G’day Everyone,
Gary here, cheryl has agreed to let me write an entry as long as I made everyone aware very early its me writing, now that disclaimer is out the way over to what we have been up to…..
We left alice and flew for 2.5 hours across austalia, I had the window seat on a clear afternoon and in the whole time looking out I did not see 1 town, 1 road 1 dirt track or any sign off life, it was just desert which i thought was pretty amazing. We arrived In Cairns and got on the shuttle bus along with all the other backpackers. We had the funniest / most un PC driver ever, my personal highlight was calling the south korean girl a north korean spy and showing the japanse girl pictures of his chinese wife on his iPad while driving!!!
Day 1 - we went for a walk along the esplanade and as always everything is clean and tidy and not vandalised like back home. We stopped to have a go on all the exercise machines that they have which are completely free to use, this lasted all of 10 minutes!. We then went for a swim in the lagoon.
Day 2 - we hired a car (well i say car it was a f*****g hyundai which pleased cheryl greatly) We drove to cape tribulation along the captain cook highway, the whole route had amazing beaches one side and the rainforest the other, the roads were winding up the hillside so at 1 stage you were beach level and the next you were in the canopy of the trees. We were rocking to the top 20 hits that the local station had compiled when dire straits came on much to our disgust and we had a laugh at my dads expense!! Along the route we kept seeing yellow warning signs for kangaroos but there was a warning sign for what we thought was emus, we thought this was weird but carried on anyway (more on this later) We arrived at our hut in the rainforest and got talking to some german guy called Robin, he joined us on a 6k walk to a waterhole, the lady in reception of the hotel had drummed it in to me that i had to turn left when i got to the river as if i turned right their was crocodiles!! We got to the waterhole with not too much moaning about my bad foot, bad leg, bad shoulder, bad back, bad blister and went for a swim, it was really nice. On route to the waterhole we came across a massive pile of well..crap it was only later that i discovered what it was. Now considering the amount of rubbish I watch on tv and nature programmes, why have i never come across the cassowary??! what a bird, it grows 2m, mostly aggressive and has killed humans with its knife like feet. I’d quite like to let one loose in langstone technology park http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/featured/cassowary-terryfying-bird-earth/10022 sadly we didn’t see 1. That night we cooked dinner and hung around with a good bunch of people listening to the sounds of the jungle.
Day 3 - We drove back to cairns and stopped via port douglas, this had loads of cute cafes & restaurants but we didn’t fancy spending £18 for a sandwich so we walked for a while and found a cheaper cafe to buy a tea and muffin for chez who was becoming a mardy cow and was getting road ragey while driving!! We got back to cairns and slept the night before our diving course.
Day 4 - Great Barrier Reef - we booked on a dive and went out to the reef. It is so expensive compared to thailand, I think i could have 10 dives for the price of 1 here. However it was on my bucket list so off we went. Cheryl was in the beginner group for people who hadn’t dived before. I was with all the cool kidz who had qualified in the past :) and went and did my dive which was great, saw Nemos, Angle fish, a massive barracuda and loads of other stuff that you would expect. When I came back chez was waiting to go and looked like a ghost! fair play though she went in with 1 other tourist and a diver and they took them round and she was chuffed to bits 20 mins later when she had done it and she even said she had fun. I had another dive and saw loads of manta rays and some awesome clams and more reefs. Overall I would say the diving in thailand was better as the visibility was greater but I may do some more here in the whitsundays.
We ate out that evening, I had another Burger while watching the ashes and ignoring cheryl haha - all in all a great few days.
PS - if i get more comments than cheryl, I’m allowed to write again….!!!
