Cape Tribulation

A lookout in the Daintree Forest along our drive from Cairns up to Cape Tribulation.


There were countless fields of sugar cane along our drive - it was being harvested while we were there.


This is the great Daintree ferry - yah - looks like our car could jump the river, doesn't it? No idea why they haven't built a bridge across this river. Must be the tourist industry collecting bucket loads of money.


Cape Tribulation is known for its beautiful rainforests.


Katie and I fell in love with this tree. It has to be the coolest tree I've ever seen.


I was swinging from the vines...

We saw the most bizarre looking trees - this tree looks like it's growing upside down...

... and these trees have thin spirally arms extending out at the roots, along with the bumps sticking out of the mud. These are all artifacts of an oxygen deprived soil system.

Here I am again jumping and swinging from tree to tree, the real adventure seeking jungle woman that I am.

Katie and I happened upon the Cairns Night Markets just a block down from our hotel Saturday evening.

We enjoyed dinner at Paddywhacks late Saturday night. I introduced Katie to an Australian beer, Beez Neez.


A view of our hotel room at Mantra Trilogy.

This is the view from our hotel room balcony. The pool was in the center of the various hotel towers and directly on the ocean, not bad. It'll do I s'pose.

Katie and I flew from Melbourne to Cairns early Saturday morning. It's a 3 hour flight from Victoria to Queensland (northeast part of Australia). We rented a car and drove through the Daintree forest from Cairns to Cape Tribulation which has the oldest rainforest in the world. It was a beautiful drive with giant mountains bordering the ocean. We tried to go to an exotic fruit tasting but didn't arrive in time. It may have been a God send given the wholly-shirted freak who greeted us at the exotic fruit farm... dodgy!! From there we went for a walk through PK's Jungle to the beach. We stopped by the information centre and asked a local for suggestions of how to spend the afternoon. We had considered the Daintree Discovery Centre, but she suggested the boardwalks instead, the Marrdja Boardwalk in particular. We headed there first and were very impressed with the really unique mangrove trees. We stopped by the Discovery Centre but decided to give it a miss and headed onto the Jindalba Boardwalk, about a kilometre down the road. We found more swinging vines and a few people our age. We drove back to Cairns, returned the rental car, and checked into our hotel, The Mantra Trilogy. We wandered around the city, meandered through the night markets, and found a place for dinner. A great first day in Queensland.