Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef

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Thursday 9th April

Our bus to Cairns was delayed by an hour, so on arriving in our hostel we quickly changed clothes and headed down to the bar where we were meeting Steve, one of the guys from Fraser Island. It's great catching up with everyone we meet up the coast, we can all share stories and it's nice to see familiar faces. We didn't stay up for long though as we knew we had to get up early in the morning if we were going to try and get on a tour.


Friday 10th April

Pippa and i went down to the tour office in our hostel this morning to see what our chances of getting on a trip were. We were in luck as there was a half day white water rafting available! (Or a bungee but we weren't too sure on that idea...!) We booked onto the rafting trip which was to pick us up from our hostel at 2pm which meant we had the rest of the morning to grab some breakfast and explore Cairns. We also booked our Great Barrier Reef trip for the following day.

It seems that Cairns may have entered a competition for trying to have the most souvenir shops in a 3mile radius...! As it was the Easter weekend, there wasn't much else open so we went back to the hostel to check emails and have a quick nap before the rafting! We got picked up from our hostel and jumped on the bus with a few other people and headed up towards the Barren River which is where we would be riding the grade 3 rapids! On arriving we got kitted out with our lifejackets, paddles and helmets and put into our groups. We carried the raft down to the river and practiced some paddling skills before our instructor guided us down the river. It was great fun and i would definitely do it again. Pippa and i both agreed that grade 3 rapids are a little bit tame so would go for a bigger and badder river next time.

We got back to the hostel and showered the river water away and put on our posh frocks and went to a nice restaurant on the esplanade where we had a bottle of wine and a scrummy dinner.


Saturday 11th April

This morning we got picked up by the boat company and taken to the harbour where we boarded our boat 'Tusa 5' that would take us out to the Barrier Reef. As we fly to Sydney tonight i couldn't dive which was a little bit disappointing but a great reason to have to come back! When we arrived at our first snorkel site, all we could see was the open ocean. As soon as we jumped in the water we were introduced to the beautiful underwater world that was just metres from the surface. The snorkeling was absolutely beautiful, it was like we had jumped into an aquarium! The coral was beautiful, huge mounds of it rising up from the bottom of the ocean. We must have spent nearly an hour paddling around seeing what we could find. Lunch was then served on the boat while we made our way to the next stop. This snorkel site was just as stunning as the first and the divers weren't going very deep this time so we could follow them about and dive down to see what they were looking at. Unfortunately Pippa and i didn't see any Nemos although the divers did at the first site, but we did see some beautiful Parrotfish and Bannerfish. I will definitely be coming back to the Great Barrier Reef, there is just so much to explore.


We got dropped off back at the hostel and grabbed our bags from storage and got a taxi to the airport. Tonight we are flying from Cairns to Sydney and we're VERY excited about it!

Lots of love from Cairns, QLD

Danielle xx

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