Our time in Cairns has come to an end for now, hard for me to believe it's been two weeks already. Today we begin to make our way down the east coast, our next stop being Townsville to see Magnetic Island. I am writing this from our 6 hour greyhound bus ride :) Which, for the record, is nothing like Greyhound in the US with having wifi, usb chargers, leather seats, and the rows are relatively spacious.
Anyway, throughout our two weeks here our love for Cairns only grew stronger... enjoyed falling asleep and waking up to the sounds of the tropical birds, walking around viewing all the beautiful flowers / trees, biking down the esplanade to our favorite spot, the Cairns Lagoon. It's a very laid back city, and we'll always remember it being our first taste of Australia!
Here are some highlights from our time on land in Cairns...
Daintree Rainforest & Cape Tribulation Tour
To the west and north of Cairns lies the great Daintree Rainforest, the oldest rainforest in the world. We chose to do a one day tour of both the Daintree and Cape Tribulation beach through Billy Tea Tours. It was a very long day, pick up was at 6:50am and then we didn't get dropped off at the end until around 6pm. I think we went about 2.5 hours north of Cairns, the road to get to the Daintree was beautiful, passed a lot of sugarcane farms, traveled along the coast for a bit, and then through the rainforest itself.
 |
| Heading North we stopped for tea in Mossman, Justin liked the name :) |
|
Daintree River Cruise for CROCS
The first part of our tour was a crocodile cruise down the Daintree River. Unfortunately, being high tide and the day before the super moon, we didn't get to see any crocodiles :( Since it is the end of the dry season in tropical Queensland, the crocodiles stay underwater or around the shade of the mangroves to stay cool. Our eyes were hurting by the end of the 1 hour cruise trying to spot one in the shadows!
Around water systems that crocodiles can potentially be in yellow signs are posted with warnings to not go near the water. If a crocodile has been spotted more recently, a white warning sign is then posted on top of the yellow sign. Best to stay away from the water (including the ocean) is the main lesson :)
After the crocodile cruise we continued north into the deep rainforest. One of our stops was at a lookout point to see where the Daintree river we were just on meets the Coral Sea (we were out that way for our diving excursion!)
 |
| Daintree River meets the Coral Sea |
Daintree Rainforest Walk
Our tour guide then took us on about a 45 min walk through the rainforest. This was all along a boardwalk so very easy to navigate. In the picture below he is pointing out prehistoric plants that grow in the rainforest still, you can tell they are prehistoric because they lack the central spine on the leaves.
It was interesting to hear about the life cycle of the rainforest, how it heals itself after bad storms and prepares itself for new trees to take over the canopy. We saw a lot of basket ferns growing high up in the canopy on the branches of giant trees. Some trees were growing their fruit on their trunks so as to protect the fruit from drying out in the sun. You can see from the tour guide though it was a very hot / humid day! The plants are definitely ready for the wet season!
Lunch in the Daintree Rainforest with WALLABIES
While our tour guide grilled out for our Aussie BBQ lunch, we were able to go over and feed the wallabies living at this sanctuary with raw sweet potatoes! This was probably Justin's and my favorite part. There were about 15 wallabies in the enclosure that we could see, but a few of them were a lot more sociable and therefore had plenty of sweet potato servings.
 |
| This is showing how large Cassowarys can be! |
Our Aussie BBQ lunch was delicious, so far I think a true Aussie BBQ is a giant steak, with sausages possibly, and lots of salads for sides. Yum!
Further and further we drove into the rainforest, with our guide saying all the time to look out for the Cassowary bird. The road sign picture below is a speed bump sign that an artist painted over with the dead Cassowary picture. The Cassowary bird is on the endangered species list and almost extinct, so just one fatality on the road can heavily impact their population (unfortunately last year there were 8 hit :( The saying is to be cass-o-wary, emphasis on wary, when driving). Lucky for us though we did spot a Cassowary on the drive up to the swiming hole!
Once we got to the swimming hole we all took a dip and cooled down, then were able to try different tropical fruits the guide cut up.
 |
| Cassowary spotting from the bus! |
Cape Tribulation Beach
After tasting tropical fruits, we loaded back up in the bus and stopped at Cape Tribulation beach. A beautiful beach that reminded me of the beach in Jurassic Park. By this time it was getting super windy and again, crocs were in the water, so it wasn't a long stop.
