Cairns, the Great Barrier Reef and Mission Beach

Ok Ok - sorry for the lack of updates (says he hoping that people have been on the edge of their seats waiting..), but we've been had a very lazy weeks lately - well, it's hard work this backpacking business!! Not really. The truth is that after Su's amazing blog last time that I thought it would be a hard act to follow - but time is a great healer so you're stuck with me again. I will convince her to blog again but she's a busy woman so it's me this time...

So we're on the east coast of Australia now after flying from Perth of Cairns via Melbourne (Melbourne was cold!!). Cairns was lovely and tropical though and we booked a day on a boat called the Tusa 5 (sounded a bit Irish) where we did some diving on the Great Barrier Reef (the only living thing viewable from space so they say!). It was pretty cool but we don't have a lot of photos seeing as we were on our lazy period. Well listen, it's hard work finding Nemo but Su managed it:

Hair raising experience it was too. She told me where the little guy was hiding all this time was and I got in there aswell:

We were under water as this stage if nobody has realised which is why we are looking a bit strange.

We spent about a week in Carins and  moved on to Mission Beach where we spent a few days by the pool - I'm sorry but the only photo we took was of an insect that looked like a leaf. Maybe it was a leaf - it didn't move too much and we had a few glasses of wine. We were convinced it was an insect though. It had legs (we think). I'm sure the people in Mission Beach won't be too upset that we didn't get too many photos - it's sold as a place to relax and unwind and that's what we did. I know I know, surely five months of unwinding is more than enough but we're going for a record.

So now we are in Airlie Beach, further south on the East coast - great place - the gateway to the Whitsunday Islands where we'll be hopping on a boat tomorrow for a 3 day and 3 night cruise. We will definitely take some more photos and break out of this slacker mentality that we fallen into. Bear with us - the blog will get better... I'll get Su on the case again!