If we die, we die together - Josephine Falls, Secret Places / 28.10.18

Today we were at the backpacker travel office at 10:30, waiting for Terry and curious to see who else would join us. In the end, it was an Asian buddy of Terry's, who was really cool and had many funny stories to tell - about Australia, his banana farm, and weird things from his life, 2 nice girls from Switzerland who have been going to school here in Cairns for a few months, and a Swedish girl who, as we found out, also booked the same trip as us to the Great Barrier Reef tomorrow. Since the guy who was supposed to come with us and had the big car was drunk from last night, we quickly had to rent a car, which was also pretty cool - the whole thing only took us a few hours, among other things, the bank card of the girl from Sweden, named Alice, got stuck in the ATM and in general, a few things went wrong throughout the day.

Finally in the car, we got to know Terry's racing skills - in the negative sense (besides the confusing left-side driving). We got lost a few times, slid around the curves along the rainforest, until we finally arrived at Josephine Falls.

After a short walk through the dense green rainforest, we arrived at the waterfall and immediately turned in the illegal direction - Terry wanted to show us the 'secret' spots - which was not entirely safe.

Linni and I quickly realized, as we climbed up the waterfall through the thick winding roots and finally on the slippery rocks, that we were completely wrong with our shoes getting wet. So we left them on the way and continued barefoot - the others later left their flip flops behind too.

When we reached the big pool that feeds the waterfall through an infinity pool, we went swimming there first and when we tried to climb out of the slippery rocks, Linni slid down the steep pool into the infinity pool and pulled me with her. If we had fallen from there, we would have fallen all the way down, it was pure adrenaline and Terry had to pull us out with a towel, which was a real action, but when we were back up, we could only laugh.

The hike continued uphill, the Asian buddy - Wang or something like that - didn't feel like it anymore and chilled in the sun down below (and ate all the snacks). We jumped into the water between the rocks once and walked along the waterfall, the water was very refreshing.

Further up, we lost Linni's waterproof camera in the waterfall and tried for about an hour to figure out where the current had taken it, but it was in vain.

On the way down, we all had no more strength and our feet were sore, but the view from the top was breathtaking and I went back up later with my camera to take some pictures - by the way, I miss the awesome camera from home that I usually use, the small one is just somehow bad in comparison but still okay. After a small photoshoot in the strong vines down below, we headed back to the (slightly) littered rental car and the two guys decided to drive to a place they called 'The Gorge' after a short stop at a cool view over the endless fields and mountains, where we hoped to see the sunset. Despite Terry's race car driving - in which I perfected his new haircut with a razor in a crazy spontaneous action - and a sprint through the rainforest, we arrived too late. The sky was only light pink, but the gorge that opened up in front of us was impressive enough. There were also some pretty deep water holes in the volcano-like rock, but only a few of us went swimming - not me. I was too afraid of what might be living in there.

It resulted in us having to walk back in the dark, and believe it or not, but it was so loud in the dark forest - Wang told us that there were thousands of insects wanting to mate and making buzzing sounds.

My feet felt worse than ever, but it was worth it because apart from seeing really beautiful things, everyone in the group was awesome and there was a really cool road trip atmosphere.

▪

The way back was almost as chaotic as everything else that day, this time Wang was driving, but even though he had been telling Terry the whole time on the way there to stop his roller coaster driving, we didn't know who was driving crazier now. We listened to cool chill music and arrived in Cairns at our new hostel, Mad Monkey Waterfront, right in the city, at 10 p.m., with the guitar tones of Highway to Hell.

We were surprised that almost everyone in the 8-bed dormitory was already in their beds, and we tried to be as quiet as possible - they probably hated us from the first minute anyway. We set an alarm for 6 a.m. because we have our trip to the Great Barrier Reef tomorrow and we lay in 2 empty bunk beds.

Song of the day: Dying for You by Otto Knows feat. some other people, we heard it on the way to the waterfalls today and I found it a bit fitting with what happened afterwards. Plus, it has that good mood, summer, fun feeling.