I came up to Cape Tribulation after a day in Cairns, which I'd intended to spend chilling out, but thanks to my dorm-mates, the day ended up comprising hair-dying, pancakes and the lagoon, and concluding with a very late night involving gay bars, table dancing (one og them, not me), lots of cider and a 3am hunt for pizza! The purpose of the trip was to see the Great Barrier Reef, so before the drinking commenced I managed to squeeze in a lecture at the Reef Teach company (who said geek?!), where they explained how to identify different families of fish and coral, and told us lots of interesting facts about all kinds of weird and wonderful fish - eg clownfish are all hermaphradites, and when the female in a schoal is killed, the biggest male becomes the female, so when Nemo's mum is eaten by the shark at the start of Finding Nemo, his dad would have turned into his mum! Disney obviously decided to leave that part out. (Further interesting facts available on request!)

I took the Adventure Tours bus up to Cape Trubulation the next day, and there were lots of stops along the way to feed kangaroos and swim in a natural swimming hole - although it felt a like being herded around like cattle at times. Cape Trib is where the rainforest meets the reef. The Daintree rainforest is the oldest rainforest in the whole world, and Cape Trib is one of only two places in the world where the rainforest comes right down to the sea. Because it's coming up to winter (and because the sea is still full of stingers so you can't swim), it was pretty much deserted most of the time, and when me and some girls from my bus went walking one day, we had the entire beach to ourselves. As Cape Trib is in the tropics, the weather and scenery was very much like being back in Asia, which also meant I was back in mosquito territory - argh! And the creepy crawlies there were huge! There were dozens of enormous spiders all around the beach hut dorms I was staying in, and when I was climbing a tree on the beach the beach the other day, I pulled myself up between two branches and came face to face with a massive St Andrew's Cross spider, about 2in from my face! I also saw a big monitor lizard wandering around the dorms when I was on my way to breakfast one day - I thought it was a baby crocodile at first, until the lady on reception told me: "You didn't see a croc, love, if you'd seen a croc you'd have been eaten!"

So on to the Great Barrier Reef! I went out on a day trip on a big catamaran called the Rum Runner, which stopped at the Mackay Reef 20km from the coast. The snorkelling there was amazing! So many beautifully colourful fish - I finally found Nemo, and dory, and saw a big blue starfish and a giant sea turtle. And it wasn't just the fish, the coral was stunning too - I never realised there were so many shapes and colours - at the risk of sounding like a giant cliche, it really is like another world down there! I also did an introductory scuba dive, which was very cool. I thought I'd be nervous about the diving, but when it came round to it, I just wanted to get down there and see the fish close up! It was a very strange feeling, kind of a cross between flying and floating, and we had to keep making our ears pop to equalise the pressure. We dove down to about 7m, and knelt on the sea bed while our instuctor showed us sea cucumbers and giant clams. I enjoyed the whole day so much I signed up to do another snorkel trip for when I got back to Cairns.

Aside from that my time in Cabe Trib was very chilled out, and mostly spent laying on a beach or beating Americans at pool! One other fun activity was an exotic fruit tasting tour, where we visited a permaculture farm and tried 10 different fruits. Having not managed to eat much fruit in Sydney (or indeed, much of anything that wasn't chips), I thought this would be a good way to end my trip on the fruit front! The man running the tour was called Digby and was a real character - weilding a massive knife to chop up the fruit and pulling on surgical gloves to pull the fruit apart. Of the fruits I tried, the two best were soursop (a kind of custard apple) and pomelo (a big round green fruit, that looked like pink grapefruit on the inside and tasted like pomegranate), and the worst was mamey sapote - it looked like papaya and tasted like soggy chicken!

Back in Sydney, I spent a day surfing on Bondi (and was put to shame by a group of seven-year-olds), and had a big night out with Kristen and, quite randomly, a couple other girls from my school who Kristen had bumped into while I'd been in Cape Trib. It turned into a very drunken, but very funny, champagne-fuelled night, which us witnessing a Michael Jackon drag show, singing like Somerset farmers on a bus, and me being thrown out of a club for taking my shoes off! Grr... I'm going to be very sad to leave Australia, because I've had such a great time here, and also because it means that my trip is over! But at least I get back to England in time for Easter eggs...!

Byeeee, thanks for reading!
Kimbob xx