Cairns, Mission Beach, Townsville and now Airlie Beach

Arrived in Airlie Beach this afternoon on greyhound! Its about 4hrs south of Townsville, heading on a sailing trip around Whitsundays in morning (2days, 1nite, sleeping on the boat!), have stocked up on sun-cream but I think its inevitable that I'm gonna get burnt.

See that I haven't put up a post since Alice Springs, too busy or sleeping to do it really ;) Cairns was class, after staying in Alice springs it was like staying in a major capital city somewhere! hostel was cool and organised our snorkeling trip and a day-trip to Kuranda with them.

Snorkeling was good, was tempted to do an introductory dive as well but bottled it. We were out a bit further than green island so at outer edge of barrier reef, I thought the snorkeling in Thailand was good, but this was way better, got a bbq lunch and went to two different reef locations for those snorkeling/diving. Got sun-burnt,on back of my legs mainly, hard to avoid given that we were in/out of water all the time. Got a bit too close to barrier reef though and whacked my left knee off some coral, nicely bruised and cut for last few days.

Day after this took a day-trip to Kuranda high-up in rainforrest, disappointed with place really, nothing to it apart from endless tourist shops, don't believe everything in lonely planet. Trip there/back was best part though, on way up took a cable car up over top of rain-forrest, pretty cool seeing birds and stuff below us. On way back then, took a train going back down the valleys.

From Cairns, it was onto Mission Beach, well we got off there and were staying ~10km from it, in the rain-forest itself. Accommodation was these tiny little tree-huts dotted along forrest. Really at one with nature for a couple of days, would have been nice and relaxing apart from all the insects around. Worst were the flying beetles, which came out flying around about 7pm each nite, impossible to get off if they landed on ya, had to literally try and pick them off, not nice! Other insects were giant moths(talking > 6inches length here) and stick-insects, those buggers can move a bit too. On way back to hut each nite, family of frogs greeted us each nite. Bit of a show-down each nite, they froze when torch lite was shown on them, so walking by them u'd hope they wouldn't jump up on ya! So was a lovely adventure really, was a break from travelling for a while alrite like.

Then onto Townsville where we spent for 1 nite on sat. Pretty cool place and would have liked to have stayed longer if we weren't caught for time on way down to Sydney. Oh yeah, so much for cooking for ourselves, hostels in both Cairns and Townsville had deals with some pubs where u get a free dinner. The free dinner was real basic, but u cud "upgrade" it to something decent for $6 which was cool.

So yeah, thats it to date, sailing for next few days, have an overnite trip to Hervey Bay to look forward to after that, then a trip to Fraser Island, after that Brisbane for ~ 5 nites, and onto sydney. Impossible to find a stop-over between Brisbane and Sydney for days we want at moment, mite have to go direct, which will be some trip on the bus. So glad that we booked somewhere for Sydney though as its impossible to find somewhere everyone is saying. No worries, Kevin