In which Silmarien finally holds a koala

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We went up to Kuranda for the first time on the Skyrail. You get to ride above the rainforest and watch the canopy, including the occasional bright blue butterfly or bird. In a couple of places you get off and there's even a ranger-led walk. He pointed out several rainforest trees to us. The most important to remember is the "wait a while", also called "lawyer vine", for reasons which will shortly be obvious. The vine starts life in the top of the canopy, then works its way down. It has hundred of tiny recurved hooks on it, so it can hold onto, and climb down, anything. When it gets to the bottom it takes root, then attempts to take over the thing that it originally landed on. The only tree that can defend itself is one that sheds its bark -- its the only one that you see that is NOT full of vines.

It was cool to hear the ranger talk about the different plants because before that (and even after) they pretty much all look the same -- they all have oval leaves and many have similar bark, not the variety that we have with oaks, maples, etc etc.

At the top of the skyrail we went on a hike -- sort of a roundabout way to get to town. It was very pretty, crossing a beautiful creek. We got to town at 2:30, and it turns out that that's when everything closes, because the last train out is at 3:30. So unfortunately we couldn't find any food to buy except 2 bratwursts. Then we took the train down again. Its a historic train dating from about 100 years ago. It goes through something like 17 tunnels and past a dozen waterfalls.

So that was our first day in Kuranda. We had heard that the skyrail and train were both wonderful, but they don't allow luggage, so we went up again on the bus (for $3.30) a couple of days later. Its only a 25 minute ride that way.

On our second day in Kuranda we found our wonderful but slightly musty hostel, which I already blogged about, and then went to the markets. Kuranda is known for its craft markets, although I have to admit that I expected more handicrafts and less commercial stuff. However... we did eventually find a woman who was twisting horses and other animals out of wire, which was pretty neat. We spent about a half and hour talking to her (Jershon especially) about how she did it. She said she has worked a lot with horses, so she knows how their bodies work. She doesn't use any patterns or templates, but she does make a bunch of "skeletons" first, then winds them up into full-bodied horses. We got a gecko to stick on our glass door, so people will stop running into it.

We also took Silmarien to the zoo where we got to hand-feed kangaroos and wallabies, see a poisonous orb spider as big as my hand (it was not a zoo member, just a volunteer hanging out a foot off the path) and ... drum roll please ... hold a koala. Which is a lot like holding a baby. Koalas have long, pointy claws but mostly they just cling onto you, which I know because as soon as the koala saw me it wanted to jump ship, so I ended up holding the koala too.

The next day we got some local information about a great hike. Unfortunately we did not actually see the great hike, because we immediately got lost. Eventually we did find a boardwalk to the Barron Falls, which are quite spectacular, even if we did see them from the skyrail and from the train, still it was good to get some exercise. We got back to town at 2:30, just in time for the daily rolling up of the sidewalks. This time, however, I expressed my disappointment and disbelief somewhat ... forcefully ... to the bartender at the hotel where we had planned to eat lunch, and he directed us to the only restaraunt open past 3, which turned out to be fantastic. It was called Frogs, and we had a salad with kaffir lime, sauteed squid, roasted red peppers, and pumpkin.

On our last day in Kuranda, we visited 2 different candy kitchens, and got to see how fancy hard candy is made mostly by hand, and how taffy is made and packaged by two different machines. They had fresh orange taffy and ginger taffy. I don't really like taffy, but I put the sample pieces in my purse and they tasted really good a few days later when we ran out of food on a long hike.

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