Emergency tanning

Said my final farewells to Cairns this morning in, surprisingly, the rain!! Was up in Cairns for 2 weeks this time and spent half in the centre at a hostel and then half with Lou & Matt. So have had mixed bag of going out partying and just chilling out. The hostel in Cairns (YHA Cairns Central) was brilliant - had a pool, jacuzzi, nice big kitchen and good folks. Again, here we didn't really do much just baked in the day by the pool, then went out in the evening. Afraid not too adventurous here either going to P J O'Briens and then the Woolshed every night. Woolshed rocks as you can dance on the tables which is funny and if you're feeling brave (or is that drunk!) you can swing on the beams too which was all god fun. Oh, went to the Mad Cow on the first night but that was a weird place so remembered to steer clear from that one again!
Said bye to Debs on the Wednesday as she went back to Brisbane when the rest of us (me, Hughesie, Denise & Bertie) went up to Cape Tribulation for the day. Gotta say that I honestly wasn't that impressed with it. We did a rainforest trek which was pretty disappointing. The only other sign of life there was 2 people pushing some kind of boardwalk cleaning machines around the place - not the kind of noise I expected to hear in the rainforest. Anyway it's another tick on the list - maybe if we'd ventured further we might have seen some good things but hey ho - back to Cairns we went. Was hard work driving back as it absolutely bucketed it down and was on some really really narrow windy roads before getting the ferry at Daintree so was definitely ready to go out when we got back. Had a really good night (it was Valentine's after all - I expect all my cards are waiting for me at home, right ;-) and had Paul and Pricey come round to our place for drinks before we went out for a big one!
Sunday saw Hughesie fly off to New Zealand which was all very emotional (he'll like to hear that !) - having spent the best part of 6 weeks travelling together was weird not hearing him cracking jokes anymore! Then Denise went off on Monday (again very sad - my crazy Scottish goon-drinking buddy leaving me!!) and I went back to Lou's. Just chilled out a lot here and watched a lot of TV as has been raining so much and Lou's been working really hard.

Finally went out to the reef with Matt yesterday (again Lou had to work) and had such a brilliant time. Definitely picked the best day to go as was sunshine all day and pleased to say got some colour back from lying out on the top deck all day! We went to 3 locations on Opal Reef and I just did snorkelling - was going to be flying the next day so couldn't dive (well, that's the excuse I was using not really because I'm a wuss and scared of seeing something big and hungry down there!). However the snorkelling was fab, saw a huge big friendly fish nicknamed Marvin by the crew who Matt got me to feed with some beef, a huge turtle, some Nemos, parrot fish and loads of other ones that I have no idea what they're called. Most people got to see some sharks but I didn't and was really gutted actually. Matt & Scotty went out to try and find some but visibility wasn't that brilliant and they weren't showing up. The boat was brilliant - all staff really fun and knowledgeable, food really good (loved the anzac slices at the end) so would highly recommend it to anyone heading that way - Calypso. I've got millions of photos from there that Pete the photograher took and will upload them when I can (grr - nowhere lets me use CD here!) to prove that I was actually at the Great Barrier Reef!!

Have now come back to Melbourne for the weekend to see Denise before heading back to Sydney as it's about half the price to get to Sydney this way (including hostel prices) rather than going direct from Cairns. It's sunny again here (yay!) but just so brown everywhere as had forgotten the drought's still on down here compared to so much greenery and colours up in Cairns.

I'M NOT READY TO COME HOME YET ;-(