Wonderfully steamy Cairns

Cairns was a hot steamy place. The kind of place with warning signs at the beach that say Beware Crocodiles and Snakes... or was it sharks. A place where you walk out of your air-conditioned room and immediately start profusely sweating. It was the wet season afterall and it is in the rainforest, so what else would you expect other than heaps of wet rainy weather. There was a plus side to the overcast skies and that was that the heat was a little more bearable. I can only imagine the humidity if it was sunny!

The first day we were in Cairns we went scuba diving again, this time on the outer part of the Great Barrier Reef. The conditions unfortunately were not the best for diving so we were sorely disappointed in the diving experience. The water was so choppy going out to the reef that the boat/ dive crew were encouraging people to either re-book the tour for a later day or take motion sickness pills. I was lucky enough not to be affected by the crashing motion of the boat and did not have to take motion sickness pills either. However, while we were diving the water was fairly murky and the coral not as grand as at the inner reef where we dove near Hamilton Island. We also didn't see quite the amount of sea life/ cool fish as at Hamilton Island.

The second day we went on a white-water rafting voyage down the Tully River. That's me in the middle on the left. Since it had been raining for days the river was up which meant better rapids! I had been white-water rafting before in Colorado, but it was nothing like this. There is a rapids scale of 1 - 6, 6 being the most dangerous rapids and we were rafting a level 4. It made for an intense ride and you felt a great deal of triumph when you made it through the rapids unscathed and still in your boat. Still we weren't able to make it the whole way down the river without getting dumped. We had nearly made it through the last turn in a set of rapids paddling our hearts out as the guide yelled, "GO, GO, GO!" with such urgency in his voice you just knew it was all over, we were done for. Before I knew what was happening, over we went into the cold rushing waters of the Tully River. As I was flying backwards into the water, something hard hit the bridge of my nose, a paddle or someone's head, I wasn't sure, but it left my nose bruised and swollen for days afterwards. Tipping the raft was a huge adrenaline rush though and it wouldn't have been as exciting a trip if we hadn't experienced it.

The next day I left Cairns to head back to Perth as my friends headed on a tour of the rainforest. I was so sad to be ending my travels and had a great time over those two weeks. Last weekend we celebrated Australia Day at my friends flat overlooking the Swan River where the Skyworks (fireworks) were held. It was pretty much the same as our Independence Day, full of family events, fireworks, and parties.