Daintree Dreaming

Time for Part Two!
The day after our *amazing* day on the Great Barrier Reef, we spent a chill day hanging out in Cairns--we went to some shops, bought some souvenirs and chilled out at The Lagoon, a large (free!) public pool.  It was great to lounge around and do nothing for a while, which is what every good vacation should involve.  The Lagoon is located right on the edge of the boardwalk, so you can enjoy the pool while looking out at the ocean that you do not want to swim in because the coast of Cairns is all mud flats, not sandy beaches.  It's a nice area where everyone in the city goes to relax with open barbecues, free fitness classes and open space to play sports.  As we were dozing on our Australian flag beach towels, we realized there was an unending flock of large birds flying above us, but after we woke up and our eyes adjusted, we realized that the birds were actually bats.  Really big bats.  Seeing flying foxes like that definitely made me feel like I was in the tropics.  There had to be thousands of them!  There were certain trees in town just covered in bats just hanging out... a bit creepy until you get used to it.

We called it an early night so that we could get up for the next day's adventure:  a trip to the Daintree rain forest and Cape Tribulation!  Our tour took us from Cairns up the coast, stopping at a few points of interest along the way.  Stop number one was Mossman Gorge- our first look at a tropical rain forest!  It was absolutely beautiful!  We were able to wander around through trails for about an hour and see what there was to see.  Everything was SOOOOO beautiful!  Sometimes I felt like I was in Jurassic Park, and other times I felt like I was on the island from "Lost," but the entire time I was completely excited to know that I was in a tropical rain forest!

Here, basically, everything grows all over everything else.  Nothing is free-
standing or clean, it's all covered in green and fifteen other plants.

 

We moved further north after our walk, passing an area pictured above where our guide pointed out an island on the horizon off the coast of which, four or five years ago now, Steve Irwin had his fateful encounter with a ray.  Next, we visited a private zoo, home to many animals native to Australia like emus, kangaroos, wallabies, a cassowary, a large selection of birds and plenty of crocodiles!  After the zoo stop, we hit the road again until we came to another area to wander through the forest, then we stopped for lunch at Cape Tribulation Beach.  Unfortunately, we were not able to get in the water without stinger suits because of all the jellyfish... but it was still Very nice!  The beach seemed straight out of a  movie- the jungle spilled out right onto beautiful white sand, without a building in sight!

 At this point, I broke off from my travel buddies-- the trip was supposed to be a day tour, but I opted to spend the night at a lodge in Cape Tribulation and catch a ride home with the next day's tour.  One other girl from the tour stayed, so we got a room together and set off for adventures!  Michaela was a Swiss girl who had been studying English in Noosa and was my age, so we hit it off pretty well.  We found a small store to get some food, just in time for it to start raining like crazy.  We were sitting on the porch eating when a goat came from nowhere and jumped up the stairs, followed by a man running behind it to get out of the rain.  Later, we learned the man had raised the goat on a bottle and it pretty much thought it was a dog... Even later than that, we learned that the man is actually an ecologist who grew up in the area and has been a major part of making Cape Tribulation what it is today.  Thirty years ago, a large chunk of place was clear-cut.  He and a team came in to plant trees, and nature took over from there.  Now, the rain forest is thriving!  Animals moved in and vegetation has taken over, just the way it should be, crushing the myth that it takes hundreds of years for ecosystems to recover from clear cutting.  He is also fond of bats, but that's another story.

When the rain let up, Michaela and I went back to our room and met our other roommate for the night, Zoe, a young Taiwanese doctor from Melbourne.  It rained again and we sat around getting to know each other, then when it stopped again, we went for a stroll.  There was a boardwalk made for tourists to go through a mangrove swamp, so we sprayed on our 40% DEET bug spray and boldly faced the mozzies.

We walked around for about an hour, and every bit of the area was everything I hoped and dreamed that a rain forest would look like.  Then, all of a sudden the ocean appeared.  The three of us chilled out on the beach until time to find dinner.  All over were little balls of sand that crabs had rolled up and put in random designs and coconuts dotting the beach.

Michaela and I got dinner at crowded cafe that night, where two German couples ended up joining our table.  They had been travelling along the east coast for the past two weeks and we ended up chatting with them for over two hours before finding our way through the pitch black back to our cabin, attempting to dodge the cane toads and geckos on the path.  The next morning we woke up to a steady rain, but after it subsided, the day was rather lovely.  Below is the view from our front door--I believe that it was a field of tea. 

We had heard of a swimming hole that we could hike to, so we set off that morning with purpose.  Eventually we found the trail and managed to get down to the water.  I really have a hard time grasping the fact that things are actually this beautiful in real life.

 We met up with the tour group again that afternoon for our ride back down to Cairns, on the way stopping for a snack at the Daintree Ice Cream Company where they make ice cream from things grown on site.  The flavors for the day were Mango, Jakfruit, Wattle Seed and Macadamia Nut.  Wattle seed tasted similar to coffee, and Jakfruit seemed like a mix of bubblegum and banana.  Our final event for the tour was a cruise on the Daintree River, home to heaps of crocodiles!  We were able to see a few ranging from about a foot to four feet in length, but my friends the day before were able to see one that was about eight feet long!

The cruise was nice and relaxing, a perfect end to the day.  I was dropped off in time for another free meal with my friends, some of whom had gone deep-sea fishing that day.  The next day, we lazed around the lagoon again and got ready to head back home the next morning.  Overall, it was the best vacation ever.  I am SO blessed to have been able to see such amazing things and meet so many great people!  Now that I am back in Canberra, my housemates call me Pocahontas because of the awesome tan I got in Queensland, but now autumn has definitely set in, making for a stark contrast from the tropical north and leaving me bundled up in my room with fond memories of sunshine.