Day 3 - Daintree and Cape Tribulation

This was a big day for us. We headed up the coastal highway passed Port Douglas (one hour north of Cairns) to the Daintree, a tropical rainforest/national park. We stopped for a nature cruise along the Daintree river hoping to see a larg crocodile in the wild. Boy this must have been our lucky day! We had spotted 3 baby crocodiles along the river banks, a grey snake in the trees above (that everyone saw except for me, I have to say it was very well camoflaged), a couple of king fisher birds, some colourful butterflies and various other little critters. Near the end of our cruise one of the other tour operators radio'ed in to our guide that they had spotted a large grown crocodile. So off we went, as fast as the little boat would take us to the spot of Fat Albert. By the time we got there, he had gone under thewater again and was no where to be found. But with a little patience, he eventually resurfaced. Wow it sure was a sight to see, a huge full grown male crocidile nearly within arms length (a very tall person's arms of course) away.

Here we are on the boat waiting to take off for our nature river cruise.

View of the surrounding mountains and rainforest.

Baby croc

King Fisher

And voila, the main attraction for the day... Fat Albert

After the river cruise, we headed off up north to Cape Tribulation, where the rainforest meets the reef. But first we had to take this "boat" across the Daintree River to get to the other side. As you can see it's actually not a very far distance to the other side of the river. It really wouldn't be very hard to just build a bridge across, but I think they like gauging innocent tourists like us the $16 return fare to cross the river. After our exciting ferry ride across the river, we had a beautiful drive through the Daintree rainforest up to Cape Tribulation where we wondered around on the beaches for a while until it started pouring down rain on us again.

Daintree ferry crossing

The beach beach where this sleepy little town got it's name from, Cape Tribulation

The rainforest right behind the beach.

As we are headed back to Cairns driving through the rainforest in the pouring rain, (who ever would have thought it rained so much in a rainforest?) we decided to make one last stop on the way home at the ice cream factory. Luckily the rain had let up by the time we got there. This place grows all their own tropical fruit and then turns the fruit into homemade icecream. On the menu that day was soursap, jackfruit, wattle seed, and passionfruit. Mmm delicious, my favorite was the soursap, a sour/sweet tasting fruit originally from South/Central America. The wattle seed kind of tasted a little bit like coffee and the jackfruit... well I guess it tasted like jackfruit, I don't have a creative way to describe it's unique flavor.

Wandering through the orchard, we found a tree full of these green prickly things. Some of them had fallen on the ground so Todd decided to find out what was inside. The flesh inside is kind of like that of a lychee, transparent white wrapped around a seed in the middle. We later found out that these were unripe rambertams. They actually turn a deep red colour when they are ripe and ready to eat. Here I am eating an unripe rambertam that fell from the tree.

Jack fruit


Wattle seed

Here I will leave you with a photo of a gigantic creepy looking spider. We came across it on our way back from our walk around the orchard. There was a big sign that said "Please watch out for my web". You would think that one would be able to see this giagantic golden yellow web that spanned about 4 square metres, but it's a good thing that sign was up. I sure wouldn't have wanted to walk into that thing!

It appears that this giant spider had just caught his dinner. Here is a photo of the spider spinning a poor unsuspecting insect for his dinner plate that night. Apparently today was our lucky day for creepy/scary Australian creature spottings.