Advertisement
So after mission beach we headed up north for our final stop in Australia. On route to Cairns we went inland to the Atherton Tablelands where we read there were lots of beautiful waterfalls and treks to go on. The route up through the mountain had us spinning - about half an hour of uphill zig-zag roads, pass me the bucket!
When we got to the first waterfall, Milla Milla falls, we realised it was well worth the drive, it was just unfortunate that the sun had gone in at this point otherwise we would have got in and had a swim. After this we headed on to look at a few more falls however due to the recent cyclone the tracks to the falls had been closed so we had to head on our merry way back through the tablelands and onto Cairns. En route we experienced our first traffic jam, due to 8 million cows crossing the road - its like being in Wales!
On arriving in Cairns we booked into a hostel for a night and the looks on our faces when we entered the room made it obvious there was a mutual agreement to find
a new hostel the following day. Don't get me wrong we're not becoming snobs but when Gina had to fix the self flushing tolilet we figured there must be better places out there. The following day we headed into town and booked into a really nice motel style place that did us a deal after a bit of my bartering and "we're just poor backpackers"sob story!
Once we dropped our backpacks off to our new and improved room we headed up to Mossman gorge which was about an hours drive. The gorge was beautiful and after walking through the rainforest we were more than ready to jump in and cool off. Unfortunately there were quite a few large fish so Gina didnt come in for a swim but after her snorkeling and walking through avaries and basically living her worst nightmares out in real life i figured we could let her off this one! Once we dried off we headed off on a little trek around the area and saw lots of gorgeous little turtles swimming in a lake and wandered across a swing bridge which as you can imagine was bouncing up and down like a trampoline with
us on it - we're such children!
We headed up to Cape Tribulation after, a dense rainforest area with long beaches and lots of wildlife. We had missed the last boat for the crocodile watching so decided to just have a drive around before it got too dark and then ....brakes.... skid...scream... No not a croc or a kangaroo or cassowary or any of the animals the signs had warned us of, a bloody pig!! You go all the way to Oz and have to skid to a halt for a damn pig, not very crocodile dundee is it!!
So the next few, okay 5, days were pretty chilled out just laying by the pool and heading to a few of the northern beaches. We met up again with the girls from brisbane and had a couple of nights out with them so that obviously wrote off the following day! After a bit more sunbathing a few more of our mates from brisbane turned up so we had a couple of nights with them as they are staying in oz to work so probably won't be seeing any of them again. The usual drunken activities occurred, Gina and I
beating men at pool, Jemma getting caught out in a drinking game and having to do press-ups in the middle of the bar, Jemma being sick, hangovers galore, the usual. There's also a lagoon in Cairns that just reopened so we headed down there one day for sun, swimming and cheeseburgers!! It was the day after our session with the guys so all were a bit quiet, lucky for the girls, one of the guys is as hyperactive as me so they didn't have to amuse me for once!!
After too many days doing nothing we decided to book onto a day trip over to Green Island. The first thing we did was have a trip around the reefs in a semi submarine. It was great as it took you to areas of the reef much further out than you can snorkel and allowed us to see fabulous reef, turtle and some really big fish, i mean really big, it nearly put me and jem off swimming. After a couple of hours on the beach the clouds rolled in so me and Jem went for a bit of snorkelling, this time with flippers on we looked even more attractive
than normal!! We swam out and saw lots of cool fish and reef, a few scary fish and a few fish that i reckon could've taken a considerable chunk out of us so we headed back to shallower water. What we tend to forget when snorkelling is that the snorkel tends to amplify your voice so Gina and the rest of the beach could hear our muffled shouts of "djid dju shee dat", Jemma's coughing and spluttering and me " Are dju alllwight??". Apparently the rest of the beach found us quite amusing, i think we embarassed Gina a tad though!! (We'll have to add our latest underwater pics another time so look out for that).
Well that was yesterday and today we're just hanging around before our flight to Bali for a week of chilling out. Oz out.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.092s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 12; qc: 28; dbt: 0.0316s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
RayTaylor
non-member comment
Bali bound
Oz - bin there done that. You seem to have been getting prettty wet inside and out over the last few days and now cant wait for the next adventures in Indonesia. So maybe its like leaving the 'new world' and returning to 'old world' as in South America - I suspect you prefer that. Our temperatures will be matching yours this weekend so we will take a leaf out of your book put our feet up chill out with a beer or two and watch the world cup start up. Come on England.