Top Cairns Hotels

Cairns is beautiful! Wonderful family destination. We highly recommend the Rainforest/Kuranda all day excursion.

All of our tours out of Cairns were handled by APT Touring. The company was reliable and punctual and the driver/tour guides were amiable and informative - a definite thumbs-up. We did a day-trip to the Great Barrier Reef (awesome), Kuranda via the Skyrail and a return by the Kuranda Scenic Railway (interesting), and the lava tubes at Undara (fascinating - our tour guide was excellent, giving us an equivalent of Geology 101).

Would recommend the On the Wallaby tour of Atherton tableland. Kurada skyrail trip is good. Reef is definitely recommended. Go with Reef Magic. Staff are excellent and you get a good amount of food. The tour is smaller so there aren''t loads of you and you go to a pontoon for those who don''t which to have to stay on a boat all day.

Port Douglas is within easy reach, we took the Quicksilver tour to the Great Barrier Reef, very nice with lots of activities off of a pontoon once you get to the reef. Palm Cove is also a nearby town which is worth a visit for dinner (about 10 minutes by car), the resort offers free shuttle. The local night zoo is recommended, delicious dinner and a visit with all the animals up close and personal, great lively staff, with dancing and all the free alcohol you can consume.

Great scuba diving on live aboard boat - Spirit of Freedom. Cairns fun town to walk everywhere. Kuranda tram/train fun. Barron River rafting and hot air baloon ride over the Tablelands were both terrific.

The Great Barrier Reef is the highlight of a visit to the area, but there are many other exciting places e.g Kurander and the lovely beaches north of Cairns, not to mention crocodile spotting on the River Daintree.

Gorgeous rain forests, reef islands are located nearby in Cairns, so many sports activities are available around the area, i.e. snorkeling, diving, hiking, horse-riding, balloon-riding, and etc.

All of the major tours were willing to pick you up at the Half Moon. We enjoyed diving on the reef and the Daintree Forest adventures.

If you''re reasonably fit, the walking trail up Mount Whitfield, the rainforest boardwalk, centennial lake and botanical gardens (all close together and within a mile of the Colonial Club) are all free and give a far better idea of the rainforest than the tourist trap of Kuranda - but because it''s free and no one makes money, the tourist buses don''t go there and the tourist office don''t push it.

We took several tours to the Great Barrier Reef to dive. Whether you are a diver or not, this is a must. We recommend an operating company called Quick Smart. They took us to Agincourt Reef, where we saw wrasse, turtle and reef sharks, and more while diving. Food on the boat was excellent too. We also took a tour to the rainforest and tablelands (Wildness Eco Safari or something) We spent $130 each for the day tour, but I personally did not think this was worth the money. Unless you are into eco system in the rainforest and tablelands, this will not be a fun tour. Not much excitement to it. However, in general, we had a wonderful time in Cairns!