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On the morning of the 3rd, I decided to head up to Cairns on the 10:40 Greyhound bus. When I got to Cairns, I understood why Shane had described it as a city you would imagine in Western Movies. All the buildings are low - and the streets are quite narrow. It is MUCH smaller than I expected. It almost seems more like a tourist resort than a major city - with every other store being a travel store selling the same trips for diving in the Great Barrier Reef, Cape Tribulation tours, or skydives.
I decided to stay at a hostel called Serpent - Nomad. I booked into a $20 room with 6 beds. It was quite a nice hostel, with a swimming pool, bar, and a free dinner in the evening. My room was also nice, and I met two of my roommates - an English girl named Kim who was travelling with three more girls, and Elsa - a Swedish girl travelling by herself and heading to SE Asia on the 10th.
After an afternoon nap, Elsa and I headed down to the bar for the FREE DINNER. At this point, I would like to tell
everyone out there, you get what you pay for. Cause that is definitely what happened. We paid nothing, and we got NOTHING. There was about 2 grains of rice and a single pathetic piece of chicken. It was ridiculous. I actually laughed when I saw it. At that time, Elsa and I decided we would walk into town and get a real meal.
Elsa had heard from another traveller about a Thai food place where you could get a cheap meal after 8:30...while we were waiting for them to lower their prices, I saw Noam - the Israeli guy that Dave and I have bumped into at every single place we've stopped at since we did the surfing course with him in 1770 - so I told him about the deal, and him and his friends joined us for dinner.
After dinner, we decided to go and look for a pub or somewhere to sit for a while. We ended up at 'Woolshed' - which I've heard is just about the only place to go to in Cairns. It was actually a really good night - we didn't drink much, but we (The israeli boys - Noam, Jonathan,
and Kfir, Elsa, me, and the Leeds boys who joined us at the club) danced for a few hours (until the wet T-shirt competition started) and at 2 AM Elsa and I caught the (FREE!) bus back to the Serpent!
On the way home, we decided we would attempt to book a rental car the next day and do a day trip up to Cape Tribulation....and that's exactly what we did. We woke up at 8 the next morning, and booked a car. Dave joined us (I hear you ask WHY don't Chris and Shane ever join us - and it is NOT due to a lack of asking...) and by 11 we were out of Cairns, and on our way up the Cape Tribulation Highway! We stopped at Mosman Gorge - a beautiful walk in the rainforest. And THIS rainforest really WAS a rainforest. It was beautiful; so green and full of life!
We then had a true backpacker lunch - bought some bread, ham, and tomatoes from the supermarket and sat on the curb beside our car making sandwiches. Then the journey continued. The scenery was unbelievable, with lush, green rainforest to one side, and the
ocean to the other. Cape Tribulation is supposedly the only place in the world where rainforest meets ocean.
At 2:30 we got to a place along the Daintree River that did river cruises (CROCODILE spotting cruises!). So we jumped on! We spent about an hour on the water, and we saw a female croc who had had babies on Dec 28th (well...that's when she laid the eggs) and we saw one of the little crocs as well! It was TINY (kaksi vaaksaa!!) We also saw a 2 year old croc (kolme ja puoli vaaksaa) and a bright blue kingfisher with orange legs! AND coiled up in a tree, we saw a python!!
At about 3:30, the journey continued - and we DID make it to Cape Tribulation (although we had some touch and go moment with over-flowing streams which we had to DRIVE through. poor mini car had to endure a lot! The roads were much better than I expected,and the scenery was amazing! And that was on a cloudy day! Now I have to think of some more entertainment in Cairns for the next week! Today I found 'The Power of One' book in a second-hand book
Cape Tribulation
Mini Croc (there WERE bigger ones) store - and to anyone who knows how much I love the movie, you will understand how excited I am about reading it!
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