For this trip, I was traveling with Helena. She’s from Sweden and two of her friends, Hanna and Karin, came down to visit her. Hanna was a nanny in Chicago for a year and has been to the US twice since then, and we got along exceptionally well during the trip.
Cairns (pronounced "cans" - Australians remove the R from things like Cairns and Melbourne and put it where it doesn't belong in idea - "ideera") is in the state of Queensland… “tropical north Queensland” to be exact and it’s the main gateway to both the rainforest and the great barrier reef. We stayed at a place called Traveler’s Castle, where Helena stayed 7 years ago. We got an amazing price since she’d been there before (less than US$200 per person total for 11 nights) and we stayed in an apartment – 2 little bedrooms, common room with tv and futon, and a kitchen – hurray to no hostel bunkbeds!!
We had a plan that originally had us doing the big activities every other day, but we pretty much threw that out the window by making Tuesday a zoo day. We went to the Cairns Tropical Zoo to see all things Australian… Kookaburas, cassowaries (world’s most dangerous bird. It looks like an emu but has a thing on its head and it can jump at you and stab you with it’s big toe. Protect yourself by running behind a tree), dingos, crocodiles, etc. The best part was getting to hold the animals… my sole purpose for going to this zoo was to hold a koala! They have strict rules for holding the animals… I’m not sure of them exactly but it’s something like, a koala can only be out for 10-20 minutes at a time, held by each person for so long, and only used for photos once a day or something. But yeah, the koala’s name was Lucy. There was a kangaroo petting and feeding area as well, and I also got to hold a 7-year-old crocodile (they feel rubbery), and pet a wombat named Lulu. Did you know both wombats and koalas have bony things in their butts? Keeps the koala’s legs from falling asleep when it sits and the wombat uses it for protection… burrow in, stick its butt at the predator, and it won’t feel a thing.
Wednesday we got up bright and early to start our tour to the rainforest. We went with a company called Cape Trib Connections. They take you to and from your rainforest accommodation and stop to do activities on the way. Our first stop was Mossman Gorge. We had about an hour there. Our guide walked us through the rainforest, explained that vines wrap in different directions in the northern and southern hemispheres, explained that we’re in the dry season now. In the restroom I encountered a HUGE spider. By “HUGE” I mean the size of my hand. So I took a picture and ran away. Nearby the gorge is an aboriginal community. I had noticed walking around Cairns at night that this was the first place I’d been where there was a noticeable aboriginal population. Really, they are only 2-3% of Australia’s population (you know, killed by settlers, forced into missionaries, they still have a significantly shorter life span that the rest of Australia), so I guess this isn’t too surprising.
We also stopped at a lookout where the Daintree River (this is the Daintree rainforest we were heading to) meets the ocean. Then we went to the Daintree Zoo where the guide just showed us a few animals and let us pet things. We pet some sort of glider squirrel thing, watched a cassowary swallow its food whole, saw a python, and got to hold a baby rufous bettong – it’s a small relative of the kangaroo. Adorable! The best part however was when we were looking at their crocodiles. One was on the bank by the fence where we stood and one was on the opposite bank. While the guide was talking one of the crocs silently slipped into the water – I didn’t see it and couldn’t figure out where it had gone. The guide decided to poke the water with a pole to make the croc near us lash out at it. He sticks the pole through the fence and BAM!! The other croc lashes out from beneath the water – he had been right there in front of us and we never would have known it. It was awesome because it wasn’t like the croc show at the other zoo where it was controlled (as much as you can control a croc) and predictable – this was a total mistake on the guide’s part. So after that, the two crocs weren’t too happy with one another and the guide made us not to tell the zookeepers what had just happened. It was the highlight of the trip for me!
{cassowary guarding its eggs at the zoo}
We soon arrived at Crocodylus, our in-the-middle-of-the-rainforest accommodation. It’s considered a hostel, but it’s really tents on platforms. We took a walk to the beach, which turned out to be a 45 minute walk. Still exhausted from Melbourne, I fell asleep for an hour and woke up to it getting cloudy. Cool beach though. Maybe 10 people there, pretty nice. We walked back and arrived in time to beat the rain, at which point I crawled into bed and slept for another 3 or 4 hours.
I almost didn’t get up for our nighttime rainforest walk, but I’m so glad I did! The German guy I was talking to during dinner laughed at me when it started pouring right before our walk, but it was still good. Our guide, a nice old man named Possum who kept telling me how cute I was, suited us up with huge raincoats and flashlights, and our group set out on the path. Possum pointed out different types of ferns and trees and plants – figs that kill other trees, pepper plants – while our group scoured the ground and trees for animals.
