The Sebel Reef House Palm Cove

... to behold. Made our way up to Cape Tribulation and also road the Skyrail over the rainforest and took the Kuranda Train back down the mountain. Did a little hiking in Cairns and got some great views of the wharf and downtown area. Needless to say, our two trips to the Great Barrier Reef were a highlight. No words can really describe the clear water and the variety of fish and coral we saw. My highlight was to ...

... they only advertise a kitchen not an actual working kitchen, so there's no equipment to cook with and it was dirty. Toby touched on this last time - a lot of backpackers generally don't take care of things therefore the owners of backpackers spend as little money as possible on their places, particularly the communal areas. We're not the usual backpackers per se, or that's what I like to think, so I felt we had to suffer due to the type of backpackers Aus attracts particularly on ...

... us as a "Gold Member" on the train back where we sipped on lovely wine and cheese and crackers while looking out on the beautiful scenery around us. I'm feeling pretty darn good right now! Kathleen and I are now going to go find more life in Cairns before our coach picks us up at 4:15am tomorrow morning for our flight back to Sydney tomorrow morning. Life is good!

... love it! It's like a Napoleon Dynamite town, but in a good way. Everyone is so chilled out and we are staying in the best hostel I've ever been in! It's like a little commune, it has a really nice kitchen and living room area, a little swimming pool and lots of outdoor tables to sit around doing nothing, which I'm really enjoying! The people are great too, we met a girl named Andrea from Germany and we're sharing a room with ...

... 20am for our bus (van) trip to Port Douglas. This is now a tourist resort with some beautiful condos and a golf course. On the way into the Port we saw all the bats hanging upside down in the trees which has the residents very upset. From here we drove to Mossman and into sugarcane district. Sugarcane is harvested between Nov. to Apriland each field lasts approx. 8 years before it has to be replanted. It grows to about 12 feet tall and must grow for a full year ...

... much the first night other than get settled.  Most of Palm Cove shuts down by 7, so we didn't have too many choices of things to do anyways. We went to El Greko, this Greek restaurant.  Our appetizers came out pretty quickly and were good.  I even got graviera cheese, which I had never had before.  (Although it is halfway between a bread cheese and a Haloumi, so it wasn't too different and crazy.)  Then, a belly dancer came out.  At first, we just watched and had fun, until ...

... a short trip on a semi submersible to see the reef but this was a little disappointing. All of our photos of this were taken on a waterproof camera so we haven't posted any on here. But we did come across a 69 year old who is doing the full world tour as a backpacker and was miffed that they wouldn't let him scuba dive because of his age - so he's going to get some fake ID and do it in the Whitsundays. He's also booked to walk the Milford Track! Wishing Mik a very Happy 21st Birthday!!!!

Woke up very very early! We had spent the night on the beach front becasue the campsite was full. There were signs everywhere saying 'Strictly No Camping' but we decided to be devils and disobey. Trouble is we spent night expecting a knock on the door. We finally gave up trying to sleep at about 6.30am ...