Cairns

We met John and Julia at the airport. These are Brian's first cousin's once removed and they were nice enough to let us stay for the three days we were in Cairns. They gave us a photography book on Cairns to give us more of a taste of the place as they said three days was too short. The first nice we went down to beach in Cairns where they had lived when they first arrived and had a really good dinner there. Then we headed back to their house. They have a lovely big house in the hills outside Cairns. The following day as part of Brian's birthday present, we headed to the Great Barrier Reef while John and Julia went to work. John was nice enough to drop us onto the Marina so we didn't even have to worry about buses. There are loads of pictures of it in the only album. It was a pretty amazing day. Brian even got to follow a Manta ray for a while with the camera. We got to see two different places on the reef. One had a lot more plant life and the other had a lot more fish. It's an amazing reef. We spend about 3 hours or so snorkeling on it. The whole experience took the entire day as it was a couple of hours to get to the first location and a could of hours back. We both wore suits that stop jelly fish stings as we didn't want to get completely sunburned like the reef trip in Mexico. That night, Brian's great aunt Millie came over and Julia made an amazing dinner and dessert for us. We spent the evening chatting away and looking at pictures from the day.