Hey (Sam writing today, Amy's supervising),

Our last night in Cairns was spent at a pub called the Woolshed which did a $10 meal deal...a huge plate of food, a pint of your choice and a dessert! It was very tasty and we thought good value for money. So we left Cairns feeling pretty stuffed! Our departure was the following day at the ungodly hour of 7am! meaning we had to check out to walk down to the bus terminal at 6am! Was dawn. We struggled down to the stop and said goodbye to our massive bat friends. Now for u to picture this u need to imagine a small cat, got it? Yeah, now add wings to it and u have an approximate sizing. They really were huge! And noisy. But anyway, we trudged to the station under our bags and knocked about an inch off our height. And onto the bus, which is somewhat cramped with the bag between your legs (our little bags, not our big ones) we think it was made in asia somewhere so designed for much smaller ppl in mind. All good tho. We set off to 'Summer Holiday', 'Down Under' by Men at WOrk and some random song about what can kill u in Oz, reassuring of course! It was a good bus journey though and we started making friends with other ppl onboard.

We stopped at a croc farm on teh drive down to Mission Beach. On entering u were passed either: a snake, a parrot or a bearded dragon (lizard). I held all 3...Amy didn't do quite so well, only erm...none. And she was making such progress in the zoo. However she redeemed herself slightly by holding a baby crocodile. Which is still very strong! it looks small but notice its mouth is taped up, cos it could quite happily munch off a finger. I had to take a super quick photo before Amy threw it across the room. After the petting session we went into the main farm. We saw lots and lots of crocodiles. They're all going to end up as either Prada, Gucci or Vescace handbags/ belts etc. ANd before any of you look at me shocked that I went in it is only so that poachers do not hunt the wild crocs as they are all protected by law and u face an immediate sentence of up to 8 yrs in prision and a hefty fine. But still. They seemed quite content though and it wasn't overcrowded or anything. We then went to see teh 'pet' crocs, those who'd been removed from the wild, the ones that were about 4/ 5 metres long. He tempted various crocs from their ponds with various animal parts, chicken heads, pigs feet etc. All nutricious. The crocs were quite happy. We also saw a mummy kangaroo and her baby (she had it in her pouch!) Very cute and a good place to keep a troublesome kid I think.

Onwards to Mission Beach, we arrived all good and made some friends with our roommates...all 10 of them (only knew 8 though). We went to a bingo/ limbo night that evening. Was good but the bingo was somewhat random. Team bingo was played and the caller (the owner of the hostel) was also the bingo caller - not good. She took ages to think of rhymes for some of the numbers so about half an hour in we'd only had approx 4 numbers and she's wondering if anyone was on a line at all yet. Crazy lady! The limbo was good too, I didn't win unfortunately. I wasn't even close.

Tuesday we just chilled out, had a lie in. We played some pool volleyball and then went for a stroll on't beach. No swimming due to stingers. Not unless u make it to North or South Mission Beach and swim in the stinger nets. Unfortunately, they were miles away so we had a wander on't beach, but didn't make it to far. Instead we did some wave watching and encountered two dancing birds. They kept running in circles around us, then followed up by stopping and nodding at us. The synchronisation was fantastic. Craig Revel Horwood would have been impressed! We were. They then followed us all teh way back down teh beach so we thought we would have to rehabilitate them in't hotel pool but then a dog came and scared them away. Bless.

Today...Weds! A day of excitement, adrenalne, sunburn (sorry mum) and a couple of cuts and a banged head (mine). We went white water rafting on the Tully River. It was amazing! We were in a raft with 3 other people and then there was our guide, Reece. You'll have to wait til I get back to watch teh dvd, it shows better than I can explain. But it was very wet and crazy but amazing! We lost our guide at one rapid, Double D Cup, when he bounced out at a really calm bit in't middle of the rapid. He was furious with himself and it'd been 3 years since he's fell out and he's never been taken away from teh boat. We noticed he was missing when we realised there was no-one shouting instructions to us. So we panicked lol. We did quite well, picking him up floating down river. The next run down (after lunch - gorgeous....beetroot on burgers in highly underrated) I managed to fall out on the first rapid, was very scary actually as I evicted myself right in the middle so there was a lot of water and rocks (hence the banged head) but I had a helmet on, phew! It was also a bit difficult breathing sometimes but once I'd abondonned my paddle and got my feet up to the surface (I was more worried about crashing into rocks than breathing) it was all good. Then got hauled back in and away we went again. So yeah, we thought that was it for falls but no....we returned to Double D Cup, joking about Reece's fall and guess what....he went out again, but the boat flipped so so did all teh rest of us. We were rescued by Team Japan who dragged us into their raft while ours was righted. Then we got back in and waited patiently for someone in another raft to fish out our paddles.

Think that's about it for now, my fingers are dropping off, will add to this 2moro or teh next day methinks! xx