Cape Tribulation, Australia, Australia

Last night I had one of the best and worst nights ever. I went back to my room and relaxed for a bit, wrote my blog and then decided to get some sleep around 10pm. I lay in my bed and just listened to the rain crash down on the roof of my “building” and heard some frogs, crickets, and various other rain forest critters making noise. It was amazing to hear so many different things working at the same time. The rain was pretty torrential and didn’t let up at all until about 9am today. It was a very nice sound at first and served as a healthy reminder of where I was and how different this was from anywhere else I have ever been. But by about 12am my whole mindset had changed. I now found these noises to be the most annoying things imaginable and I couldn’t wait to get even one hour of sleep. That hardly happened. I nodded off for a few minutes here and there and then some other noise would wake me up. It is the worst night sleep I’ve had since I was on the train from Luxor to Cairo.

Finally morning came and I met Lisa for breakfast at the hostel restaurant at 8:30am. It looked like this rain was never going to stop so we were trying to figure out what we could do at the hostel for a whole day with no car and horrible weather. Luckily, as we were trying to make up our minds, the clouds broke and the sun came shining through! We didn’t wait around to see what was going to happen next, we threw on our swim suits, rented a couple of bikes and headed down the road to Cow Bay Beach. I spotted a couple of Cassowaries on the way down to the beach, a mother with its chick. They are some big birds. I took a couple of pictures and then continued on to the beach. It was stunning! The sun decided to stay out for the rest of the day, so we were able to see some of Cape Tribulation before heading back south tomorrow.

We walked down the beach, trying to spot any wildlife that was risking the open air after the four day rain storm that had just struck the area. I was sitting in a mangrove tree and never even noticed until Lisa came over and pointed out a six foot monitor lizard sunning itself on the beach just ten feet from us. I spotted a few other little lizards and a turtle on our way back to the hostel as well, so I really felt like we were getting the rain forest treatment now!

Terry decided that this would be a good time to go get the car from the south side of the Daintree River. I hopped in the car with her, key in hand, ready to pick up the car so we could go explore a bit more. She dropped me off at the north side of the river, I hopped on the ferry to get to the south side, and only when the ferry pulled away from the port did I realize that the key was no longer in my pocket. I couldn’t believe it. I was now 10 miles from the hostel, on my way to a car which I didn’t have a key for, and my cell phone had absolutely no service at all. I figured that if I could call Ian at the hostel, he could call Terry on her mobile and get her to come back and meet me on the north side of the river again. I tried calling from the ferry phone (which the gents were nice enough to let me use), then I tried from the pay phone on the north side for about twenty minutes before I could get through to talk to Ian. By this time Terry was already back at the hostel and they found my keys right down the side of the passenger seat where I left them (idiot!). So Terry (being the saint that she was) brought Lisa down to the north side of the river with the key, put her on the ferry so she could meet me at the car. What started out to be a very simple twenty minute task, turned into an hour and a half of chaos.

Lisa got to the south side with the key, we got in the car, and since I’d already wasted so much of our day with this debacle, we didn’t even head back to the hostel. We headed north of Cow bay and stopped at a few boardwalks that Terry had recommended we see. The first was called Jindalba, just by the Daintree Visitor’s Center. We walked about a half mile down this stunning boardwalk in the middle of the rain forest, only to find out that the other two miles had been closed off due to trees falling during the cyclone. We hopped in the car and headed further up the road toward Marrdja boardwalk. We stopped for ice cream on the way at Daintree Ice Cream Company and it was absolutely amazing. There was only one choice for ice cream and it was a cup with four different flavours in it. Macadamia, wattle seed, apricot, and coco. They were all made from locally grown plants and they were outstanding.

We enjoyed our ice creams while walking through their gardens and orchards and then headed up to the Marrdja boardwalk, only to find that half of this boardwalk was closed too. We got to see some more wildlife on this walk though. We spotted an eel in the mangrove swamps, along with some stick bugs, brush turkeys and some sort of rodent. Even though the walk was cut short, it was worth it. So we headed back toward the hostel, stopping off at the beach again to have a look around. We got back to the hostel, had another wonderful meal at their restaurant, and I’m now exhausted and ready to pass out.

We’re heading south to Port Douglas tomorrow where we can expect nicer rooms, fewer bugs, and better roads. Let’s just hope we can get out of Cape Tribulation in the morning!!