My new years resolution is to learn how to take a complement… I am not normally one for new years resolutions but that seems like a good one so I will do my best.

I am at the end of my East Coast adventure and am a mixture of happy and sad. I am happy because I get to go back to Brisbane and see my friends for a couple of days before I head to New Zealand for a couple of weeks with my mom and my aunt. I am sad because it has been an incredible trip. It seems like one thing after another is amazing and different and ridiculously fun.

I am exhausted after my last couple of days in Cairns. It has been a lot of early mornings and late nights and it is starting to catch up to me… I think New Zealand will be more relaxing…aside from driving on a different side of the road…

A couple of days ago I went white water rafting for my first time down the Tully River, rated one of the best rafting rivers in the world. It was amazing (as I seem to say about all things…but they really are!) I think white water rafting is something I could seriously get into, I am already looking up rafting trips in New Zealand. It was a five hour trip down the river with six people in our boat, two hilarious Irish guys that kept acting like they were gay even though they weren’t a sweet couple from Hong Kong and a girl from Germany. It was an excellent group of people, couldn’t have asked for a better way to end my trip. It is up there with my outback experience as one of my top days of the trip.

I also went on another sailing trip at the top of the Great Barrier Reef and got to see a Nemo in its proper colour. Sadly no sea turtles this time but we got to see the reef through a glass bottom boat and that was pretty neat. I have decided I am not much of a sailing person. As much as I love activities that are water based I think I only prefer things where I am the source of momentum…like swimming, kayaking, rafting or rowing. I just get sleepy and bored on boats and I wasn’t built to lie in the sun for long periods of time…

Finally, one of the other highlights of the last couple of days was visiting a crocodile farm. I got to hold a python…which was pretty crazy. I HATE snakes so it took a bit of courage to do, but not being one to back down from things I even let them wrap it around my neck a couple of times… I really have had no idea what I was going to get myself into on each day of this trip. I hope New Zealand is as exciting :)