Plan A

One evening we went to a backpacker feeding farm for some cheap food and this evening's entertainment will be GOldfish racing...or Goldfish torture as we would like to call it. The idea goes...the crowd bids for a fish (i.e. George W. Fish - most hated fish in the world, Lord Windsor - inbred fish from England, Paddy the drunk, Silver Fin from New Zealand, Sushi from Japan, Dirty Sanchez the most disgusting fish etc. etc.) The drunkards of the bar pay anything between $20 and $40 for a fish, then the tournament begins! The skill (yes, apparently there is some) is to blow bubbles about 6" behind the tail of the fish and it will swim away from you...the reality is the only girl in the competition won because she is the only one who had any concept of how far away 6" was, the guys on the other hand - whether it be from lack of co-ordination from the alcohol, the inability to do two things at once or the inability to do anything but suck when a a straw and some liquid are handed to you...the really weren't getting it. If the fish went in the wrong direction, how does that saying go?? Braun before brains - I know if I blow really hard I'll probably just be able to blow the fish to the end of the track!? The poor fish...!

An early rise for our Cape Tribulation tour...first stop giving away some more money - this time to Santa!? It's a good job Santa's job doesn't involve charging for his presents because the combination of credit card technology and fat man with a white beard didn't go down to well. Jeremy/Fred/Hippy version of Steve Irwin/our tour guide started our day off with a "get to know each other session" - what's your favourite tale from Australia...Adam happily told his I shared some chips with a drunk Aborigini story! The tour continued with many a long and informative 'swear on my life' diatrap about his time in the rainforest, yes? especially at 2am, yes? 3am, yes? and a particularly indepth science behind the roofing system of the rainforest, miracle fruits, a detailed timeline of how the road was built (finshed in 1994 - this will be a part of your pop quiz later on in the week) which somehow turned into how the worlds mountain ranges were formed. Bet I stopped listening before you did :) Now don't get me wrong, in the midst of all going off on tangents there was some very interesting facts, like if you incubate a crocodile egg a degree higher than normal you will get a lady crocodile - preferable for zoos and such like because the ladies fight less!

We stopped at a wildlife park and saw cassowary birds and crocs in a billabong which launched out of the water when the guy threw stones at them. I think I would be fairly annoyed if I was trying to avoid the rain and someone kept throwing stones at me. Oh yeah, it was raining again by this point! We also saw the tiniest frogs in the world ever about the size of a fingernail (a small fingernail) - sadly whilst oohing and ahhing over these creatures a girl came along and stepped on one! :(

We continued to drive through the Rainforest and saw some wild Cassowaries. We wandered through the mangrove swamps...maybe I should say on a boardwalk - we were inches away from danger at every turn. Jeremy/Fred ate an ant?!?! Which apparently tasted of lemon and lime...well if we are going to play 'I'm a Celebrity' dude feel free to bring out Ant and Dec anytime you like :) In the afternoon we were dropped off at PK's - our home for the night, Adam napped and Amy and I went to the pool (and he wonders why he doesn't have a suntan!)

To while away the next morning before our trip back to Cairns we went for a walk along the beach...where danger lurks around every corner - which isn't far wrong to be honest - at high tide when the sea meets the creek the crocs come right along to the shoreline, this was exactly the time we managed to arrive at the beach! Luckily Adam Dundee was there to protect us so when the 6m long croc appeared out of nowhere and started chasing us down the beach we were barely scared at all...Adam bravely diverted the croc into the trees confusing it by running in zig zags. As the crocodile was just about to grab Adam's leg he used his suntan lotion as a weapon of massive power and the crocodile started choking. Adam Dundee finally wrestled it to the ground but was standing in quicksand! By the time the croc had drowned in the sand Adam was already in it up to his waist and was only able to pull himself free with the strength of a bear - being such a hero he had also managed to karate chop with crocs tail off with his arm and is now planning to make some crocodile boots as a momento of his trip! Back in the safety of the pool we relaxed for a while with some swimming and su dokus.

Jeremy/Fred finally picked us up and we headed to the ice cream factory - a typical sight of the Australian rainforest. Along with this and the breif stop to check out the white tailed kingfisher we had to navigate the potholes and dips in the road with less caution than before and the trip was fairly bumpy to the crocdile cruise. Next stop - the crocodile cruise! We were told to be careful walking down the path to the boat...why? Should we be looking out for crocodiles?! Have they been spotted on this bank before?...no, be careful carrying your hot drinks down the path, we don't want anyone to burn themselves! We saw a tree frog, lots of interesting vegetation and birds nests, a croc sunbathing and we saw some rain! Luckily the rain held off long enough for us to walk through Mossman Gorge and just as we got back to the bus it rained again and didn't stop for another four days! Upon our arrival back at the hotel we had some good and bad news waiting for us...the good news is that we have been upgraded to a better room because all the dorms have gone...the bad news is that there will potentially be a cyclone in the next few days the roads to AIrlie Beach are flooded! Excellent!

Our day to the Great Barrier Reef turned out to be a success - there was good weather and good reef! In fact the sunshine was out in force that day (mostly because of the lack of ozone layer in that part of the world) and so was the suntan lotion, if anyone was watching from the outside it would have looked like we were playing pass the parcel with it and when the music stops you are the lucky person that gets to use it! Adam managed to burn the backs of his hands - a small price to pay for the realisation of a dream to go on a catamaran, no? We did some snorkelling, had a giggle over the wetsuits (Adam was in charge of helping/groping Amy into hers ;) Someone in our snorkelling group spotted a turtle, so off 20 of us trot - stalking this poor turtle! Adam and Amy were playing a fun game of how deep can you dive...I on the other hand had a lot of difficulty staying face down in the water let alone going any deeper than that! We had lunch and then more of the same, snorkelling, taking silly photos, getting cramp, missing the "GET BACK TO THE BOAT" signal. Back at the hostel we found out the Bruce Hwy was under 8m of water and the forecast - rain, rain and more rain.