Daintree? Raintree!

---

I left off considering whether to go on a jungle night walk or not. I decided that since the rainforest allegedly comes alive more at night time that it would be interesting to see it then, and embarked on about an hour an a half long tramp around the jungle.

Whilst the rainforest wasn't dead I didn't see the masses of snakes and giant spiders and wombats that I had hoped. However there were some frogs, a couple of dragons sleeping on trees and some fairly small spiders and a white tailed rat skipping about in the bushes. So it was good enough but didn't blow me away.

I'm afraid that Lonely Planet lies- it wasn't a party place at all- it was utterly boring in the resort. I ended up going to bed almost as soon as I got back around 10pm and lying awake for ages. Bah.

However one noteworthy event did occur during the night. The heavens opened and the Wet Season began in spectacular fashion. So, so much rain. It served as an effective alarm clock at about 5am.

The next morning we had until 2pm knocking about at the resort so took a quick walk (in a torrential downpour) to a local swimming hole. It wasn't much good for swimming though- bit too fast flowing, so we just went off back to the same beach from the previous day, the rain having eased off a bit. Then we went back and I finished off reading a book Ive been lugging about with me since Fremantle.

Once we were picked up the only thing remaining as a tour was a 20 minute cruise on the Daintree River, my third river cruise in the past couple of weeks! Again, not as good as Kakadu (which has become my standard by which subsequent trips have to live up to!) but good enough- various birds, frogs and one baby crocodile.

Once I got to Cairns I started this blog, but interrupted it to go to a club with my new dorm mates and associated people for a couple of hours, so this is a bit late. And today not much to say- 11 hours on a coach to Airlie Beach. The trip didn't start so well, with coach being an hour late, but it was quite comfortable, as coaches go.

But now I appear to be basically living in a night club, but I'm so tired, a party is the last thing on my mind. Its a bit typical since this place seems to be Party Central. Doubt Ill be doing any of it.

---

Photos

Strangler fig
These grow around other trees, kill them so they rot away, so that eventually it is a scaffold of branches with an empty middle

Magrove swamps
Where the forest gets flooded by the sea. At low tide you can see all the crabs running about, at high tide all the fish swimming about

More mangroves
This time sticking up out from the beach itself

Sleeping dragon
A rare night time photo that worked

The Heavens Open
The Wet Season begins

Comments

[Dad]

BA Strike
Shouldn't affect your flights (I hope, as I think you are on Quantas) but just announced BA staff will be on strike from 22nd December to 2nd January - may be worth expecting some disruption on your way home.

[DoktorSteve]

flight back
I should be on a Qantas flight so hopefully I'll get back OK. It's just like BA to try and sabotage masses of people's Christmas. Delay in blog updates because I lost one USB stick, and the laptop won't accept the new one, so I need Wi-Fi. My hostel says it has wi-fi, but they are lying.