Cairns: 31st-4th June.

At the ghastly hour of 6.35am, our bus ground to a halt beside the Esplanade in Cairns. As the reception at the Cairns Girls Hostel (no stinky boys with moldy socks strewn around the room) was not yet open, we decided to bring our senses to life by sipping on a strong cup of coffee. Once checking in and leaving our bags at the hostel, we meandered into town to get our bearings and completed some much needed internet checking, which was not wholly productive as we ended up Facebook-ing each other from different internet cafes! Anyhow, once our room was ready, we drifted off with the fairies for a couple of hours before spending the rest of the day ambling around and to be honest, doing absolutely nothing.

On the 1^st June, we arose bright and early to spend the day on the Uncle Brian’s tour. We were informed about this tour with great enthusiasm by a pair we met in Byron Bay and therefore it came to the top of the list of things to do while in Cairns. We were picked up by Cousin Paul who would be our guide for the day, who impressed us by reciting the names of the other 18 people who had already boarded the bus. First stop were the boulders near Babinda where we were told that if we entered the pools we would most certainly die but on a lighter note, we learnt about the weird and wonderful characteristics of the surrounding rainforest vegetation. Next off, Josephine Falls, three connecting waterfalls which permitted angelic rock sliding by members of the group who could withstand hyperthermia early on in the day! Mr. Lunch then satisfied our pangs of hunger with lasagna and carbonarra followed by butterscotch pudding. We then trundled to Millaa Millaa Falls which was extremely exciting due to 3 separate reasons: a) it features in the Quantus advert to entice people to Australia, b) it was the waterfall used in the Timotee shampoo advert and c) it was used in Peter Andre's 'Mysterious Girl' advert were he would smother his abs with the crystal clear water! So, of course, doing it for Peter we braved the cold (and it was very very cold) and swam behind the falls. Jess was a pro at reenacting the famous Timotee pose:

Armelle then braved the chilled waters at the next site of interest; a huge lake formed by the result of volcanic activity and therefore has no rivers flowing in or out of it. On the way back, we stopped beside a river to hopefully spot a platypus, but after half an hour or so of seeing a few ripples, we decided to give in.

Now, the Uncle Brian’s tour was not any ordinary tour. Cousin Paul entertained us throughout the day in Gus the bus by encouraging bus dancing (swaying to Hakuna Matata seems to be a favorite), chocolate munching, perfecting Mexican waves and the passing-a-ring-with-a-match-stick-in-your-mouth-to-the-back-of-the-bus game while driving.

On return into Cairns, we speedily got ready to race to Cairns Central to catch the evening showing of 'At World's End', the supposedly final film in the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy. We both enjoyed the film but were rather confused by the ins and outs of the plot which later had to be explained to us!

An extremely lazy weekend then followed, consisting of shopping, trip organizing, wandering the night markets, laundry and swimming in the man made lagoon.

Saturday night however, was the peak of excitement. Dressed in our glad rags we headed into town with our room mate Stephanie. First off, O’Reily’s, where we clambered over numerous benches to bag a seat outside. Shenanigans was our next destination were a questionable band blurted music out until the early hours. Being 3 girls sitting at a table was obviously an open invitation for groups of men to approach us! The first lot was a group of backpackers who were actually quite boring so there is not much to be said about them. We were then descended upon by a football team who had made a stop to the pub on their way home. They were absolutely hilarious! Half of the team tried to convince us that they were indeed crocodile hunters! This banter continued for a couple of hours before they were escorted by their coach to the bus to continue the journey home, claiming that they were going to slash the tyres so that they had to stay here and continue their evening with us! Stephanie and Armelle then decided to carry on and return to the Irish Pub but after entering the pub and finding topless girls dancing on the bar they hastily decided to retire too!

Monday the 4^th it was time to move on, and after a morning of internetting and sending parcels home, we caught our flight to Darwin without a hitch- the joys of our first and only internal flight. We arrived at the Cavenagh hostel in time for a glass of red wine in the adjoined bar before bed.