Cairns

In cairns we met up with Mike's friend, Ben, from waterloo who had just finished off work in Sydney and flew up to meet us to hang out in cairns.

We got lucky booking our trip out to the great barrier reef. Initially we thought screw it and booked an expensive trip on a good boat so that we would do it right. But the day before we found a package that had everything the same just on a slower boat, but 90 bucks cheaper. So we changed to that boat and when we got to the pier in the morning the seas were to rough for the smaller boat so we were upgraded to the original/expensive one that we were going to go on at first. I guess we were lucky that we got the free upgrade but that also meant that it pretty much rained the entire time and the boat was getting thrown around like the prostitute that we picked up the night before...too much? I'm allowed to get edgey this close to the end. (Picture 1: Mike from the aftermath of meeting our friends from Fraser Island)

Anyways none of us got sick but we had to spend about 30 minutes inside the boat for a dive briefing and it was funny to watch people drop off one by one, to run outside and be sick. The first reef we went to was Norman reef, which was the furthest offshore reef that we went to. The conditions were not ideal because of the low light and waves on the surface, but once we went down in the scuba gear, the bad seas didn't matter. The second reef that we visited was the Hastings reef, which is closer to shore but I didn't really notice much difference between the two. The snorkelling wasn't as good as it was in the whitsunday's because the surface wasn't flat, but we saw clown fish (Nemo's), Giant Clams, a 6 foot eel and a giant wrasse which weighs about 400 pounds and got to spend about 1 hour scuba diving. The second picture is a picture that I took of the picture that the photographer took of me, but we didn't want to pay 15 bucks to buy. He obviously caught us and called us scum but it was worth it. We brought an underwater camera and Ben had a underwater digital but I don't have any of those pictures yet, save this murky one.

That night Ben didn't have a place to stay so the plan was for him to take one of the empty beds in our room. So that night we hung out at the bar in our hostel and they had the worlds smallest bungee jump. It was so small that you could have jumped from the platform without a cord and land on your feet and walk away. Unfortunatly both Mike and myself were 10 pounds too heavy to try it, but Ben made it on. After that we had some beers with our friend Petra from Sydney and her friends until we were going to sneak Ben up to our room. Normally, hostels if they have security are a joke so I told Ben not to worry and we would just walk past the security guard and say that he lost his key...no dice. Ben had to end up climbing the walls half drunk to get to our room, as I looked on thinking how if he fell his blood was on my hands. To top it off partway through his climb the fire alarm went off, which we all thought was a security alarm, so he dove onto his stomach to try and hide while the two of us took left him and tried to look as inconspicuous as possible. In the end he made it up in one piece, but I haven't laughed that hard in a long time.

The next day we rented the pimpest car that we could find and drove up to Port Douglas and Mossman Gorge. Port Douglas is just a nice little resort town but Mossman Gorge is a rainforest national park with waterfalls and a whitewater river. It poured the entire time we were in the rainforest, which was fitting. The road from Cairns to the gorge hugged the beach and cliffs the whole way and the road was in great shape, so driving our little 90hp daewoo was the most fun I have ever had driving. The best part was that after the 170 or so km that we put on it, it only used 8 litres of petrol...a car after my heart.

Later that night it was our turn to hang out at Ben's place until about 1 in the morning when he drove us to the airport in our sports car. Since our flight was at 5:45 that morning we didn't bother getting a place to stay, we just hung out in the terminal and played with wheelchairs and slept on the benches until our flight left.

Im in Sydney now, staying at the blooms tonight and Mike is staying with his family friends and tommorow at 11:30 am we fly to Auckland, New Zealand for our 3 day extended stopover.