Hello everyone,

Matt and I are in Cairns now after an ealry flight on Monday morning. The flight was 3 hours and we stepped off the plane into imense heat! Cairns is described as tropical Queensland and it is just that! It is so humid we are finding it difficult to move without sweating! On Monday we got picked up at the airport by a shuttle bus from the hostel and got dropped off at the Serpent hostel. We couldn't check in until 1pm so we got the shuttle into town and went for a look around. We had a look around and booked our Great Barrier Reef trip for the Wednesday. We didn't do too much after that, just taking in the sights of Cairns before having a relaxing evening in our hostel.

We had a lie in on Tuesday and we had decided to get a bus up to the top beaches and work our way down, however we found out that it is stinger season and we wouldn't be able to swim. We changed our minds and went to the pool that is in town which is quite shallow and you can sit it in and chill out. This was a much better idea as we were both melting in the heat! I can't believe how humid it has been here it makes doing anything such an effort. After a relaxing afternoon at the pool we came back to the hostel to get changed and then headed back into the town to pick up our underwater digital camera we had hired for the next day at the Barrier Reef. We also had some vouchers through the company we booked some of our tours with for a free tea so we made the most of this as our money seems to be running out faster than anticipated!

Wednesday, we got up early and went down to the wharf to get our boat out the the Great Barrier Reef. We went out for about 2 hours before we arrived at our 1st stop which was where we kitted up in our lovely snorkelling gear and stinger suits incase there were any jellies in the water. We looked fetching as we jumped in! The coral was amazing and there were thousands of fish swimming around us. Some of the 1st fish we saw were clownfish (Nemo's!) We took a lot of photos on the camera and some videos too which are pretty cool. After about an hour or so we got back on the boat and had lunch and set off for the 2nd stop of the day which comprised of 2 different reefs which were equally amazing and again there were thousands of fish swimming around us. I can't describe what an amazing and spectacular experience it was, it was brilliant. Again, we had around an hour before we got back on the boat and headed back to Cairns. We dropped the camera off and waited an hour before getting the dvd with the pictures and films we had taken on it. Some of them are very funny, especially how good Matt and I look in our stinger suits!!

That's about it from Cairns, we are getting the bus down to Townsville tomorrow and heading over to Magnetic Island for a couple of days!

I will update you from there,

miss you all

Liz

xx