Jungle Tours Daintree/Cape Tribulation
Trip Start
Sep 16, 2008
1
3
29
Trip End
Sep 15, 2009
Where I stayed
Cape Tribulation, Queensland, Australia
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
We were really lucky to get a great group of people on the bus, most of us clicked really quickly and had a great laugh with the tour guide Fraser all day. Coupled with the comedy entertainment of the official Swedish Miss Precious in front of me that did her (clinique) makeup 6 TIMES during the few hours we were traveling!
Our first stop was Port Douglas Rainforest Wildlife Sanctuary, possibly the most exciting place we'd been to yet. Yes, it even gave finding real Nemo's a run for its money! For $2 you can buy a bag of kangaroo feed (see where I'm going with this) and wander around a large enclosure hand feeding (wait for it) Kangaroos and Wallabies!!! In all honesty the roos weren't interested at all, but the little Wallabies hop up to you and grab onto your hands for the feed, it's SO cute!!!! We couldn't stay in the enclosure too long as we had to get over to the Koala section for show and tell...and cuddles! I'm actually in two minds over whether I agree with this or not (it's been banned in other Aussie states) but you can have a short cuddle and a picture with the Koala. It's an AMAZING experience, you interlock your hands for it to sit on, it grabs on to your arms to cuddle you and smells really strongly of eucalyptus!
Next stop was Mossman Gorge, a swimming hole a short walk into the rainforest. Now for those of you that reckon all water in Oz is tropically warm to swim in, you lot would be WRONG! It was FREEZING, but once you'd swum around a bit it was a really fun refreshing change from the humidity of the forest. If you swim upstream a little you can climb up onto the boulders which are really warm and great to sunbathe on...unless you're me, who slipped on the moss and nearly broke my foot, ouch! There were beautiful huge blue butterflies flying around us who seemed to like the colour of my board shorts and kept landing on me!
Next was lunch in a remote little cafe, with a wild west style piano saloon out back! There were little pineapples growing in the flower bed! For desert we were led over to a tree (wrongly assuming we were going to sample some local fruit) and instructed to grab the green ants running around it and lick them! They're a lot like lemon sherbet, the taste is really sharp and bitter!
Our accommodation at Cape Tribulation was an amazing little wooden cabin by the beach (maybe 20 meters walk through the trees) complete with very cute resident mouse that enjoyed waking us in the early hours! Unfortunately it was a 3.5km walk to, well, anything remotely resembling civilization so we were a little cut off! We had plans to meet up with the guys from the tour so got out the torch and were all set to walk into town, but on getting to the road and seeing as it was like a scene out of every creepy forest based horror movie you've ever seen, I decided we were staying put for the evening!
When we finally walked into "town" (I use the term loosely, it's a couple of hostels and a general store) we spotted 2 cassowaries crossing the road. This was incredible! There's only 1200 left and the chances of actually seeing one (let alone 2!) are pretty remote! They're huge birds, with big blue bills, and we quickly realised why we'd been warned how dangerous they were, you'd have no hope of outrunning these things! Of course, I was excitedly oblivious to the danger and whipped out the camera to catch them on video (those of you on facebook will notice I say "thats coming towards us right" just as the clip abruptly ends!)
That's pretty much it for our Daintree Adventures I think, not bad for a couple of days right! The rest of the time we've spent relaxing on the beach or wandering around the area, it's rained a lot (being a rainforest and all!) so we've got drenched by surprise on several occasions! There's a really obnoxious photo of where I'm sitting to write this - in the hostel bar which is in amongst the rainforest, it's an amazing sight! We're returning back to Bohemia, our original hostel in Cairns tonight as we've made some friends there and weren't too impressed with the second one. We'll be leaving for our next big adventure - the tour to Brisbane next wednesday. (It's weird constantly having no idea what day date or time it is, I just had to look that up!)
ps: Photos will follow soon I promise, having uploading issues!
