Back in the real world, and in real time, about five minutes before I started writing this section of the blog, we were walking down the street back in Cairns and a girl came up to us and gave us some business cards telling us we could get an hours free internet in a travel agents. Up we went half expecting a scam, Regina expecting to get mugged (and told the guy that), but low and behold we get online for free and without being mugged (so far).

Well, back to the story at hand. Our heroes had headed north for the Tropics and not far up from Port Douglas comes the end of civilization as we know it, or ye know it at least. The road ends at a ferry crossing and on the other side is the jungle. This jungle, which stretches hundreds of miles from a place called Townsville all the way up to the north east of Queensland and Australia. It is 250 million years old or so, maybe I have the number wrong and its not exact to this year also. It was around when Australia was attached to Asia and called Godwanda or something like that, google might help those who want to know the real name, not me. Anyway, its pretty basic up there as we have been told. That said they do have tarmaced roads, bars, restaurants, atms, hostels and the like. On the way up we had been talking about the snakes and spiders and things.... quite frankly we havent seen any yet. As the ferry drew close to the shore I began the following sentence "I really don't see how it can be any different just because we cross over this river". By the time I got to the end of the sentence we had dissembarked the front of the ferry and onto the road. There was literally seconds between the end of the sentence and the biggest spider I have ever seen, we have ever seen, crossing the road in front of us like a dog would down the town somewhere back home. He was the size of my fist, hairy and bloody scary looking. Regina screamed and rolled up her window. I was so freaked I decided to swerve to avoid it, Regina nearly grabbed the steering wheel to drive us into it but thankfully I wrestled it free as this spider would have not been crushed by our puney little car and would have probably eaten the whole thing, us included, alive!!!

Now, that may seem a like an unsettling way to start this trip. It also immediately made us rethink the amount of time we would spend up here. We cut in half instantly. On we went, through much thicker jungle / forrest. You cant see a metre into the jungle from the road and it closes in all around the road like a tunnel. Some ways along the road there is a lookout that we pulled over (gingerly getting out of the car), and went for a look. Its really spectacular, the coast road is a real Great Ocean Road or at least Great Coral Sea Road. Lush mountainous jungle in all directions surrounding golden beaches lined with great palm trees. I am talking paradise stuff here. We eventually wound our way along to the hostel. Not the prettiest place so far. They dont have pots and pans in the kitchen you give a deposit for them, and you have to buy paper plates and plastic cutlery because people keep robbing them. Other than that I guess it was grand.

First off, we walked down the road a little bit where there is a rainforest boardwalk loop. This of course was closed due to storm damage, so we took another route down to towards the beach. At the start of the path there is a sign that warns against crocs in the rivers, jelly fish in the sea that can kill you and stinging trees in the jungle that hurt like hell.... paradise still??? Its hot, real hot and you cant go swimming or you will die. The trees provide some shade but they are full of things that want to kill you. Anyway, I still like it here. We walked down the beach and down to where the crocodile creek meets the water. Did you know that so called fresh water crocs can swim, and regularly do, in salt water. In fact the name is quite silly because they have to swim in salt water at times. The same applies to salt water crocs who can swim in fresh water by the way. On the way back from this amazing beach we cross through the forest path to the hostel. We came to a bridge and just as we did I saw something long and brown floating down the river. My heart stopped, for about five minutes. I held my breath and looked down to make sure my laces were tied.... I was wearing flip flops, no worries I am still faster than Regina who is also in flip flops. Before we knew it I was taking my camera out and the crocodile was turning into a log....... anyone think that was going somewhere else???? Yea it was just a log but my god did it look like a croc. I think I put up a photo of it

That night in the hostel, which also serves as the local bar we decided to go for a fizzy pop. Since we had no where to hang out other than the bar we figured it would entitle us to sit around. We also played a game of pool, I had a flawless victory against Regina who claims she was trying to drag the game out.... I dont think so. We sat in the line of the fan and watched three creepy old people dance like drunk two legged crocodiles or something relevant yet weird and eventually decided to cry ourselves to sleep instead. Dont worry, it was actually a good night, we laughed a lot to each other like a couple of school kids

The next day we went off down to the local swimming hole. There is a better one further north but the road is gravel and we arent allowed in the hire car. Also I ran some of that road after and it was absolute cat so twas a good thing. The other swimming hole turned out to be amazing anyway. A river bent around some rocks and formed a pool on one side and then ran off down some rapids on the other side. Its too cold for crocs and there is falls down stream so they cant get up to it. The pool is totally natural with little fishys swimming around and trees all around. The photo for this blog, containing Regina in the bottom left corner just about shows how class this place is. A waterproof camera would have just done it justice, we dont have one of them though

On the way back south to humanity again we went on another board walk. We initially planned to go to a Sky Walk forest thing where you can go up in the canopy but it was an absolute rip off so we just went for a free walk around a board walk which was cool anyway and off we went again. No massive hairy spiders on the way down, and again no snakes....

On the subject of which however, so if anyone doesnt like them but has been reading the blog you can skip this paragraph. When we got to the hostel I asked the lady behind reception were there any around. She told me they were mostly nocturnal so we had little chance of seeing them during the day, however at night they come down onto the road to soak up the heat absorbed during the day. She was walking home one night from another pub nearby and she managed to stand on one, the big ones, amathyst pythons, six metres long, sort of like a tree trunk, or similar. She freaked out and ran the rest of the way home but the snake just lay there, not bothered at all. Lots of them get run down by cars driving along at night, not so bright are they (nice double meaning there for those who didnt spot it; not bright......!!!!!)

On to Kuranda next because we had a night to fill, since we ran screaming all the way out of the jungle back to normallity. Ironically we hadnt seen anything scary up there..... would we see it in Kuranda. I will give you a sneak preview, there was something scary in the hostel in Kuranda, and it has two legs......