Our day started at 6:30 with a pick-up at our hotel. Only 7 people took this small group 4WD tour and it was great having Jason, a biologist, lead the tour. We headed north up the coast. It was a gorgeous ocean view for much of the way.
We spent about an hour or so traveling past banana farms and sugarcane fields stopping by a sugar factory for a quick and unexpected few minutes learning about this crop. We even saw a star fruit tree bearing fruit!
Our next stop took us to Mossman George, a national park with a rainforest and the boulder strewn Mossman River.
Our cruise came next and we spent over an hour viwing and understanding this unique environment. We were fortunate enough to see a number of estuarine crocodiles and learned enough about these guys to make me a tad uncomfortable!
Our trek off the bitumen (blacktop) was exciting especially when we drove through creeks and rivers! 4WD vehicles here in the north are outfitted with bull bumpers (bars in the front) and snorkels. The bull bumpers are for the kangaroos and the snorkels are for heading through streams. Fortunately it is the dry season so we didn't go too deep but it was still exciting.
We hiked through more rainforest and Jason shared so much information that I will never be able to remember it all. I do know what leaves NOT to touch and that is important! I also learned that this is the oldest rainforest in the world and has changed little over the past 100 million years. This rainforest is tropical and differs from the rainforest from a previous post. We saw some similar plants but there was a difference in the plant life. We only saw one strangler fig tree but a lot of the giant ferns and palms that were not as plentiful in the subtropical rainforest.
Cowie Beach was a neat spot with mangrove trees and one special one called the Lone Soldier mangrove.
We saw thousands of sand crabs on the beach but they scurried into the sand as soon as we got close. We were able to see one of these guys close-up. Look carefully at the photo for the turquoise color. That's the crab!
Captain Cook landed at Cape Tribulation. Seems he hit the reef and damaged his ship. After a good deal of time and work, they were able to move the ship off the reef and they headed inland to make repairs. He named the area Cape Tribulation because of all the trials and tribulations with this particular portion of his voyage. He was pretty upset when he named some of the places. Mount Misery is right near the Cape. Several islands were named Hope Isles so he was not completely negative!
We walked on the beach at the edge of the rainforest and enjoyed watching the lace monitor in the picnic area.
Our last stop of the day took us to Daintree Ice Cream Company where we sampled homemade ice cream made with local fruits...never heard of any of these fruits but the ice cream was yummy!
Great day!
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