesday 31st March

We were up early to get down to the marina for the trip onto the reef. We booked with a local company (passions of paradise) who were extremely good, the staff were brilliant and the food on the boat (a catamaran) was very good. Because of the time of year we would need to put anti-jelly fish stinger suits on, they also protected us from the sun. It was really funny, thirty odd people trying to climb into these Lycra suits! We were taken out to Michaelmas cay first. Robin decided go scuba diving and had to attend briefings on the way out to the reef, he was on a total high the rest of the day after seeing Clown fish, Sting rays, feeding a turtle and of cause seeing the fantastic Barrier Reef.

I did snorkelling with most of the others off the boat, we were taken onto the cay, which was actually a bird sanctuary, with our flippers and masks by a small boat and then we snorkelled back to the catamaran moored off shore. The coral was beautiful and there were many different coloured fish to look at. When we got back on board I met up with Robin and we had dinner, which was a nice buffet lunch. The boat then upped anchor and we sailed to a different area of the reef, which was much deeper and once again we snorkelled. There were white tipped sharks but unfortunately we didn't get to see them, Robin was very disappointed!

On the way back the Catamarans engines were switched off and the sails put up, we sailed for a while back to the harbour. The weather was good all day and the sea was crystal clear. It was a fantastic day and one we shall remember. We walked back towards the Hotel stopping at a bar for a pitcher of beer.