Cairns: Part 4

Day 4

Today was the second day of our tour, starting off with a quick but filling breakfast at the hostel we stayed at. Then we were off to feed some rock wallabies, and swoon over all the joeys.

Next up was a crocodile cruise down the Daintree River! I lost count of how many we saw, but each one (especially the little ones) was soaking up the sun on the southern shore of the tidal river. The full size crocs have really beat the odds, each hatchling has about a 2% chance of surviving to age 5. And!!!! I saw my first Australian snake in the wild!!! It wasn’t venomous, but still!

We only took the cruise one way down the river. Kurt picked us up at the cable ferry crossing and we carried on northbound, deeper into the Daintree Rainforest. There was plenty of construction, thanks to the lasting effects of Cyclone Jasper that pummelled the region in December 2023. Some of the roads we drove on were hardly roads, more of a dirt trail several meters above where the road used to be. Cyclone Jasper was ruthless, and it will be a while before the landscape recovers.

While at one of the lookouts, one of our tour members must have accidentally switched off their brain and decided to give a cassowary fruit a try. They are poisonous. Luckily, they didn’t fancy it, so spat into the bush it went. We continued north towards Cape Tribulation keeping our eyes peeled for cassowaries. Eventually we saw one that disappeared after taking three steps in the dense bush. 

Lunch was provided by Mason’s, then we got to go float in a (croc-free) portion of a creek under the canopy of trees. And we were off again, this time to Mayalo Beach. We saw where the rainforest meets the reef, a mesmerizing meeting of two UNESCO world heritage sites.

A short rainforest walk, then we made a stop for tropical fruit ice cream. I got the sampler of Jackfruit, Wattle seed, Strawberry, and Coconut. The jackfruit one tasted like 75% banana and 25% mango, it was not bad! The wattle seed ice cream was kind of like a coffee/chocolate flavour, with little almost beads of the ground wattle seeds in it.

Soon enough we were on our way back to cross on the ferry and make our way back to Cairns. But not before some construction delays allowed us to enjoy the last of our excursion together!

See you soon,

Kate