Day 23

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We had to get up nice and early because the coach was picking us up form our hostel at 7.15am. There were 2 other English girls from our hostel who were going on the same trip but they were staying for 2 nights in different accommodation. The bus then stopped at another hostel to pick up 4 other girls who were on exactly the same trip as us. 3 of them were from Canada (Carla, Heather and Marcey) and another English girl (Lindsey) who went to Birmingham uni and graduated at the same time as Mel and me!

Mel slept most of the way (feeling slightly hung over from the night before!) but didn't miss out on much because there wasn't really anything to see because of the thick low cloud and almost constant rain!! We made a couple of stops on the way. The first one was at Daintree animal sanctuary where we got to see some cassowaries, a very friendly wallaby (who followed us round!) and a crocodile.

Next we got on the ferry to take us across the Daintree river. Slightly further along the coastline we stopped at a lookout point where we could see absolutely nothing beacuse it was so cloudy! No one really wanted to stop because it wasn't very exciting so we continued and drove to the next stop. This was in the middle of the rainforest. We got off the bus and armed with plently of mosquito repellent and our waterproofs we set off on a boardwalk through the mangroves. Despite being very wet there was lots to see and we managed to spot a big guana (a type of lizard).

We arrived at our accommodation (PK jungle village) just in time for lunch so we both ordered an open salad sandwich which turned out to be slightly bizzare! It wasn't raining too heavily when we finished lunch so we thought we'd go for a walk. One of the walks said that it was only possible to go at low tide because you had to cross a creek which had crocodiles in! We checked at reception and they told us that it was nearly low tide so it was the perfect time to go.

On the way out I noticed that there was a pharmacy and since I had what appeared to be an infected cut on my arm we went in to see whether there was anything I could get to put on it. I showed the cut to the pharmacist who looked at it and said it looked like I had ringworm! We both got slightly freaked out until he told us that actually it was a fungal infection similar to athletes foot so he prescribed me some cream. Since he also told us that it was contagious Mel decided that she'd have to walk on the otherside of me to avoid catching it!!

We set off and walked through the mangroves to the beach. It was still very grey and raining but we decided that in the sun the beach would look lovely! After about 10minutes we reached the creek and decided it was far too deep paddle across (plus it was raining quite heavily by this point!) so we thought we should turn back!

The rest of the day was spent in our hut with the Canadian girls and Lindsey. Everyone seemed really tired so we just slept and wrote our journals. The four of them had decided to go on the night walk through the jungle but Mel and I decided we didn't really want to go. We sat and played cards for a while and then went and cooked dinner - pasta with tomato sauce.

That night we got bitten to pieces!

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