Tully, Australia, Australia

Last night we went out for dinner at a Mexican restaurant called the Green Ant Cantina. It was recommended in a travel guide and I can see why. I had the best fajitas I have ever had at this restaurant! And I’ve had my fair share of fajitas. It was in a strange location, closer to a neighborhood setting than in the city, but the food really was amazing. We came back to the hostel straight after dinner and I was asleep by 10pm.

The first night in the tropical hostel was an eye opener. The room was crawling with insects and spiders inside, and you could see some sort of little lizard crawling along the outside of the window. It wouldn’t have really bothered me if the windows could close all the way, however this is a really old building we’re in that has not been very well maintained, and a few of the windows will not shut. Luckily I never woke up to any kind of beastie on my face!

The alarm at 5:30am came too early, I was still exhausted from the travel day yesterday. But a quick shower woke me up and we were on the road by 6:30am heading down to Tully to go white water rafting. It was almost two hours to get down there, but it was a very interesting drive. Cyclone Yasi had hit this region just last week, and we got to see the brunt of the damage.

The towns of Mission Beach and Tully were the hardest hit, and we were heading to the Tully River for our rafting trip. The damage was immeasurable. It’s hard to gauge exactly how much had been damaged, because I’d never been there before Yasi, but you could see that there was wide spread devastation. Every banana tree we drove past had been knocked over, and the bananas were lying on the ground completely useless. They would not ripen correctly on the ground, so none of the bananas can be sold. About three quarters of the trees in the rain forests were either knocked down or stripped bare, so some of the forests looked like a fire had blazed its way through. A few houses could be seen without roofs on them, and every yard was still littered with debris.

We weren’t able to drive the bus as high up the mountain as they normally do, due to downed power lines and trees blocking the road. So we started our trip a little further downstream than intended. Lisa and I were paired up with three girls (Lisa, G and Bec) who were up from Sydney on holiday. So the five of us set off in our raft with our guide Paul. He was a hilarious Kiwi guy who gave us exactly the kind of day we wanted. We went down grade 1-4 rapids and always chose the more exciting paths if there was a choice. We also stopped off at a rock in the middle of a pool to take a jump in the water from about 15 feet up. I was just happy that I didn’t dislocate my shoulder this time (see my Morocco blog!). There were a couple of points in trip where I thought I was going to be thrown overboard, but just managed to hold on and stay in the raft. For some reason Lisa and I had taken the front seats in the raft, so we were thrown around a lot more than the others behind us. It was good though, we got soaked a lot more than the rest too and the cool water was great considering how hot it was paddling down the river.

There were four rafts out with our company today so we tried to stick together and we all stopped for a bbq lunch about half way down the river. So after tackling 6km of river, we were all pretty hungry and thirsty, a perfect time for a break. The camp ground they stopped at had been demolished by Yasi as well. There was a shower port that had been obliterated by a tree that used to hang over it, and there were other trees strewn across the fields. The river had raised during the storm from 1.5 meters (4.5 feet) to over 6 meters (18 feet), so this carried a lot of debris down river and knocked down everything in its path.

The second half of the journey was a much easier trek than the first, which was fine since we were all trying to digest burgers and sausages from the barbie. We finished off our boat journey, got our feet onto solid ground and said goodbye to Paul. He was heading south to Mission Beach, and we were heading north to Cairns so we weren’t going to see him again. The bus journey home was pretty quiet considering most people were sleeping. We got back to the hostel at about 5:30pm, grabbed a quick pizza and have come back to the room. I’m completely exhausted so I’m going to have another early night. At least we don’t have a ridiculously early wake up call tomorrow. We’re picking up our rental car and heading up the coast to Cape Tribulation tomorrow. I can’t wait to see the completely intact rain forest!!

The only unfortunate thing about today was that I don’t have a waterproof camera, so I wasn’t able to take any pictures. Luckily Raging Rapids do have a photographer who sits at various stages of the river and takes pictures as we’re coming down the river. So I will have pictures to post, as soon as I get the digital copies from the company, and then get a decent internet connection.