Ferngully: part 4 (birds and butterflies)

But alas, we had to leave the Daintree and spend our last night in Cairns. We stayed at a super backpackery hostel (read: I had the sneaking suspicion that everything was covered in 18-year-old semen or alcohol. Or both), and the next morning Dan convinced me to go visit the nearby mountain town of Kuranda. I'm glad he was insistent, because it was lovely, and we got to see some beautiful birds and butterflies, and also to add to our Train List.

Tropical birds at Birdworld!

Our favorite birds. Unwittingly, I'd jinxed Dan minutes earlier and promptly forgot about it, but Dan being Dan, he kept silent, waiting for me to say his name. In the meantime, we found these guys, who were projecting their nest, and I started to copy the bird on the right. So we stood there for about 15 minutes, while I cooed and cocked my head and made weird faces at the macaw, and Dan just stood there silently laughing and not saying anything in response to my numerous questions. It honestly took about 30 minutes before it dawned on me that I'd jinxed him. Oh man I love this boy.

 

The Hercules Moth caterpillar is FREAKING ENORMOUS.

Those blue blurs are the Ulysses Butterfly, one of the largest and alleged "prettiest" butterflies in the world, and it's found wild in the Daintree. The Ulysses is so big and pretty, it's ridiculously easy for birds to find and chomp it; thus, the butterfly has evolved to fly like a super fast, drunk bat, so getting a picture of it in the wild is nearly impossible. So this picture is from the Butterfly house in Kuranda, but Dan and I totally saw one wild in the Daintree!!

Lastly, we added to our list of trains we've been on together by taking the train from Kuranda down the mountain to Cairns.

Apparently this used to be an incredibly important supply and transport train during WWII, but now of course it runs through ghost towns.

This is the fourth train we've taken together. We really like silly trains.

And that's it for our trip to Queensland! Yay!