Dougies @ Port Douglas!

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Hey hey! Oooh we are having such a good time 😊 I'm sure you guys will get bored of reading this soon and be like yeah, yeah whatever guys I'm sick of hearing about it!

Today we arrived in Magnetic Island after a 3 day stay at Dougies in Port Douglas - it was too good to stay for just one night so we stayed one extra, it was what we had planned before the whole falling off the table malarky after all. We took the free Dougies bus to Port Douglas from Cairns which was wicked - lovely driver called Rowan who gave us free chupa chups (the quickest way to my heart as some of you will know already!) and drove us round Port D so we could get our bearings. Dougies came *highly* recommended by Claire who stayed there years ago on her travels, and we had come from the absolutely excellent Calypso in Cairns so it had a fair amount to live up to! I have to say we loved it - although not quite as clean as Calypso it had hammocks in shady spots under palm trees by the pool, a great bar, lots of lively people with a good vibe and our room was really very nice for hostel prices - mind you, Port D is a very upperclass part of Oz, it is where the well heeled take their vacations.

We found the town very sweet, a little bigger than we were expecting and full of extremely posh (and unfortunately completely out of our budget) eating and drinking holes. Also loads of little boutiques selling all my favourite sort of funky jewellery and stylish surfing gear... it's just as well we are backpacking but I could have gone to retail heaven. The beach is named 4 mile beach which Rich and I had an ongoing debate over - I'm pretty sure it wasn't 4 miles long, but as I couldn't drag his sorry little hungover ass down more than half of it, we will never know for sure. We do still aim to do some running but for now it has been too hot, or we have been too hungover - and believe it or not we are still pretty busy out here! There is plenty to do organising trips and accommodation for onwards travel - and I expect we have slowed down just a teeny bit from the whirling dirvishes of organisational wonders we were before the wedding...

Anyway, back to Port D. The 4 mile beach was stunning - the rainforest comes right down to the beach which makes it lined with palm trees and coconuts. There is more than enough sand for everyone although there was an area where they advised swimming - in a month or so the beautiful waters will be awash with box jellyfish, and although they seemed once again 'fairly certain' there shouldn't be sharks or too many crocs about (they do see the latter on the beach but they are apparently only heading from one estuary to another, nothing to worry ourselves about - aaaahem!) they suggest swimming in one area only to make it easier for the lifeguards to fish people out if necessary.

We met up with a couple of girls called Laura on the bus and spent quite a bit of time with them, they were absolute sweeties and lots of fun. The last night there they shared The Goon with us - this was our first encounter - crikey does this stuff give you a pounding hangover! For anyone not aufait with The Goon it is a ridiculously cheap wine that comes in I think a 4 litre box for about $6 or something crazy (that's about UK pounds 3). The rose actually tasted OK, my my how our standards have slipped, and anyway it was a cracking night. Apart from that we really lazed about - wandering around the town, strolling along the beach, chilling in hammocks, slipping in and out of the pool. Afterall, we had come to relax!

When it finally came to leave we were sorry to say goodbye to everyone there, even a 2 night stay had been enough to get close to some of the lovely staff and make a connection with the place. We took the shuttlebus back to Cairns just in time to catch the bus to Townsville. This left at 6.45 and got in at 12.30 - fortunately 'How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days' was enough to send us off to sleep like babies and we slept all the way. Arriving at 12.30 we found Townsville extremely noisy and full of party people, but we decided to give it a miss (in fact it looked a bit rough anyway) and hit the sack. Pretty gross hostel really but we only needed it for one night's sleep and it gave us our own ensuite!! We were up early, gave Townsville a fleeting glance and agreed to head straight on to Maggie Island.

Maggie Island is just absolutely stunning - it is 70% Nature Reserve, is basically a huge mountain, beautiful sandy beaches. It has very few permanent inhabitants and lots of koalas! We are about to go trekking up the mountain to look for them, we here that late afternoon is the best time to see them as they start to wake up - lazy little buggers spend 16-20 hours a day sleeping in the Eucaliptus trees! Our accommodation is gorgeous, we have our own little chalet (thanks to the Lauras for recommending it!) and there is a BBQ/pool area where we will have our own barbie tomorrow night. They have possums there too so we're looking forward to seeing them. Tomorrow we are hiring a 4x4 to drive round the island. It's only 11k top to bottom so there will be plenty of time to stop at the little bays and chill out. The next day we are booked on to dive the Yongala!!! We are VERY excited about this. We are doing it as 2 adventure dives which will make up half of our advanced course - also means we are able to go to 30m to see the best of the wreck. We will have to fill you in on this afterwards, I expect you have all read quite enough for now.

Loads of love to you all, we are thinking of you all back home a lot. Every second of this is a different part of paradise. Sooooooooo happy 😊 Oooh yes, forgot to say - we saw humpback whales on the way back from the dive trip! How bloody lucky are we? I think all the animals know we are on honeymoon and are putting on a little display for us 😊

More photos next time...

Tons of love,

The Fryers xxx

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