I am back from the Daintree Rain forest and Cape Tribulation. I stayed at the Beach House YHA. Youth Hostel Association is what YHA stands for. It was right on the beach. Could not go swimming in the pacific ocean because it is stinger season and you have to wear a stinger suit or there has to be a stinger net around the beach. A stinger suit is black nylon or polyester and it covers you from head to toe and your hands and your neck. Stingers are the highly poisonous box jelly fish, and all sorts of other creatures that live in the sea at this time of the year in australia.
Bathing suits are what we americans call the suits we swim in. New Zealanders call them togs. My son in law from south africa calls them swimming costumes, Australians call them bathers. Sometimes its confusing. Americans call rubber sandals flip flops, australians call them thongs.
The Daintree rain forest is a world heritage sight as well as the Great Barrier Reef. They are the only two world heritage sights that are right next to each other. The forest is older than the amazon. It is several million years old. I went on a night hike through the rain forest looking for critters that are asleep during the day. We saw fire flies, phosphorous stuff on a log that attracts fire flies when they are mating, giant crickets with white knees and very long antennae, giant spiders, a tree with heart shaped leaves with tiny silica spikes on the leaves (not something you want to run into ever). Apparently it takes about 6 months for that silica to get out of your skin once its lodged in there and its very painful according to the guide. We saw red shiny fungus, looked kind of like red raspberry sauce.A komodo dragon.
Then today I went on a jungle surfing safari. That was good scary and turned out to be a lot of fun. we were on platforms sliding between trees over the tops. I was scared at first and then finally got used to it. Actually might have been better than trying to figure out where to step over tree roots and on slippery rocks the night before in the rain.
Had ffor lunch chicken braes salad. Actually the first chicken breast salad I've had in months. This was somewhat different. It had pump in, feta cheese and anise seed as well as fresh spinach and a lemon dressing.
The bus picked me up at 12:50 to come back to Cairns. Our first stop was the Daintree Ice cream factory. Four flavors for $6. Blue berry, coconut and then two flavors have never heard of before. The fruit was from the farm that the daintier ice cream factory resides on. I have made blueberry ice cream and it just is not a strong enough flavored fruit. It doesn't have much flavor.
Another highlight of the return trip was a stop at the wildlife park where we saw a cassowary, wallabies, kangaroos and both salt and freshwater crocodiles. Back in the bus and on to Mossman creek where we had an hour to take a dip in fresh running mountain stream, very chilly.
It was a great 24 hours.
Have charged my battery on my iphone. Discovered am going to have to delete some pictures off my ipad in order to add the latest ones. Never in my life did I think I was going to take more pictures and videos than the ipad could handle. I still have a month of travel left before I get home. I am going to have to buy another digital container for pictures. My mind is drawing a blank of what they are called. Have charged the battery for the camera, am charging the ipad now. Will probably have to leave with it only charged to 79% as its time to get a cab to take me to the bus station to catch the midnight bus to Airlie Beach. It's an 11 hour trip and it seemed smarter to go during the night so can legitimately sleep for at least 6 of those hours. I have washed and dried my clothes and repacked. I have found some cheese that was left in the kitchen along with some bread and butter so had grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner. So am ready to go.
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