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Published: September 27th 2008
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Rain rain and more rain was what I was greeted with when I arrived in Australia. And it was cold! After 5 weeks in Hong Kong and the heat and humidity there, 22degrees was pretty chilly in my book. So as I stood at Cairns airport domestic terminal waiting for Pete and looking like a lemon with an incredibly large rucksack I was getting a little damp. An hour later I finally manged to find him, at the international terminal, good job someone had some common sense to go looking, or we would have been sleeping on the floor just a few hundred metres away from each other with no clue! Its not often that I'm the one with the common sense, but there we go, 24 hours travel had adled the brain of my new travelling companion and all I hoped was that he would come out of his daze soon, or we would be getting pretty lost in Australia with my internal compass working the way it does!
Pretty soon we had found our hostel - and the bar - and were well on our way to settling in for the night as it was still raining.
Decided that
as we are limited on time for Pete to be in Brisbane in 3 weeks we would pretty much organise what we wanted to do in the first couple of days, much helped along the way by the crazy receptionist at the hostel, which by luck was also a kind of travel agency too.
So on the bus we jumped at 7.30 Thursday morning and headed into the Rainforest, that feeling hit again, the one that every now and again I stop in shock and go "Oh my goodness - I'm in the rainforest". Its becoming such a regular feeling, but it never ceases to amaze me when I think back about how short a time I've been away and how many cool things I have seen. Anyway, off we head into the Daintree wet tropics rainforest, in torrential rain, with the warning that we may not be able to get to our hostel if the creeks are flooded, but we'd try anyway. We made it, which is more than can be said for the poor girl who was trying to get back out from the hostel as she had a plane to catch that evening, but the creeks
had risen at such a fast rate that within half an hour of us crossing no-one else could. 3 hours and much panicking later they made it, whether she got to her plane on time I don't know.
Friday brought with it glorious sunshine, that has stayed with us since. spending the morning down on the beach, checking out the fringing reef (tide was out) we headed to the canopies in the afternoon and went Jungle surfing - Zip lines and flying foxes through the trees, we were so lucky, normally groups consist of 12, but it was a particularly quiet day, and we got to go just the 2 of us, so the guides were able to give us more information about the rainforest itself, and we were able to stop and hang over the creek for loads of time and just take in the scenery. As with all pictures, nothing can do it justice. Although it is not only in Australia that the rainforest and reef meet, with the mangroves down to the beach being part of the ecosystem that supports the fish and sealife, The Daintree and Great barrier reef are both world heritage sites, and
it is unique that the 2 sites actually cross boundaries. It is one of the most diverse ecosystems in the world, if not the most.
Saturday morning was spent hanging around the pool, in such an amazing setting it was like paradise, but as with all paradise, everyone wants a bit of it and it was a little busy. The journey back to Cairns was beautiful, and I found myself staring out of the window in awe at the density of the forest and the surounding countryside that was changing the further south we got, until we got to a crazy part of the trip - croc watching on the Daintree river. It was incredible. The Daintree is full of Salt water crocs - the dangerous ones! and we were lucky enough to see a few females basking along the banks and a huge male swimming along slowly, probably on the prowl for a mate. we also got to see a lot of other wildlife, wading birds, a beautifully coloured kingfisher, and numerous other birds, we also saw an amethyst python curled up in some tree branches, although you needed pretty good eyes to see it from the boat
and there was no way I was able to get a photo. After an hour cruising along the river it was finally time to head back to Cairns, with the next part of the journey starting on Sunday, the overnight bus was to Airlie beach would be leaving at midnight, which would just give us time to grab some dinner and a couple of drinkies at the hostel club - which was so busy after the weekend races it was difficult to move - and the rainforest was behind us, we were now ready to hit the waves and sail round the Whit Sunday Islands - let the excitement and adventure continue!
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