So I made it to Cairns in one piece! The rumour was it is just like Queenstown in New Zealand, Party Central! The Party place to be was Gilligans Backpackers so of course thats where I was staying. I made my where there and left my bags in the storage room as once again you couldnt check in until 2pm. Adam was staying for 1 night in a different hostel with Tom and Mark was still in bed so I exploring by myself. Now Cairns is called a city but its more like a town really. I found a bakery and bought myself a bread roll for breakfast and then I found a shopping centre!! I went inside not only was ity lovely and cool with air conditioning but it had a big Christmas tree in the centre. It felt wierd seeing a Christmas tree as it doesnt feel like Christmas at all. I have to confess I did buy something as well. I have been wanting a skirt for ages as thats what everyone else wears here, so I treated myself to a little black skirt. By then Mark was up and Shona had arrived on a later bus so I had people to hang out with. We checked in.

Mark had decided he wanted to dye his hair blonde so we went to the shop to get some dye. We put it on his hair and went to get ready for a night out while it developed. We came back 20 minutes later and when Mark opened the door his hair looked white!! It had definitely worked. We tried not to laugh and said it was time to wash it off. It didnt actually look that bad in the end it was mostly a white blonde colour but the middle bit was slightly orangey yellow! Me and Shona finished getting ready which for me was my new black skirt and a black dress for Shona. It was good to get dressed up properly to go out. We went downstairs to get our free meal and meet Adam and Tom. The gang was back together again. We had a good night taking advantage of the 2 for 1 drinks in the happy hours and dancing the night away. We went to PJ O'Brians Irish bar to finish before going to bed about 4am! That did not seem such a good idea when I had to get up at 7:15 to catch a 8am bus for a day trip I had booked.

I managed it. I was booked on Uncle Brians Rainforest trip to Atherton Tablelands. The bus driver was however cousin Brad not Uncle Brian. He was crazy and never stopped talking the whole day. The plan for the day he told us was walk, eat, swim, eat, swim, eat, swim, eat, drive!! The walk was around a rainforest and it did actuaklly start to rain slightly while we were there. We did see a waterfall but it was too dangerous to swim there. We then had cake as a snack before getting back on the bus and being chased down the road by a giant cassawry bird! We then went to a waterfall where we climbed up on the rocks and actually slid down the waterfall like a water slide. It was great fun. After that it was lunch but it was a long drive. To keep us entertained he made us play games on the bus. One was we all had a match stick each and had to hold it in our teethand then we had to pass a thing that was the same shape as a polo around the whole bus from match stick to match stick without using any hands!

After lunch with desert we went to Millaa Millaa falls. These are the falls made famous by Peter Andre in the mysterious Girl video. So the boys had to do the Peter Andre pose and the girls had to do the shampoo advert of flicking your hair to make an arch of water over your head. I was quite good at it as my hair is really long and made a good arch. The water was freezing though!! We had a group photo there and then made our way to a volcano lake. So we can say we have been swimming in a volcano and survived. We then had hot chocolate and a muffin whilst looking for platypus in a river. We didnt see any but we did see a turtle and a rat! It was then time to head back to Cairns as the sun had set, but via the bar! So armed with drinks it was Karioke time on the way home on the bus! We didnt get back until 9pm so it was a really good day trip.

When I got back the others were already on a bar crawl with the party bus so I quickly got changed and went to join them. I found them in the Mad Cow pub, bought myself a wristband and joined in. The party bus was like a London red bus and drove you from club to club. Everyone was singing and dancing on the bus, getting half naked and hanging out of windows. CRAZY!! We went to another club called velvet underground where me and Shona entered a competition to win a bungy jump (not that I wanted to do one) We had to make positions when the DJ called them out, they invovled picking each other up so we didnt last very long. Nevermind. It was then back to Gilligans at about midnight. We stayed for a while before bizarly deciding to go back downstairs to the bar! So 2am we went back out. We were on the dance floor and once again lost Shona and Mark. Adam was with an Australian girl so I was talking to a guy that worked as a skipper on a boat called Bevon. It was about 5am when we actually went to bed.

The next day I spent sitting around the pool with Shona and we did a flying fox zip line from the roof of the car park, down over the pool into the bar. That evening we went out again! There was a wet T-shirt competition at 11pm so we watched that. Bevon was out again and we went to checkout his boat in the marina. Once again it was a late night with an early start the next day as I was going on a Cape Tribulation tour.

I once again managed to get up and catch the bus at 7am. We first went to a wildlife park where we could walk around enclosures and look at the animals. After that we went to a river and did a crocodile cruise. We saw a small baby crocodile and a medium 10 year old one. After that we were then in the rainforest. We did a short bush walk to a lookout where you could see the rainforest meeting the Ocean. We then had lunch before going to a hostel where we waited for 1 hour whilst some people went jungle surfing. After the hour was up it was time to start heading back. This is when the bus started to play up. It kept cutting out and then not starting for ages. I was supposed to be staying in Port Douglas for the night but he didnt really want to go that way to drop me off so I ended up back in Cairns. Which meant I ended up going out again! In fact we went out every night without fail. We didnt do much during the days, either sit by the pool, sit by the lagoon, go to the Pier Bar or sit on the balcony. Evenings would consist of sitting on someones balcony drinking goon, playing cards & games, singing loudly and getting to know people. Then we would go downstairs to have our free meal and party the night away. On various nights there were wet T-shirt competitions, jelly wrestlying, ladies night, bingo, a bikini competition which involved Adam on stage in a Mankini! Very funny!! So always somethingdifferent to do, followed by a slice of pizza on the way home.

Over the week we made friends with lots of new people a group of 5 lads and 3 lads both from Blackpool, 3 girls in my room, a Finish stripper, 2 Danish guys, 2 Canadian guys and loads more. I also met up with Howard again quite a few times over the week. I went on a road trip to Cape Tribulation again with the two girls in my room. It was a much better day than the day trip and we got to drive. It also meant I actually made it to Port Douglas and we managed to blag 4 free bottles of Malibu from the bottle shop. Bonus!

As much fun as Cairns was it was time to leave so I booked my next bit of travel at the travel desk and was set to fly Darwin after 12 nights. That also meant saying goodbye to Adam after being together for 4 weeks, which was quite sad.