Cairns - Northern Queensland

4 days in Cairns - not a very attractive town in itself, but the area around is beautiful. It is surrounded by mountains and tropical rainforest, and out at sea is the Great Barrier Reef. Our first couple of days here were ones of forced relaxation as we had a taste of tropical rainstorms - 29 degrees and rain was actually not unpleasant. It gave us time to relax, do a crossword and catch up a bit. The Esplanade area along the shore is attractive and has running/cycling tracks. The plants and trees are just beautiful and so brightly coloured.


On Wednesday we drove northwards up to Cape Tribulation through the Daintree rainforest national park. The forest had an amazing variety of plants, palms of all different kinds, weeping figs and loads of other things that we didn't recognize. Cape Tribulation has a beautiful beach which was almost deserted. It probably hasn't changed much since Captain Cook had problems there.


The highlight of the trip was a guided trip on the Daintree river where we saw several crocodiles basking in the sun after all the rain the previous day. The largest was 5.5 meters long (this one was a female and much smaller)! He watched the boat the whole time we were there to see if anyone was going to make a mistake. The headlines the day before in Cairns were about the finding of human remains in a croc further up the coast, so we weren't taking any chances!


Yesterday we went out on the outer part of the reef for the day. It was indescribably beautiful. We must have taken about a hundred pictures, most of which were rubbish and give no idea of the colours and variety of the coral reef and the fish we saw. I managed to snorkel (I'm very proud of myself as I'm a poor swimmer) and we just swam around looking at it all for hours. Kirsty went diving and saw Nemo, a turtle, and some kind of shark among other things.


Today we are off into the Outback for 12 days with a 4WD. We are aiming for the Gulf of Carpentaria and wilderness.