Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Ferngully: part 1


DID YOU KNOW that there's a tropical rainforest in Australia? What nonsense! A third of the country is red desert Western Australia, and then suddenly there's a rainforest in the northeast! I simply had to go visit it.

Dan and I got tickets on super sale to visit Cairns, QLD, months ago; so naturally, it turned out to be at a slightly critical time for him to be working on his PhD. Thankfully, he managed it by spending some late nights at uni leading up to the trip, and jumping right back in as soon as we got back.

Another consequence of getting tickets months in advance and not being sure of our schedules was that we ended up booking a very short trip. Thus, I focused with laser intensity on achieving my primary goal to visit the (seriously is this for real?) rainforest.

We arrived in Cairns at about 5am and had to wait for a tour bus to take us several hours north into the proper Daintree, where we would be staying for two nights.

It was raining (oh right, I forgot we'd be in the tropics....) when we landed in Cairns at freaking 5am, but that didn't stop Dan from having a swim before our bus came!

OH SHIT LOOK IT'S A CROCODILE sleeping on the bank.
Fan trees, with our cool blonde tour guide Steve, and the most annoying Canadian I've ever had the misfortune to overhear at loud volume.

The above are basically the only two pictures from our bus ride, as we kept falling asleep when driving and waking up just for the excursions. But finally we made it to Crocodylus, our hostel in the middle of the national park. Best. Hostel. Ever.

The common room was basically one giant tent with multi-leveled wood floors. It was BEAUTIFUL.
The rainforest from outside our room/hut.
Also outside our hut.

That night, we went on a Night Walk through the jungle with a guide (also the paddle guide, also the co-owner of the hostel... this was one cool couple) who told us heaps about the jungle plants and insects and wildlife. We don't have any pictures from that because 1) it was nighttime and hard to take any good photos, 2) we were concentrating on listening and learning, and 3) Dan had the camera and kind of forgot it existed. ^^;;

The next morning, Dan and I walked ~3 km along a road through the jungle down to the BEACH whoooo.

On the way, we found this driveway (?) gate that reminded me of home. Yes, that's a leg at the top, above a muppet, a flipper with an aloe plant going inside, and a broken boogie board with the sign "caution: drunks crossing". xD


There was also this lovely custom bike....
With this sticker on it! I laughed.

More pictures and stories to come soon!

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