Daintree Rainforest

We had ummed and ahhed for a while over whether we would take a guided tour up into the Daintree rainforest or self drive with the car. We opted for the guided tour option in the end and on reflection of our day we definitely made the right decision. The roads into this area are much improved over the last few years and you certainly could quite easily drive into the rainforest on your own but we had a great experience with an exceptionally interesting guide! 

With the river tours, ferry crossing and other various costs, including lunch etc. I reckon that you tend to pay roughly double for a guided tour but have the luxury of being driven around and sometimes taken to spots where you couldn't otherwise get to. Two of the areas we visited today were off road areas owned by the travel company and were some of the best spots that we visited! Including a great little trip in a vintage Land rover Discovery.

We were back to early pick up times this morning and headed up the Captain Cook Highway towards the Daintree. Cook's name is on pretty much everything around here! The University is the James Cook Uni, the highway is named after him and Cape Tribulation is so named due to the troubles he had around this area when he ran aground on the great barrier reef.

As we drove our guide and driver, Kim, began to tell us about the area that we would be visiting for the day. The Daintree is the world's oldest living rainforest, dating back 120 million years and is a closed canopy vine forest. It is home to 1,650 different varieties of trees! Putting that into perspective the UK has 35 varieties in total! The ground is made up primarily of granite boulders and the trees are very shallow rooted, fighting for any goodness in the ground. Some of the smaller trees have laid dormant for 30 years, they will wait until a cyclone takes out the larger trees and thrive in their place.

As we pulled up to our first stop of the day at Mossman Gorge, Kim was beginning to tell us about all the poisonous animals in the area. A theme on Australian tours is they tell you of all the potentially dangerous animals in a lighthearted tone and how no one has died for months or years! Today was the best example of this yet, everything is seemingly able to attack you including some of the plants! Yet no need to worry!!

Mossman Gorge is a real success story for the local indigenous tribe, who have built a small centre, a number of walkways and operate the busses and everything themselves. There is such limited information and discussion on the aboriginals but the more you hear the darker the past seems to be! In this part of the country, however, they are thriving alongside the modern settlers and both live together fairly harmoniously.

As we moved on to our next stop up to Cape Tribulation it began to rain as you'd expect in a rainforest! The highest points here can get up to 10-12 metres of rain a year and most of this falls from November through to March when the wet season falls on the area. We stopped at a lookout for Daintree Tea and Lamington Cake! I've seen few larger cakes and they were delicious, very light sponge covered in chocolate and desiccated coconut!

By the time we got to Cape Tribulation we were more nervous than ever about seeing any wildlife at all! Snakes and spiders are the obvious threats, salt water crocodiles are the biggest threat in the area so we weren't going to venture too close to any murky water! Even the iconic Cassowary, native and endangered in this area can disembowel you with its claws if cranky!! All that said we had a lovely stroll along the beach and our guide pointed out some pretty cool wildlife to us.

The tour was only six of us including two girls from England, the first English people we've met since leaving Lisa & Dom in Bali. They'd both just graduated from Loughborough so it was nice to be able to discuss our times there together and each others travels.

Over lunch we began to understand more about our guide, he has the most interesting voice, ending every short sentence by either going up or down! He has recently remarried to a woman from Papau New Guinea, Australia's closest neighbour and was telling us about his visits over there. It's one of the most un-westernised countries in the world and has 800 languages and 1,000 cultures! He has to be escorted by 8 warriors everywhere he goes as violence and cannibalism is still common among some of the tribes!

He showed us some amazing videos of living among his wifes tribe and told us some incredible stories of his travels there. He is currently setting up a trekking company there as tourism is just starting to reach there, the company is basically providing warriors to accompany people around! After a delcious lunch of salads and cold meats we headed down to an ice cream factory and had a taster pot of four local fruit icecreams. Carly's favourite was the Yellow Sapote , I preferred the Davidson Plum and Macadamia.

From there we headed to another piece of the companies private land and took a 35 year old Land Rover to Cassowary Falls. It was a beautiful spot and we enjoyed a swim in the cool water below the waterfall. Only after as we were feeding the fish and turtles did our guide reveal that there was a four foot eel living in the lake! They love a scary animal here!

We finished our day with a lovely hour long cruise along the Daintree River. We were luckily enough to spot the resident alpha male crocodile sunning himself in the later afternoon sun. He's called scarface as a result of the number of fights he has been in over the years and is 60 years old! He's only got 4 of his original 66 teeth left but at 4.5 metres long and weighing 450kg he can still pack a punch! From the safety of a boat they are beautiful creatures, they do a lot of their hunting using their ultra sensitive faces which can sense more than the tips of our fingers.

A while later we saw some baby crocs along the bank and a pair of kingfishers flashing about by the waters edge. I was less interested in the very long tree snakes but they were still great to see! The trees around here are classed as mangroves with their roots dipping into the water. Mangroves are classified as plant that grows between the low and high tides, their routes are often used as hiding places for young crocodiles.

The bus took us back to our hostel and we decided again on a relaxing evening before we head out to the great barrier reef tomorrow. A quick trip to the bottle shop for more beers and coke and for dinner we've got some leftovers from yesterday. We've rented another movie so we can chill out in the room once we're done.