Diving with Diana!!

We took a transfer to Cairns for the last week of the Australian leg of our adventure.
We stayed a little out of town at a Nomads backpackers hostel, the Serpent, which had a pool, a nice bar and was the cheapest we’ve had throughout the whole of aus! It had a few cubs staying there. (Cashed Up Bogans(similar to chavs)) Cairns it’s self was an interesting place, it obviously had a high unemployment rate there are a lot of drunk aborigines roaming the streets and a lot of bogans drinking in the various bogan watering holes dotted around town. There was no beach and the mud flats at the sea fronts had a lot of signs warning us about crocodiles, but the lagoon was a nice place to hang out.
We spent the first day in Cairns camera shopping for Laura to replace the love of her life…. her camera, which the rat pack had brought Laura, and our travels destroyed with a mixture of sand and hard surfaces.
So we’d met up with Diana in Cairns and headed off into town to book up our next few days.
We found Peter Pans and sat down with the sales guy we’d met on the greyhound earlier in the week. We had managed to get a fantastic deal. This might be because the sales guy was sweet on Diana. Thanks Diana our aussie hunny trap. We had bought a couple of days of adrenaline fueled fun. We hung out by the lagoon and had a delicious but not nutritious dinner at the hostel, followed by a game of darts with some randoms.
The next day we went white water rafting down the Russel river. First we hiked through the rain forest with our rafts on our backs and paddles in hand. It was only 5 minutes before we needed to cross a river and the threat of leeches was hanging over us. Mike was frantically checking his legs every couple of minutes. Diana had two leeches that mike helpfully got off for her with his paddle. Laura proudly announced when she reached the river that she had escaped leech free…. Until she took off her shoe and discovered the biggest leech out of everyone there! Being the mildly competitive type she was obviously jealous that Diana had two, but was happy in the thought that hers was by far the biggest even though the majority of its mass was indeed blood sucked from Laura’s leg!!
Once in our two man inflatable kayak we were a force to be reckoned with. Before each rapid our guide would stop us and tell us how to take the rapid… some of them grade 4!! On route we stopped at an aboriginal cave with a waterfall and painted our faces with tribal war paint. Then we carried on down the river. Diana did manage to get stuck wrapped round a rock at the top of a grade 4 rapid. She had to let her boat go and walk around instead. One of the guides jumped off the land crocodile Dundee style and wrestled the raft back to the land….amazing to watch that narly dude. We went out that night to listen to a bit of live music….. what an awesome day!!
The next day we were up early ready to dive the great barrier reef. The staff were very friendly, but it was a very busy boat. We managed to do 2 dives and Laura was very excited to see a giant clam. She also had a 1.3 meter sucker fish stuck to her leg for the duration of her first dive. Usually they sucker onto sharks but unfortunately we didn’t see any of them. Mike was really excited by the food especially the cheese platter. We had a great night out that night playing guess the nationality and convince someone that they know you game…. Diana what a legend!! Diana almost convinced this guy Elliot that he knew her.. she put in ground work and talked to one of his friends to get some deets…. So funny!! Diana got some yummy pineapple sweets at the end of the night. Laura liked them so much she happily obeyed the three second rule for them and may have eaten a few of them off the floor…very messy night!! It was sad to say goodbye to the lovely Diana, who headed back to Sydney.
Our hostel ensured we had a good send off on our last night they had an aussie night. Were they put emu, crocodile, and kangaroo on the Barbie. They also had an animal show were we saw indigenous species and got to hold a crocodile!! It was sad to say good bye to Australia but with Australia being so expensive and Fiji calling we were excited to leave.