Ok, maybe my favorite part was the next stop... Daintree ice cream! This was really unique ice cream, made from some of the same tropical fruits we just tried and not overly sweet. The flavors here are wattleseed (brown one, tasted kind of coffee like), davidson plum (the pink one, my favorite), passionfruit (the yellow with it's seeds, Justin's favorite), and pineapple underneath these three. It was a nice way to end the trip and enjoy on the bus on the way back to Cairns.
 |
| Daintree Rainforest ice cream!! |
|
Overall it was a great tour, long day and not 100% our cup of tea, but I'm glad we did it.
 |
| Views on the way back to Cairns |
Our Little Roadtrip South
Our Airbnb host gave us some tips on where to head for a little roadtrip south of Cairns, and also let us borrow her spare car! So, after a little bit of nerves with adjusting to driving on the left side of the road (I drove us), we were off.
The Boulders
About an hour south of Cairns is a town called Babinda, where a place called The Boulders are. This was a really pretty fresh water swimming hole, much bigger than the one on our Daintree tour. The water was really cold at first, but felt good on such a hot day!
Josephine Falls
Our second stop was just about 30 minutes past Babinda, called Josephine Falls. This waterfall was beautiful and had three levels of access. The top level and middle level were lookouts onto the falls (first two pics here), then the bottom level was where the gate was and you could climb over the boulders to get into the main swimming hole. The boulders were very slippery and the water was cold, but once you got in it felt nice :) In the third pic you can see there was an area to slide down the rock into the pool, lots of people were doing that.
 |
| The beautiful Josephine Falls |
|
Paronella Park
After driving longer than we thought it was, we arrived at Paronella Park and almost didn't go in. They were charging $44 AUD each, which seemed expensive to us. One lady pulled us aside and gave us a discount ($39 for both of us...) so we decided to go. I'm glad we did, it was a neat park, but still not worth the $88 it would have been! I guess this place used to be a resort with a ballroom, cafe, etc in the 30s, but flooding and storms destroyed a lot of it.
Our favorite part again was animal related, feeding the little sea turtles by the bottom of the waterfall!
Etty Bay
Our final stop on our roadtrip was near Innisfail, a place called Etty Bay. Here we relaxed for a little bit and took in the views. Our Airbnb host had said we might see a Cassowary while there, and we were lucky again and did! We saw it right as we got in the car and were about to leave the parking lot. So I followed it while Justin snapped some pics, very odd bird! Apparently it is the most dangerous bird in the world too, if provoked it will perform karate-like moves with those huge clawed feet.
Cairns Botanical Gardens
Our second to last day we decided to check out the Cairns Botanical Gardens (mostly my idea but Justin is glad he went). I thought the walking tracks around the gardens were part of the gardens and we would see plants on the way... so I was determined to take the red arrow trail. Turns out the trails are actually the Mount Whitfield Conservation Park... and the trail itself was a little over 1.5km with a 200m elevation! We weren't planning on a second workout that day :) But the views were worth it I think!! Justin liked taking pics of me trailing behind him...
After our little side trip, we then strolled the very flat Cairns Botanical Gardens :) Justin was happy to practice his plant photography, I think he did an excellent job!
 |
| The many variations of Orchids were my favorite :) |
Living the Cairns Life
Some of our favorite days were just the regular ones, working a bit and then exploring, i.e. usually going to the Lagoon.
 |
| Up early for a free IT workout downtown! Got my Hype4Life shirt on! |
The pics above and below are from our biking / walking trail to the downtown area (about a 30 min walk each time).
 |
| These birds make a super creepy sound that escalates |
Did some shopping too, cute little weekend markets, Rusty's Farmer's Market, and the Night Markets.
 |
| Last day at the Cairns Lagoon, our favorite spot! |
Cairns, all I can say is you are beautiful and we will definitely be back! Actually sooner rather than later as we will be back in March with Justin's Dad & his girlfriend to do another dive liveaboard! Thanks for reading!
I'll leave you with a pic of where we are now, Townsville!
 |
| Airbnb view |
Sarah
"Take only pictures, leave only footprints, kill only time" ~ Our tour guide for the Daintree said this, I'm sure it's been quoted by others but I really liked it!
p.s: so far we've made it 2 weeks in Australia without getting really sunburned (knock on wood)! Thank you to Alicia for that, with her warnings to definitely put sunscreen on!
p.p.s: we survived the 6 hour bus ride! Wasn't so bad after all :-P
