OZ -Cairns, Cape Tribulation and the Great Barrier Reef!

As a swansong to OZ we had a fun packed and fairly hectic last few days spent in Northern Queensland "Crocodile country".

After checking into our backpacker resort - yes you hear correctly it's a proper resort (big pool with a gym and everything!), we then booked ourselves onto a 3 day trip up to Cape Tribulation. Cape Trib forms the costal part of what is left of the oldest rainforest in the world and it's both a national park as well as a world heritage site. In fact it's the only place on the planet where one world heritage site (the rainforest) touches another (the Great Barrier Reef). The drive up to the cape is amazing and true to the nature of the surroundings it rained all the way up there! Our driver kept commenting "This isn’t rain y'know. Not proper rain anyhow, it’s just spitting out there mate!" Hmmm, looked pretty torrential to us. So much so that it downed a tree across the only route into the area and it was all hands on deck to move it out of the way. Eventually some 'blokes with chainsaws' turned up and made short work of what was left. Either side of the winding road is dense rainforest, kinda reminded us of Jurassic Park, I for one was keeping my eyes open for Dinosaurs. Very nice. The road also crosses several Creeks which with a bit of persistent rain wash over the road and can cut off the tourists on the cape for days at a time (or so our guide said!). During the journey we left the bus for a little rainforest boardwalk although it was raining so hard it was all but impossible to fully appreciate the surroundings. At least it was warm rain and not the miserable stuff we get back at home. We then stopped for a short boat ride up the Daintree Crocodile infested river! Our boat driver Bruce (seriously!) managed to find a female Croc for us to photo as well and a few rare birds and plenty of Flying Foxes. These are bats but they are huuuuge with wingspans up to 2ft!

We finally reached our accommodation which was a lovely little resort with cabins and bungalows. All very posh and surounded by the forest so you get to meet plenty of wildlife! Later that afternoon we went 'Canopy Surfing' which is essentially swinging through the treetops a little like Tarzan only wearing more clothes. As we were the only two people there we had the benefit of some very informative chit chat from the guides (both biologists). Some of the platforms we leapt from were 20 meters above the forest floor attached to 1000 year old trees - quite unnerving and great fun!

After all the excitement we went on a guided night walk in the forest with possibly the most 'Australian' Australian we have ever met. The purpose of this little stroll was to spot 'Critters'. Now, I'm not sure what a Critter looks like but apparently it can take many forms, sometimes looking like a Lizard or maybe a frog or toad, other times like a rat or wallaby or bandicoot (a small Kangaroo). Anyway, we eventually came to the conclusion that the forest is absolutely teeming with critters of all shapes and sizes. Fancy that! Our guide did ask us at one point what direction we should walk to get back to the minibus and fingers were pointed in all sorts of directions. None correctly, which was a bit of a worry. Sooooo easy to get lost out there!

Next morning it was an early start for our day trip to the Great Barrier Reef. We were very lucky to be one of only 8 people on our dive boat that day - the boat usually carries anything up to 24 people so we were very well looked after! We were taken out to the Mackay reef where there is plenty to see. One thing to mention here - I (Chris) was bricking it as diving and even snorkelling scare the Bjesus out of me. This is because I stupidly tried using an Aqualung in Cuba with very little instruction and it.... well it freaked me out. Ever since then I have been unable to even snorkel. Hmmm, so I wasn't feeling too optimistic about my chances of plucking up enough courage to try again this trip. However, after swimming about with a snorkel for 30 mins (and loving it!) looking at the fish and coral, I comitted myself to dive. Zaida actually did a dive in Cuba so this was our first dive together. It was amazing, not nearly as terrifying as I expected. We both enjoyed it so much that we had another go in the afternoon. We may even do our PADI diving qualification in Fiji although equally we might not......Who knows.
During the day we tried to take lots of underwater photos with varying results, just proves how difficult it is to get a good picture of Nemo (Clown Fish), but we managed to get one in the end

So that was that. Back to Cairns we went, very happy with our little tour of the reef and Jungle. This left just 24 hours to go before flying to NZ and crazy campervan action!