The start of our Australian travels: Cairns

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After 6 months of work, we take off to Cairns - the beginning of the end of our yearlong traveling adventure!
Cairns is famous for its Great Barrier Reef tours where many tourists get to see sharks, plenty of colourful fish and corals; and for its rainforest tours due to its location in the wet tropics.
I laughed at how there are signs and a waiting area for Uber at the Cairns airport (and someone pointed it to us) - we had to hide the fact that we were taking Uber in so many Asian countries!
At 4pm, the streets of Cairns were deserted - it was a bit of a weird feel. We were very hungry so after checking in at Bounce, our hostel (which was nice and pretty cheap), we went for a nice fish and chips at FryDays and ate it on the esplanade. The tide was low and we could see hundreds of crabs! We spent quite a while looking at the crabs and then we walked on the esplanade and had dinner at the cheapest place in the night market.
On the next day, we went for a rainforest tour. We went on a bus where our guide, Mark, kept talking. I liked the story about farmers who are nicknamed “Cockies” because they always complain - which owes them the comparison with the loud birds, cockatoos.
We stopped in Port Douglas where we saw the Sunday market and used public musical toilets. We drove on Captain Cook road, with beautiful views of the oceans. We then stopped at Mossman Gorge and had a walk in the rainforest. After that, we took a ferry to the Daintree Rainforest. The Daintree Rainforest is said to be the oldest continuously surviving tropical forest in the world and home to the endangered giant bird, the Cassowary. We tried to look for one but didn’t see any! We had lunch at Cape Tribulation and it rained heavily for a few minutes. We then took a boat to see the mangroves and the crocodiles. We only saw one but it was a nice tour nonetheless. On our way back we stopped at some viewpoints including Alexandra Range lookout, and had Daintree ice-creams made of fruits grown there and stopped on a field full of wallabies!! There are a few grassy fields with horses and wallabies have found it the best place to get their food... They are breeding so much that there are now hundreds of them.
That evening, we had dinner (at the same place than the night before) and a 3 litre beer with Douwe, from the Netherlands, whom we had met on the tour.
Our last day in Cairns was spent swimming in the lagoon, an outdoor public swimming pool next to the sea, and relaxing. We had lunch at Dominos where the pizzas only cost $5 each (less than £3). I walked to Dominos to meet Shaun and saw a lot of aboriginals who were drunk and begging for money. It was a sad sight. When we came back to the hostel, a new guy, Milan (also from the Netherlands) had checked in and was settling in the bed under mine. Shaun offered him to play some pool and we ended up having a chat and going to the lagoon for a swim with him. Douwe joined us at the lagoon and the four of us had dinner at the night market (the third time for us!) and shared 3 litre beers again!
On the next day, we woke up early and took the bus to the rental agency to get our car and start our 12 days road trip down the East Coast!

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Photos

The infamous Daintree Ice-cream
Black Sapote (Chocolate pudding fruit), passion fruit and coconut