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Published: November 6th 2012
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Only 50 mins drive from Cairns and we arrived in Port. We had booked a sweet townhouse, self contained at a place called A Tropical Night only 15min walk into the town centre. Sam, forever scoping out great deals, got us the place for only $60 a night! The town was quaint and low key and the lovely Four Mile Beach was only minutes away also but warnings of stingers everywhere made it a little unappealing to enter the water near the shore.
The second day we were there we drove to Kuranda to visit the Rainforest Station Wildlife Park. We got lucky by arriving there early beating the three or four buses full of Asian tourists who clearly go loco when they see our native fauna (and why wouldn’t they? Koalas are the bomb!). This gave Sam and I the chance to be able to have one on one time with all the wallabies that roamed the park freely and feed them without having to barge through people just to get a look. All the usual suspects were there as well, crocs, dingos, snakes, koalas, lizards etc and not to forget Sam’s favourite bird of all time the Cassowary
– nasty buggars they are, I’m not a real fan but something about them appeals to him and we spent quite a while watching the big fella pace back and fourth the fence line wishing he could peck our eyes out I’m sure.
We also caught a show of the Pamagirri Aboriginal dancers, the first native display I had ever seen and it was pretty impressive the way they move around and play the didge, something we both tried to master after the show. Sam managed to get the sound out okay (much better than me) but that circular breathing is a tough gig!
That afternoon we drove back into Cairns, we stopped off at Barron Falls on the way to have lunch and unfortunately due to not enough rainfall they weren't as impressive as we were hoping them to be but you could definately appreciate them anyway. Cairns was nothing special in our eyes, maybe if you were a single young backpacker - plenty or foam parties/pubs and a lagoon which I'm sure holds all the STDs known to man....sound familiar - Airlie Beach?? Even though we only spent a few hours in Cairns we were glad
to be out of there and heading back to Port Douglas.
We drove up to the Daintree and went to Mossman Gorge on the way, getting pretty drenched by the rain which is typical of this area of the North, keeping everyhting lovely and green. Driving all the way up to Cape Tribulation we were unlucky enough to fall victim to a falling coconut, something you just don't want to happen in a hire car. It was pretty hectic - hit the bonnet first then up onto the windscreen on the passenger side where I was sitting, though weirdly we couldn't see any damage at all...lucky us. Cape Trib was lovely and rainy, it managed to pelt down with rain right as we got our sangas out to have lunch at the end of a walkway where you got the best view of the place - where the forest meets the sea. A massive goanna was hanging around probably waiting to be fed by the tourists but apart from him we didn't see much wildlife up there at all, I think the rain caused everything to be in hiding.
Finally it was diving time and we found the
Calypso crew to be the most affordable to go with - and the fact that most of the people on it were snorkelling meant more deep sea fishies to ourselves! We ventured out to Opal Reef and did two dives all up, Sam was having trouble with his ears so we flagged the third dive and just joined the snorkellers in the end which was great because being closer to the surface the coulours are more vibrant and show up well in underwater photos. The reef was a great dive and we were glad we finally took the plunge and spent the money to get out there (a big hike in price for us when we are used to spending about A$30 on each dive in Asia). Sam and I had both been out there and snorkelled the Barrier Reef long before we even knew each other so it was nice to get down there together.
Mareeba was our next day out and the Atherton Tablelands. Mareeba being home to a coffee factory where we sampled some caffeine of course and then onto Atherton where we discovered the only thing really going on there was the Crystal Caves. A
pretty impressive place to visit if your into your stones and gems like I am, we donned some miners hats and explored the man made caves filled with all types of pretty thangs from all over the globe. The world's largest geode of Amethyst taken from Uraguay stands 3.5m high - crazy to think it ended up here! Driving through the Tablelands we encountered our second falling coconut, again we didn't see any damage but I will get to that later....
Just out of Yungaburra we went to visit the Curtain Fig Tree, one of the largest trees in Tropical North Queensland. Basically they are a strangler fig, wrapping themselves on a host tree eventually killing them as they feed from the ground, pretty damn stellar, check out our piccy. Millaa Millaa Falls was our next stop (Sam has a thing for waterfalls) and we were greeted by a waterfall that looks just like the postcard, plenty of water in this area no doubt and we managed to have the whole place to ourselves for a fair while which was a nice change to touristy places although there were leeches about and that was enough for me to cut
the visit short after getting our photos. We stopped for lunch at the Crater Lake Barrine, one of two volcanic crater lakes and were joined by some inquisitive turtles by the lakeside, just never get sick of seeing turtles - out and under the water.
On our way home we stopped at the Gallo cheese and chocolate factory, no secret Sam and I are a big fan of cheese tastings so we scout places like this out all of the time. There was an interactive farm with lots of cows, goats and piggys etc for the kiddies to pet but of course I got involved too. Our last night in town we headed out to the famous Iron Bar (completely covered in corry) and got involved in some Toad races, I was the lucky one to have my number called up and my fella came second - we had to make them move by blowing into a party horn, my technique not too bad, he he!
In all, we would have loved a few more sunny days but being the North thats just what you get up here, still it was great to be on hols in any
case, even if it was for only one week we packed a lot in like we always do. Oh and getting to the hire car, there did happen to be a dent on the bonnet that you could see from an angle which we didn't pick up but of course they did. Being a Sunday they couldn't get a quote for the damage but told us it would be a simple fix about $150 - months later they took over $300 out of our account, we thought they had forgotten about it but someone obviously overlooked this at tax time - Sam should have cancelled his credit card, arghh!!!
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