Hi All,

Arrived in Cairns in seriously tropical heat and was mightily relieved to find a nice air conditioned room at the hostel! The heat here is just silly, was 35 yesterday with stinky humidity too. I shouldn't reeally complain though, i hear there's frost and ice in London??? Ha ha.

Anyway, there's not much to do in Cairns apart from snorkel and dive (Which I can't be bothered to do) so I booked a trip up to Cape Tribulation which is "Where the rainforest meets the reef". The area of Daintree is supposedly the oldest rainforest system in the world (Even older than the Amazon) and is right where the Great Barrier Reef is too. Pretty spectacular.

I took a bus trip up therer, stopping for a rainforest walk where we saw loads of wildlife (Including a HUGE Golden Orb Spider....YUK) and some cool things called Strangler Figs. They attack a tree, winding around it, effectively killing it till all that's left is a hollowed out skeletal lloking tree trunk. Weird but really cool!

Stayed at a lovely little hostel (Which was also a spa, well out of my meagre budget though!) where toads and metallic green looking cockroaches felt WAY too at home! Chilled out for the first night and on the next mornign went Jungle Surfing. This was basically zip wires through the rainforest, stopping at various VERY HIGH platforms to take pics and learn a bit more about the ecosystem and the area. It was AWESOME! Got whacked into a tree and I went down one of the wires and even flew upside down on the last one! Wasn't quite as scary as the bungy but flying upside down through a rainforest was quite a bizarre experience!

I'm now back in Carins, heading to Alice Springs tonight on a SHOCKER of a bus. About 30 hours in total I think, joy joy. After that I'm going on a camping trip to Ayers Rock and then up to Darwin. Less thana fornight left in Oz, can't believe how quickly it's gone!

Anyway, will update again after my trip to the Red Centre.

Sel

xx