Cairns

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So now we're in Cairns. It was hard to believe the tour was over - we all wanted to keep going. Our tour guide Hog (Greg) is a fantastic guy, and I miss him already. He and I really hit it off - we have a similar sense of humour and found it easy to take the piss out of all the tourists in our tour. I'm a kiwi, so techinically the same as an aussie, so we were ganging up on the others. Anyway, he's due back in Cairns in a couple of weeks and we're meant to be heading north to Cape Tribulation for a night to check it out. As for all the others from our tour - most stayed a few days in Cairns and we all hung out for about 5 days. Mostly we relaxed and shopped and ate out, but Hog booked some of us in to go white water rafting on the Tully River. He was meant to be coming with us, but he ended up being called back into work to race an empty bus back down to Airlie Beach to evacuate people after the cyclone. There were no deaths, but they had no power and food was running a bit low, so people wanted to get out. So anyway, me, Hannah, Nikki and Georgie went on the Xtreme Rafting trip on the Tully River without him. We had a blast! We rode rapids, we got out of the raft and swam down rapids, we climbed rocks and leapt off the top into the water, and generally had a fantastic time.

After that, one of the girls, Hannah, decided to come to Port Douglas with me, so we rented a car and drove up. Its about an hour north of Cairns, but a world away. It's such a nice little town - very touristy but very nice. All the locals are so friendly, so I'm hoping to find some work and see how things go here. Hannah and I explored the region as much as possible to make the most of the car. We drove up to Mossman which didn't appear very nice (we didn't like it so turned around and came back without getting out of the car) and we drove to Kuranda to meet Nikki, Katie and Rachel who had gone from Cairns to Kuranda on the cablecar and were heading back on the train. Kurandas a nice little place too - very very touristy. We had to give the car back after 2 days though, so caught a shuttle back to Port. Hannah finally left and flew to Sydney, where she was hoping to get some sun since it's been raining here for a week!

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