Sunday 27th November

Road trip to Cape Tribulation!! Me and my friends hired a car and drove up to Cape Tribulation stopping at Port Douglas beach and Sunday markets. Me, Inge and Kirstie bought kind of matching anklets with bells on so everyone knows when we're coming! I was driving the first day and it was a beautiful scenic drive the whole way. We stopped at a gorgeous view point along the coast. Most of the drive was along the coast down windy roads amongst the rainforest on one side and the ocean on the other, amazing.

After Port Douglas we carried on and drove to Mossman Gorge. Here we did an hour's walk climbing up rocks, through the forest and through the trees and somehow I managed it in my flip flops, although for part of the way round I was wishing I had my trainers on! But I am still alive and I didn't fall over so that is all that matters. It was extremely hot by the end of the walk but we saved the best bit until last, the water!! We were so excited to jump in even though it was freezing! We took loads of funny underwater photos and had a laugh.

Mossman Gorge was fun but tiring, so the next part of the drive was extremely long to get to Cape Tribulation before it got dark. To get to Cape Tribulation we had to get a ferry to cross the river and then what seemed like another hour until we reached our hostel for the night. We soon realised the car didn't cope well with hills as we reached the other side of the river, most of the road was uphill and round a lot of steep bends. With 5 people in the car, all our bags and driving behind a slow driver, the car had to climb the hill in 1st gear! I'm sure you can imagine the annoyance of crawling up a hill and hoping you make it!

We finally reached Cape Tribulation and our hostel which was more like a campsite and we had our own little cabin which was extremely hot as the only source of 'air-con' was a really noisy fan! We put our stuff in the room and headed to the beach to see the sunset (which we didn't see) but instead we entertained ourselves by writing 'Cape Trib 27/11/11' in the sand and taking photos.

Monday 28th November

The next morning we managed to score ourselves free breakfast due to a misunderstanding when checking in. It was really nice to have a cooked breakfast of scrambled eggs on toast, makes a change to just toast or cereal or no breakfast at all! We set off on our way back towards Cairns fairly early, stopping at a crocodile river cruise on the way. I was excited at the thought of seeing a crocodile but unfortunately the river had been flooded from the rain during the wet season so the tides were too high. We did see lots of bats in the trees, not as exciting as a crocodile though!

On route back to Cairns we made a stop at Ellis Beach, it had to be done just to get the photos and then we continued onto Palm Cove beach where we spent the afternoon sunbathing and swimming in the sea. In the evening when we got back to Cairns, me and the girls went out for their last night in Cairns before travelling down the east coast.