Clarendon on Spence Cairns

... the next room along and also found someone in the bed! After a bit of a wait in the corridor they checked us into a different room, only a standard room but a bed all the same.

The next day we picked up our new camper van... I was extremely excited as it is so much better then the Jucy Lucy. We now have two hobs, a sink with working tap, a microwave, seats and a table. There is also room to put our bags away ...

... off right in the tourist area. Found a hostel and booked my dives out on the reef!!!! Wandered around and checked out the town while enjoying the warmth, Had a nice walk along the waterfront boardwalk before heading back to the hostel and cahtting with my german roomates.

... one!

Had a late lunch at a cafe overlooking the rainforest (aka someone's backyard) and then had a quick walk along the Baron river. Spotted a few brush turkeys along here but we soon realised they are everywhere!

Hopped on the train for our ride back to Cairns on the Kuranda scenic railway. Lots of nice scenery on the way and pretty amazing that the line - including 15 tunnels - was hacked ...

... O Briens where they had a decent live band on and we proceeded to get drunk!
Third day and it was spent moping around the place again, this was the running theme of Cairns - to be honest there isn’t a great deal to do there except chill out at the pool (If the weather is good for that!) and get ****** amongst the masses of English and Irish. We moved to a new hostel called Nomads which was cheaper and ate free meals at the Woolshed. We kept bumping into people from the ...

... for the rest of the day. (Had to go with the introductory dive, since I am only junior certified to dive, and besides which, having not gone diving in 10 years, I figured it was just a good idea.)

I was assigned to a dive master called John.

So we set off, all having been advised to take sea sickness tablets because the trip out was ‘a bit rough’. I took said tablets, and was glad I had, as I felt decidedly queasy by ...

... es Nachts im Riff ruhig zugehe, d** hat sich boese getaeuscht. Nachts ist im Riff alles unt**wegs was schwimmen und kriechen kann! Mann stelle sich den Istanbul** Wochenbazar zur Hochkonjunktur nur dass alles unt** Wass** und mit and**en Kreaturen wie Marktschrei**n und sonnenv**brannten Touristen vor. Einfach Traumhaft durch Baracudaschwa**me zu schwimmen und d** Schildkroetenparade am Me**esboden zuzuschauen. Als es wied** zurrueck zum Boot ging, bekam ...

... 8 years since I was last there and there is now much more to do, places to eat etc. There are even for the fashion discerning a Dior and Louis Vuitton, but both stores are a bit incongruous with the lifestyle and vibe of the town, where boardies and singlets rule. There is no beach but they have built a great boardwalk to promenade along the sea front, and also created a lagoon filled with sea water for the townsfolk/ tourists to swim in ...

... the rainforest canopy. There were some stunning views of the rainforest, mountains, and ocean in the background. The sky rail ended in a small tourist town of Korunda. I wandered through a butterfly sanctuary and took a scenic train back through the rainforest and overlooking the gorge. It was a nice quiet day. Rachel and I found dinner and settled in for our big trip tomorrow. Hoping for another exciting journey to a new place. We'll see what happens.

... was really short. By now I was getting tired of plane-food. The cereal was REALLY good. It was more like granola. At Sydney we had met up with our Chicago group and unluckily I was sitting next to the most annoying of them all. This guy would not stop talking, and dancing. He got up in front of 300 people and started dancing! Soon though I became friends with him and the other Chicagoans.
As I looked out the window, I saw we were ...

Having recovered from the dive trip, the next move was to locate some of the land-based wildlife. We hired an economy-sized car in an embarrassing lavender colour, and set off from Cairns to Port Douglas, revelling in unaccustomed luxuries such as a fan, two door mirrors and a radio, and trying not to think about the huge insurance excess. En route we stopped at a lookout on the Captain Cook highway, and Andy was almost tempted by an ...