{Possum, Hanna, Helena, Karin, me}
We started off slowly, but we were more successful as we got deeper into the rainforest. We saw huge cane toads (not native to Australia – brought here to eat beetles but they turned out to be pests), huge huntsman spiders, different birds, snails with 2-3 inch shells, rainforest mice that are so big they look more like possums, a beetle that must’ve been 8 inches long plus 10 inch antennae, a forest dragon (iguana?), and something called a velvet worm that looked like a weird caterpillar – Possum was exceptionally excited about this rare find. After about 2 hours we emerged from the rainforest onto a paved road and Possum had us shine our flashlights in the air to attract bugs which in return attracted bats (and yes, he called them microbats). It was a really great time and I was very glad I managed to stay awake for that! We even saw a possum outside our tent before going to bed. (Note: We went to bed at 12:30 this night, since the tour didn’t end till after 11, and that was the latest we were up the whole trip. We progressively went to bed earlier and earlier, so we were all in bed by 10:30 on some nights!)
{toad, worm, spider & dragon on the night walk}
The next day, before getting picked up by our Cape Trib guide, we went on another walk around Crocodylus. I gave up and turned back after the millionth mosquito bit me in the face and the path looked exceptionally muddy – but not before we realized that there in the mud was a fresh cassowary foot print! (A guy in another tent told us he saw two of the huge birds outside his tent the previous morning.) On the way back I saw these weird chicken things that make huge piles of dirt (which, if by rivers, will be used by crocs who lay their eggs in them). Back at the camp I saw a wallaby hopping around one of the tents. It was just really cool to be staying right in the middle of the rainforest, with all the animals running around us.
Our activity for the trip home was a river crocodile cruise. First we spotted a dead python that had been killed by a croc, then a feral pig running along the bank. The feral pigs are pests as well. They destroy riverbanks and release chemicals from the soil into the water, which can even impact the reef. The government pays people to shoot them from helicopters. Our first croc was a juvenile, then a female in the water, and then we found Big Al, the head hauncho in these few miles of water. He was BIG! The guides didn’t interact with or feed the crocs – our guide said in the Northern Territory it’s legal to feed them, but that area has the most croc attacks as well. Getting off the boat, someone spotted a tree frog hiding under a bench.
We had heard it might be windy over the weekend, so instead of taking a day of rest, we scheduled our trip to the Great Barrier Reef for Friday. We picked the smallest boat we could find at the cheapest price. This had it’s plusses and minuses: We were only with 20 people, but small boat = sea sickness, even on what was the calmest day they had seen in a while. It took us about 2 hours to get out to the reef and at least 5 people on the boat got sick. I just continued to stare at the horizon and tell myself, “Throwing up is not an option!”
Felt much better after we stopped at the reef. The coral looked brown under the blue water and bits of it stuck up in some places. I had planned to just snorkel, but the boat was offering intro scuba dives for $24 (less than half the normal price) so Hanna and I decided to do it. We got to snorkel for about 15 minutes while the first group did their diving. I jumped into the water and swam away from the boat – coral and fish galore! Really, it was kind of overwhelming. They gave us no restrictions on how far or what direction to swim, so really I was out in the middle of the ocean allowed to do water I wanted. The only fish I could name were the parrotfish. They bite the coral, so I would listen to the sound, find a school of them, and follow them around. Plenty of other fish as well – blue and yellow and neon and purple.
Hanna and I climbed back on the boat to get ready to scuba. Our scuba guide was named Mischa. He had explained everything on the boat ride over. We hopped in the water and he had us practice our breathing and what to do if we got water in our mask or lost the mouthpiece. Then we started lowering ourselves to about 10 m down using a rope attached to the boat, making sure to adjust the pressure in our ears by pinching our noses and blowing out. We weren’t even all the way down the rope when Mischa started flailing and pointing over to my left. I turned and a few meters away there was a reef shark! What luck! It stuck around only a few seconds before swimming away. Once we were set, Mischa held on to our hands and swam us around. It was cool to swim between two walls of coral, or along one wall with nothing but blue ocean on the other side. And I did find Nemo! We passed over two clown fish hiding in their anemone. At one point, Mischa pointed to something I didn’t see. He signaled something which I thought meant crab and he dragged us down towards a crack in the coral. I panicked a little bit since I didn’t know what was happening and I was afraid of getting too close to the coral. I watched a giant that open and closed as we swam towards it – turns out Mischa was having us chase after an octopus. I was right on top of it and didn’t even see it!
{clam, some fish, parrotfish, clown fish, some coral - my photos turned out not so great, so I stole all but the last of these from Jeremy - he was in Cairns at the same time with his dad. I only stole pictures of the things I actually saw myself - he saw sea turtles and I'm jealous}
Overall, we were under water about 20 minutes, which seemed like a good length of time. The scuba was definitely one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. We had lunch after that – some sort of curry, tuna salad, potato salad – Helena was disappointed that it wasn’t the “tropical buffet” she expected, but it tasted good to me! After lunch, we had more than an hour to go snorkeling again. So I hopped back in the water, with my camera now (of course there weren’t any sharks this time), and swam around and followed some more fish. I didn’t feel cold at all in my wet suit – but apparently I was since I discovered that my face and lips were purple when I got back on the boat.
Luckily the trip home was pleasant and no one got sick. I must say, it was hard to pick a favorite between the rainforest and the reef!
To be continued.....
See more photos from Cairns here:
http://gmu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2097757&l=5e3fd&id=15600311
