Cairns 14/2/08

Luckily the rain had subsided to showers, and our first day in Cairns was spent looking around town and organising what we wanted to do before heading down to the Whitsundays. Slightly worried by how much all the local tours would cost us, we rented a budget car for the next day, and drove up to Cape Tribulation, where rainforest meets the sea. We saw all the sights that a tour included, but for less than half the price! There were some great lookouts along the coast road, although the low lying cloud sometimes obscured the view!

Our first stop was at the Daintree River, where we went on a crocodile cruise on a 'river train'. We spotted five crocs on the trip, which apparently was quite lucky for this time of year. They varied in size from 0.5m to 3m, and were all lazing around on the riverbank - sometimes very hard to spot when they were camoflaged in the mangrove swamps!

We then continued north to Cape Tribulation, stopping along the way at a few boardwalks that walked us through the rainforest to various gorges and rivers, which unsurprisingly were flowing quite well! Arriving at Cape Trib, we walked a short distance through the rainforest to the beach - the busiest we've been to in a while with all the tour companies! It was a nice beach but unfortunately it was all still a bit overcast so the sea had lost its usual turquoise sparkle!

The next day we took the skyrail gondola up to the rainforest village of Kuranda. Kuranda wasn't particularly special, with lots of tourist markets etc, but the journey there and back was spectacular. At the base of the skyrail was the Tjupakai Aboriginal Cultural Centre, and as we hadn't seen much Aboriginal culture on our trip so far, we decided to see what it was like. It was actually much better than expected, with shows illustrating the history and beliefs of the Aboriginal people, traditional song and dance, and demonstrations on didgeridoo making and playing, traditional bush foods and medicines, and boomerang throwing! We were both a bit gutted that the spear throwing was cancelled due to the wet weather!

The skyrail itself gave really good views over the rainforest, and we stopped at the two stations on the way to Kuranda. At the first, we went on a guided walk through the rainforest, where a ranger explained the various stages of growth in the forest, and uses for different plants. At the second, we walked to various lookouts across to the really impressive Barron Falls, which were in full flow!

We took the scenic railway back down from Kuranda to Cairns, which was also a beautiful journey through the forest, and we stopped to view the falls from the other side. You could also see the (overflowing!) dam at the top, and the hydroelectric station at the bottom.

On our return to Cairns we went to Reefteach. This was a 2 hour talk on the reef describing how to idetify the fish and coral species. It was interesting with lots of pictures, some stuffed fish and coral examples.

On our final day in Cairns, we took a dive trip to the outer reef on Silversonic, a very plush boat which actually left from Port Douglas, an hour north of Cairns. This meant the reef was much less crowded and we were the only boat at our dive sites. We went out to the ribbon reefs at Agincourt, and spent the day doing three dives and snorkelling in between. We kitted up in some sexy full body stinger suits and were ready for the off. As we jumped in for our first dive we had to avoid jumping on a giant Maori Wrasse. These were really friendly and swam right up to you even allowing you to stroke them - something we had previously been told not to do but it seemed to be encouraged here! We also saw some sharks including one quite high above us giving a nice spooky view! We then did a couple of drift dives which are nice an relaxing using the current to take you along! Lots of really big nudibranks (a kind of sea worm but really colourful). It was nice to bring some of our knowledge from Reefteach into the dive.

In the evening we went out for valentines day dinner ($5 steak special!!) ahead of our 11 hour bus journey to Airlee beach where we set off on our Whitsunday trip. When we boarded the coach the driver seemed to have little faith in "the office" who said the road was definitely open - he was not so sure. There had been a lot of rain and we had heard that boats had been washed up in Airlee beach so just hoped we would get there. We then received a text from Tim and Elizabeth to say they had got to Brisbane but were being told they might not be able to fly on to the Whitsundays! Despite all the concern we all managed to make it to a very rainy Airlee beach. Look out for another Guest Writer special for the next update!