Located North of Cairns Australia the Daintree rainforest is worth a visit. It's quite an extraordinary place and if you've already heard of it you'll know it's where two natural wonders meet. The rainforest itself and the Great Barrier Reef.
The drive there alone is well worth it in my opinion, it's one of the most beautiful coastal roads I've ever had the pleasure of riding on and easily rivals The Great Ocean Road all the way down south. The drive is about 1 hour each way from Cairns but if you've been traveling in Australia for a while 1 hour is more like Just down the roadwhen it comes to travel times. The road starts inland but quickly makes it's way to the coast after about 20 minutes or so. There are plenty of places to stop and take in the views along the way and you find yourself wanting to stop after every turn.
In the evening and early morning it's simply stunning. In my opinion, the journey to the Daintree is more scenic than the Daintree itself.
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A beautiful beach stretching far south along the coast, stop here for this amazing view. You may be lucky enough to see some sea turtles here too like I did. It's well worth the stop.
On the way don't miss the rock piles which can be easy to miss. It doesn't really look much but it's years of people stacking up rock towers as they pass by and it represents memories of travellers that have long gone. Most are on the floor but you'll see more creative designs in tricky to reach spots. It's difficult to tell exactly how long they've been there but our guide said since add date here Be sure to add to the collection by building your own before you continue on your journey.
P.S If anyone knows how to rotate images the right way up, please let me know. It took me nearly an hour just to upload this one picture and it still didn't work. Piece of :poop: (that doesn't work either)
There isn't just one beach along the Daintree and there is in fact quite a few beaches and bays, each with differing views from East to North. The main beach which you'll see in most travel brochures is this one, Cape Tribulation;
As you can see, it's very similar to Port Douglas but this one has or at least had something special about it. It meets with the Great Barrier Reef. Now think for a moment what that looks like in your head, incredible right? Well here's the harsh reality.
You see those brown bits on the floor? That's the reef. That's the "Great Barrier Reef". It's dying and a lot of it is because what we humans have done to the ocean. This message won't truly sink in until you go there. When I took this picture I was literally standing in what was left of the reef. Sure if you go out to sea there's more colour and more life but you'd be shocked what the reality is. I'll be showing you this in another post.
It's a very odd experience walking through dense forest and tree's to a beach. You would think it would start to open up a bit, perhaps the tree's get a bit smaller, less bushes etc but nope. It's simply a wall of tall tree's and the only giveaway that you're anywhere near the coast is sand on the floor. Instead, you walk through thick vegetation and swamps. Luckily though someone was nice enough to build wooden pathways across them to avoid sinking into the mud!
(again, wrong way up) :angry:
Speaking on mud, Mud Crabs are everywhere, you'll see them darting out of one hole to the other. It looks like the swamp is moving when there's lots. A pretty cool sight.
I visited the Rainforest twice, once on a Uncle Brian's Tour which by the way are good tours and well worth looking at if you've never been. The second time we hired a Juicy campervan (more like a car) and stayed the night. Now this may not seem like a big deal to you but I was walking along one of the wooden walkways and it was starting to get dark. All of a sudden I saw these flashing dots randomly appearing in my vision. I thought I was hallucinating! It turned out they were fireflies.
I'd never seen them before so to me it was a big deal, but there wasn't just one or 2 or 3, more like 20-30. I've seen them since but never in that number, perhaps I was lucky to see it but it's well worth hanging around after dark if your staying there the night. Just stay clear of the beach in case of crocs!
This is an option you can take if you go and it's pretty cool to see them in the wild. This tour is included in the Uncle Brian's tour and they know exactly when the level of the river is ideal. Crocs spend a lot of their time under the murky water so the chances of seeing them by simply turning up are slim to none. They're ambush predators, what do you expect. However if you go during low tide where the banks are visible you may see the odd croc resting there and let me tell you, they're big! They may not look it from a distance but you wouldn't want to get too close to find out!
You might even see the baby's resting on the bank too, they're a lot less intimidating.
What's a Cassowary? That was my first question and when the Aussies described it too me, I didn't believe them and couldn't take them seriously. After all they're the same people that try to fool travellers with the classic drop bear story which I nearly fell for so why would I believe them about this?
"It's a big bird, the most dangerous in the world" they'd say. "Here we go" I'd immediately think. It's gullible time.
"It kind of looks like an Emu except it's skin is bright blue and it has this thing on it's head, kind of like a chicken"
"Great killer chickens" I thought
"It runs really fast too kind of like an Ostrich and they're very territorial." "They will attack if provoked and have two massive spikes on their feet which they slice into their victims"
"What like a Velociraptor?" I'd say sarcastically.
"Yes but only one of the toes, not every one." Oh and whatever you do DON'T RUN if you happen to stumble across one". "They'll chase you and there is no chance of out running it, they do about 20kph and that's through thick dense rainforest."
I had to Google this thing and sure enough there it was!
Why am I mentioning these? Because they're in the Daintree! There's even speed bumps designed to make lots of noise so that when cars go over them Cassowary's know to stay well clear. They're extremely rare and protected. Unfortunately I didn't see one when I was there but I saw one unexpectedly on another tour! But that's another adventure!
Thanks for reading my post, I've been a bit inactive recently as you'll clearly see from the dates of my uploads. I've been busy with 2 new jobs and juggling 3 around is quite an effort! I'm also in the process of writing my own book about swimming which has taken up allot of time.
If you want to see more of what Australia has to offer going further south, check out my older posts.
Please feel free to ask me any questions related to any of my posts and experiences. I'll be posting some spectacular trips in New Zealand in the New Year.
