Cape Tribulation

We left Cairns at 7:30 in the morning, according to the driver the place where you party,sleep and get out during the daytime. I'd tend to agree as Cairns doesn't have much to offer in the city itself. We left our big bags in storage and took our over night bags with us up to Cape Tribulation. Our driver filled us with so much information, I'm now definately going to be the best teacher of rainforests ever! We stopped in the mossman Gorge, the first section of tropical rainforest. This was far better rainforest than the Atherton Tablelands. It was raining which meant that the forest looked so lush and green and so dense, it was fantastic. We also saw mangroves, where the vegetation grows from the salt water. From the Gorge we went to a small animal sanctury where we saw Cassowary birds,snakes, crocodiles and I got to have a black parrot on my shoulder. Not ony that, we had the best bacon and egg roll ever! The guy also had a snake in pillow case, he'd just been out to some womans house to get a snake out...it was in her bedroom! I touched the snake, in the sealed pillowcase!!
From there we went up to the Daintree National park, went to some lookouts and learnt some more about rainforests...in between battling to stay awake on the bus! We went across the daintree river on a pull ferry and then to some more mangroves further north in the national park. From there we made our way to Cape Tribulation where we stayed for the night. In Cape Tribulation we went for a walk along the beach, we were told not to go in the water as there are stingers and crocodiles. Ian and I had to cross a creek though in order to get to the lookout, it was only shallow, but I was so scared of getting eaten by something! On the way we walked through more mangroves and there were thousands of red crabs wondering around amongst the trees. We got to Cape Tribulation beach safely and went up to the lookout so see across the beach. I think it would have been more spectacular if the weather was better. Cape Tribulation was small to say the least, consisting of about 5 hostels/hotels, one shop and a pharmacy. We spent the evening playing cards with a few other people in the hostel. Yesterday we got up and spent the morning around the pool, cloudbathing! We organised to go to the bat house, which we later found out was closed on Mondays, gutted! We got back on our tour bus at 2pm and headed back towards Cairns. On the way we stopped at an icecream shop where thay had random tropical flavours such as wattleseed. I stuck to the mango one. From there we made our way back to the Daintree river where we went on a Crocodile cruise. It was fun spotting crocs, we managed to see about 4, 2 larger ones and 2 small ones. The baby ones were so cute, didn't look like they'd hurt a fly! Spot the baby below:
We left there and went to a fruit shop on the way back, the highlight wasn't the fruit, but the baby roo's/wallabies! They were gorgeous, I got to feed the smallest baby. They were hanging up in peg bags in the fruit shop, really sweet. On the way back we had a whistle stop tour around Port Douglas, seems like a lovely place, nice harbour, although 4 mile beach wasn't the most amazing beach. We arrived back in Cairns, checked back into the hostel and then went out for our free meal. Pretty good, cheapest hostel we've stayed in in Australia and you get free dinner!
Ian's gone rafting today, but I didn't really fancy being thrown out of a dingy! With all the rain up here I think it would be far too scary and I'm not the biggest fan of going under water so I left him to it! I'm spending the day looking in the art gallery, going around the shops and lazing around, if the rain manages to stay away for long enough. So, Darwin tomorrow and then fly from Australia to Bali on Sunday, OZ is almost over!