Brisbane to Cairns

Once we left Surfers we went a couple of hours to Brisbane to see someone I meet last year and spend a night there just for a quick catch up and somewhere to stay for the night, he made us a lovely dinner and then took us out for what he says is the best ice cream in the world called…

I mean it was good but it hasn’t made ruin ice cream for me.

We left the next day and heading up to Bunderburg, the weather was horrible making the drive really hard for me. There were some points where I could hardly see in front of me but we made it there safe and sound, and we were able to stay at Gerry’s daughter’s house for a few nights, so we actually had a bed again for a few nights. Whilst we were there we went to the Bunderburg Rum factory and had a tour and a couple of free tastings and they have a rum they make but only sell from the factory which is a coffee/chocolate liqueur so obviously I had to buy a bottle of that and it is just amazing, over a bit of ice…yum yum yum.

We soon left Bunderburg as we only wanted to go to the rum factory, and headed up to Airlie beach and this time we stayed with Gerry’s son. We didn’t have a bed this time but we got to set up our lovely tent in his garden and we had a fire every night so that was a bonus. Airlie beach was amazing I loved it, we went to the beach on the first day but the water was murky so we didn’t really fancy going for a swim as it was the end of the box jelly fish season, not nice. But the next day we went on a jet ski tour of the islands and that was fun. We had about 20 minutes on the way out to the island and Judith was driving and then when we got to the island we had a tour of the aquarium and got to feed the rays and hold a baby bamboo shark. On the way back from the island I was driving and it was so much fun, I just wish we didn’t have to stay in a line and follow each other as it made it harder because one person would be going to slow or the person behind you would be right up your ass and it was really annoying. We nearly didn’t get to go out that day as the weather was getting rough and the swell was about 3 meters so they phoned round in the morning to check that we were up for an adventure and weren’t going to be scared of it! ha us scared of a little water…

After we left Airlie Beach we went straight on up to Cairns and the weather was horrible nearly the whole way, we must have been following a storm or something, but we made it there, managed to find our hostel and again we found a really good deal for a private room for 3 nights, the room was more like a hotel with a balcony and en-suite and a massive double bed. Unfortunately money and weather meant we were very limited on what we could do in Cairns, so we didn’t get a chance to go out on the reef as it just rained every day we were there, but we did go up into the rainforest to a place called rainforestation which is a nature park set in the rainforest. We ended up having our very own private tour on the amphibious vehicle as we were the only English speaking people there (everyone else was Chinese or Japanese) and we think the tour guide loved us as he kept stopping and chatting rubbish to us and the tour went on for a lot longer then we think it should have done, neither Judith or me remember anything he told us. The main thing we did was cuddle a Koala, it was amazing and we got our photos taken with him. Other than that like I said we didn’t actually get up too much, Judith brought me home a big sombrero from a night out she had and it has been travelling with us ever since.