Well we arrived in Cairns yesterday after an early start, we left the hostel at 2 .30 in the morning. We couldnt check in at Gilligans until 2pm so we decided to take a trip to Kuranda which is a village up in the rainforest near Cairns. We travelled up to the village on the skyrail which is a bubble lift like in the alps that takes you up over the rainforest canopy for about 45 minutes. It was a really breathtaking journey despite all the clouds and rain, we saw some huge trees and lots of cockatoos and some parrots. We stopped off for a rainforest boardwalk on the way up with a really informative guide who told us about the trees and wildlife and went to a view point of the baron gorge which we couldnt see because there was so much cloud! At the top we went to the butterfly attrium which was good, there were some huge butterflies, tristan was very popular with all of them, they kept landing on his head much to the amusement of many japanese tourists who took lots of photos of him. We spent the rest of our time in Kuranda looking at the markets, I bought some handmade kangaroo slippers, and then we headed off to the train station to catch our train back to cairns. The journey back was good with lots of nice view points. That night we went for a wander round cairns, we found some different accomodation, Gilligans where we are staying is really noisy, its like sleeping in a nightclub, as we had been up since 2 that morning we werent too pleased (we are getting to be a real grumpy old couple!!).

Today we have had a busy day doing jobs, we posted some stuff home and booked a trip up to the daintree forest and cape tribulation. We also sorted out a campervan type car (toyota previa) called a juicycamper for our drive down to Ruth in Brisbane. Our last job was our dive medicals (we have booked a 5 day dive course on the barrier reef for our PADI to start on wednesday) at the doctors which we both passed before going back to the hostel to cook tea. Very busy day. We will write again in a few days to let you all know how our diving is going we have two days training in the pool from wednesday.

Love Tris and Rach

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