Today we had booked a trip to go to the Daintree Rainforest which is one of the few areas of the world where the rainforest meets the sea and also allegedly the only place where two World Heritage Listed environments are side by side although I am not so sure about that but all the sign’s say it is true. We were picked up at about 7.30 – a little late as a lot of the roads around the hotel are closed because of a triathlon! Then we picked up a few others and set off for the rainforest. The first stop was at Mossman Gorge Centre where there is an information centre and a bus that takes you to up to the creek. This is totally owned and run by the indigenous people – although if I understood correct it was built by the federal government – and as well as helping to manage the tourism in the area also provides training opportunities for the indigenous youth, there are a lot of programmes around tourism as well as catering. Our driver / guide Richard walked us round the area and pointed out a number of trees and explained their function and also what was happening to them, we saw Black Perch in the river and an exceedingly well camouflaged lizard but not a lot of other wildlife. We got back in the bus and headed over to the Daintree area, starting in the south and gradually working our way north. First we had a river boat cruise where we saw a massive crocodile, unfortunately it was sleeping and most of the body was underwater, it was also hiding in the shade so we didn’t get a very good view of it but apparently it was a male and probably 3 – 4 meters long so it was probably good that it wasn’t on the move! We met up with Richard again who had brought the van across by ferry then drove to Thornton Beach which was nice but very different to Whitehaven Beach in the Whitsundays! Our next stop was a Bush walk where we saw our first Cassowary although he was a little way off but the bright blue head doesn’t provide much camouflage from here we drove to our lunch stop which was barbecue steak with a bit of salad, if I didn’t know better I would think Chris was Australian as they eat a lot of meat and they are not keen on adding anything to it apart from barbecue sauce! After lunch we could have gone for a swim in the creak but it was very shallow so we didn’t bother, we went for a walk instead although we didn’t see any other wildlife. It was then time to drive to Cape Tribulation where Cook landed after crashing into the reef and damaging the boat. According to Richard he was in a bad mood when he named things around this area as they are all called things like Tribulation and Misery Bay. We went for a walk along the shore but despite the fact there have been stingray and even some crocodile sightings in the area, all we saw was a really small spider on a tree! This warmed us up a bit so we went to the Daintree Ice Cream Factory where they make ice cream from exotic fruits. Basically you buy what they have made or don’t have one so we both had the combination tub which contained, Soursop, Passion Fruit, Mango and Chris had Coconut and I had Jack fruit as a ‘treat’ although I am not so sure! However we have both found a new favourite which is Soursop it was lovely so refreshing, unfortunately all the Australians agreed this wasn’t it real name but none of them could remember what it was! Having refreshed ourselves with the ice cream we went to our last stop of the day which was the lookout where we could actually see Port Douglas although there must be a lot of bush fires in the mountains as it looked like it was covered in smog but it was actually smoke, then it was time to catch the ferry back to the mainland, it is a chain ferry like the one in Cowes and drive back to the apartment about 5pm where we sat and relaxed after another good day.
