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Published: December 6th 2006
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Today we headed up to the Ferntree Lodge Resort in the Daintree Rainforest. It is located at Cape Tribulation - a famous headland on the North Queensland Coast where the World Heritage Rainforest meets the World Heritage Great Barrier Reef - a pretty unique feat for 2 World Heritage sites to meet - and they sure like to keep reminding you of the fact!
En route we went to the Daintree Mangroves Wildlife Sanctuary and grabbed breakfast. It was our first opportunity to encounter and feed the Cassowary - a mad Australian native bird that is pretty rare to find in the wild now - but trips do seem to encounter them once a month or so. Check it out on Wikipedia. Apparently it is listed in the Guinness book of records as the most dangerous bird in the world!
We also saw a few Pythons and Squirrel Gliders, Parrots and Kangaroo's. The coolest thing though was the Croc's. They had a muddy pool - about 15 metres in diameter that they said to us houses 5 Saltie's! These are the bad boy version of the Croc - Freshwater one's just nibble and chew you to death whereas these
babies go after you big style and swallow you hole.
We could see one of the smaller one's - a 2 metre female, but we were assured that the big daddy was in there. It really looked like a crappy little pool of water only a few inches deep with no life in it. However our guide picked up a couple of little stones and threw one into a corner of the pond. Instantly the big male Croc leapt about 2 metres out of the water assuming it was a bird or other piece of prey hitting the surface. Clare shit herself. It was awesome. (Not Clare but the Croc - that was just funny)
Basically the big daddy Croc sits in this little bit of the pool all day long, he is pretty grumpy aparrently and he just sits under water for up to 3 hours or so at a time before he needs to come up and breathe. He can reduce his heart rate to 1 beat per minute to achieve this. Clare's was substantially faster than this at that point. I managed to get a good shot of him on the second stone throw -
after which our guide refused to do it any more (and told me off for trying when she wasn't looking like a naught little school boy) so as not to harrass the Croc. I should say that all that divided us from him was some pathetic looking wire fence - I've seen stronger hamster cage's.
After breakie in the sanctuary the owner brought out one of the baby kangaroo's that had just been rescued. Now part of me was wondering what would happen if we kinda slipped it over the fence near Grumpy, but then that just wouldn't be a fair fight. All the girls spent 10 minutes cooing and ahhhing, and the lady informed us that for 10Aus$ a night, they'll happily give someone a bed and feed them to come and work on the sanctuary and look after the baby roo's. I think I've found your calling Mum.
The Coast road up to Cape Tribulation is stunning - it winds it's way round the coast and cliff side's until you reach the village of Mossman and then the Daintree river crossing. It is so easy to start becoming nonchalant about what we are seeing, although we
don't mean to - and it is tiring trying to stare at anything and everything to make sure we take it all in and remember it!
Mossman is like a town out of America's mid west - I guess in part echoes of the gold rush that occurred here in the early half of the last century. Everyone here drinks beer all day until Sugar Cane harvesting season comes round again.
We crossed the Daintree river on the cable ferry - surrounded by large signs warning of the danger of Crocs in the river.
Once over the River you descend into Jurrassic Park teritory, The road nearly becomes single track - and is gravel in places, and the rainforest canopy encapsulates the road to create a dark tunnel effect. We stopped at one last look out to take in the view over the Daintree valley and out to the Low Isle's - the location of Steve Irwin's untimely demise.
The Ferntree Lodge is the cheaper spin off of the Voyages Hotel Group - and once we got there we realised it was way better than normal backpacker accomodation in the area. The alternative backpacker sites in
Cape trib resembled planks of wood with mattresses strewn in them which were certainly of a lower standard!
I had asked one of our guides in the Atherton Tablelands why they don't run any trips up in Cape Trib, and he told me it wasn't their bag as it was too commercial. As it turns out Cape Trib has about 5 buildings, and couldn't be any less commercial if it tried. There is a Pharmacy which doubles up as an all in one village store (Mum I got you an application form for the dispensers vacancy if the Kangaroo thing doesn't work out) and their is a corner shop. That's it. Oh and a pub.
It is also rainy season and as every guide book makes such a fuss of this - no one was around virtually. The thing is is that it doesn't rain all day - it just pisses it down for half an hour or so a day and then is pretty hot and humid for the remainder. The hotel was running on skeleton staff and the area was dead! We chilled by the pool and watched the cricket - which was still going well at this point! We also had to attend a hotel briefing on where we could and couldn't safely go - mainly because of the Croc's and the Stingers.
The noise of the rainforest is deafening at night - it really is something else. It is mainly Cicada's, Grasshoppers, insects and bat's calling and is quite an experience.
We were pretty knackered and crashed after dinner and a few drinks.
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Nicole
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A Guide called Andy
Hello, One of sonia's uni mates is a guide in Cape Trib. He's called Andy and was at Uni in Bangor with her but he did zooology or something like that! So if you meet a tall english guide called Andy say hello for me!