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Tues, Apr 15-20 Cairns - 5 days in Cairns, so little time, so much to do. One has to take a day in an activity filled place to settle and figure out what you would like to see. Every city has many attractive activities however, asking a local to ensure you book the top activities for the amount of time you have, at a reasonable price. This is why NOT to book activities in advance. Unless you take in something extremely popular (for example the Sydney opera was booked online a month in advance), you can usually book a spot - especially if just 1 or 2 people. Also, the prices are better as you are booking direct and not paying a middle man or 2. I became friendly with the lady at the front who booked trips and she gave me great advice. Cairns was still recovering from Hurricane Ita which hit some areas close to Cairns very hard.
Wed, Apr 16 - Daintree Rainforest Walkabout in Mossman Gorge. We drove through Port Douglas on the way - a very quiet, relaxing beach type holiday. One of the pictures I took was a station on the beach with a sleeve containing a bottle of vinegar - why. In case you are stung by a Box Jellyfish, it helps until you can get to a hospital! The other picture is a beautiful beach - with NO ONE on it or in the water - for this reason. Box Jellyfish are THE most poisonous jellyfish in the ocean and they collect her for almost 6 months of the year. Plus, sometimes they have crocodiles in the water as well. Yikes!
Once we arrived at the Visitor Centre, we were greeted by Dan or Dingy - it has been his dream to create this centre so visitors could learn about the Daintree Rain forest - the oldest Rainforest in the world - 250 Million yrs old - like Table Mountain in Cape Town. That is about 100 million years older than the South American Rain forests. It is FULL of danger - the tree vines and half the vegetation is poisonous. Never mind getting lost. However, Dingy can tell the way from the crooked trees - small trees or branches that aboriginals have broken over the years in such a way as to point in the best path. You would not see them unless he pointed them out. The only bad thing was we had 3 rather rotund older English ladies with us and although this rainforest walk was quite easy, they could hardly make it - never mind the shoes they wore. Our walk was thus the *short* walk - damn out of shape chubbies!
Next was a boat ride down the Daintree River. The guide was a *handler* who takes away stray crocs, snakes and other dangerous animals from peoples farms and houses. He spotted a one year old; 2 year old and 5 year Croc on the banks. Not sure how - they are almost invisible! The best surprise was the python he had in the cooler, taken from a farm chicken coop that morning. Look at the picture; you
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