Cairns, Australia

My final stop in Australia was a week spent in Cairns. I stayed at a hostel here called Gilligan's which had a great pool to enjoy the nice weather, although as it was attached to a club didn't make for a great place to sleep (I managed to get a infected insect bite so sleep was something I wanted that week with a bad leg!).

Cairns itself isn't somewhere I would particularly want to visit again in a rush, but the day trips you can do from Cairns definitely make it worth a stay. My first day trip was to Port Douglas, Cape Tribulation and the Daintree River. I chose to do it as a long day trip, but probably should have considered the overnight option as it didn't cost much to upgrade! Our day started at Port Douglas where we stopped for a little while to visit the beach - there was also a really beautiful Church at the other end of the street that had open windows from inside overlooking the water.

Our next stop was Mossman Gorge where we had a great guided walk to see the Mossman River - our guide for the day was great and very friendly and enthusiastic.

Our lunch was spent at a Beach House Resort at Cape Tribulation, and after some food we went for a walk down to the lovely beach there. I definitely would have enjoyed staying here as it was so different to Cairns - much more like being in the jungle with a lot of beautiful nature and wildlife (and big spiders!).

Our final stop for the day was the Daintree River where we did an excellent Wildlife Cruise, mainly to look out for crocodiles! We did manage to see quite a few, although mainly smaller ones. I had a great day out - it was lovely to see some of the beautiful landscape and nature of Australia.

Snake!

On Easter Sunday I took a day trip to the Great Barrier Reef - along with the Sydney Bridge Harbour Climb this was the other item that was on the top of my list to do in Australia. The day before I had been given antibiotics for my knee, but fortunately I was still allowed to dive! Sadly I don't have many photos of the day as I don't have an underwater camera, so just a few shots from the boat.

As this was such an important thing for me to do on my trip, I spent a bit of time looking at the different companies and boat options available. I ended up going with a company called Reef Experience, and I thought they offered an amazing service. The boat itself was great and the staff were brilliant. There were 4 of us onboard who were certified divers so for $10 extra we did our first dive with a guide. I loved diving at the first site, and it was nice to put my newly learnt skills to practise again. We got to use dive computers which I had never done before and I enjoyed reading at what depth we were diving. I didn't find the descent too bad on my ears and had a thoroughly enjoyable dive.

The rest of the day I spent snorkeling - the second site had amazing coral and it was very easy to see a lot of fish and coral just from the surface. The food and lunch onboard the ship was excellent, and we even got Easter eggs and hot cross buns on our way back to Cairns.

This was a great end to my time in Australia. On the Tuesday I flew from Cairns International Airport to Tokyo Narita. I will update soon on my time in Tokyo, one of my favourite places from my trip!