Wow, is time flying and it’s almost time to come home :( okay, let’s not think about that… But, I would like to share the AMAZING past weekend we had…then within the next few days I will try to get a blurb up about Cambodia..it’s just hard to put in words or capture in pictures so I have been dreading even trying….but I will soon.
Addie’s parents arrived in Townsville this past week on Monday, October 11. Addie and I met them at their hotel and it was very exciting to see their face!! I hung around and visited until I had to catch a bus as I had to get home to write a paper that was technically due tomorrow..later that week it got an extension…AWESOME! That night was my first ever night to sleep in our room alone because Addie stayed with her parents…it felt incredibly strange as I have gotten so used to sharing our room! The next day, Tuesday, I worked on paper in the morning and we had class the entire afternoon. We had a lecture in our health class that was rather interesting; it was about the economics end of health care. After classes, around 6:30 pm, we rode the bus into town and met Mr. and Mrs. Young and went to dinner at the Seaview Hotel. It supposedly has the best steaks in Northern Queensland! Lucky us, it was 2 for 1 steak night! It was TASTY…with a glass of Chardonnay wine…ummm umm yum! We also stopped off to introduce them to the best gelato in town, Juliette’s! We caught a ride home with a friend, as we merely missed our bus by 1 min and 23 sec…yes, we could see its taillights driving away…darn! Anyways… I went over to my friend, Sameer’s, to say bye, as he was leaving the following morning for San Antonio, Texas, for a medical conference to present his research. It is soooooo exciting that one of my friends I made here was visiting my state!!! He is rather excited as well!
Okay, then on Wednesday, we had class most of the day, our last Australian movie was played for our cinema class that night called The Tracker!! Then we drove over to the Young’s hotel to stay the night since we would be leaving early the next morning for Cape Tribulation. Cape Tribulation is about 7 hours north of Townsville and is where the rainforest meets the reef..literally!
Contrary to its name, we had a beautful time in Cape Tribulation. It was soo name because around about 200 years ago Captain James Cook, my school is named after him, sailed up onto Australia and was the first person to find it. When he reached up into that area, he actually crashed his boat onto some reef and had to do an emergency repair and throw off lots of cannons and equipment to make a quick retreat to land. He had a miserable time up there, hence he named Cape Tribulation, Mount Sorrow and many other places. I mean technically speaking, how would you feel if you sailed onto the land that was home to crocodiles, the worlds deadliest snakes and spiders....I bet he had a scary time!
We started our drive early, around 8 am on Thursday. We were staying in a private holiday house where we could cook and all that jazz, therefore we stopped in Cairns along the way to buy some groceries. We found our way all the way to the place…Mr. Young had his first go at driving on the wrong side of the rode! We laughed all along the way, and especially as we got into Cape Tribulation and saw all the Cassowary crossing signs. Cassowaries are the man eating bird that is on the endangered list here in Australia. We got to our delightful house for the weekend and were greeted by an extremely nice owner lady who informed us that everything on that side of the ferry (we cross on a river ferry to get into Cape Trib) was run by solar power. Aww, such peace it was out in the rainforest. It rained most of our way there and when we arrived…welcome to the RAIN forest! It was soo quiet minus a few crickets and happy frogs! On Friday, we snorkeled off Mackay reef. It was AMAZING!! The weather was at its best for us as well, pretty much the prettiest day without rain that we had the whole weekend! Saturday morning we went on a river cruise in search of crocodiles. We saw 4 crocs!! That afternoon we did jungle surfing, a zip lining course thru the rainforest.
A beautiful and fun way to view the layers of the Rainforest.
Oh yea, I might add that the Daintree Rainforest is the oldest rainforest on the planet, dating back to 2 to 18 million years old. It has some of the plants that existed during the dinosaur era. After the surfing, we walked the “boardwalk”, literally a boardwalk down to the beach in hopes of sighting a cassowary. It was a nice walk, but no cassowary. On our way back to our house from jungle surfing, Addie let out a huge, “AHHHH, DAD, A CASSOWARY, AHHHH SLOW DOWN!!!!” I about freaked out and as I turn around out from the forest walks a cassowary. To this moment I can’t believe we actually saw one…actually not one, but two cassowaries came out and just sort of lollygagged across the road.
We made a quick turn around and didn’t realize until a car was coming, that we were facing the wrong side of the road….ahh too much excitement!! It was probably one of the top coolest parts of the weekend! That night we did a night walk which is literally a night walk thru the rainforest in search of cool rainforest fauna! We saw this awesome glow in the dark fungus…soo cool. We saw a cricket with looooooong antennae, about equivalent to us having 200 ft arms, proportion wise were the antennae to the cricket’s body. We also saw a Boyd’s Forest dragon and green tree frog and the strangling fig tree, look it up in your spare time…..awesome, awesome tree, or ask me one day..it was neat!
On Sunday morning we started our trek home. Stopped off in Port Douglas, a very touristy seaside town, and ended up finding the Sunday Markets going on. They were great!! Finally by 9 pm that night we walked back into our dorm rooms….I forced myself to get this post up before bed, because I have been horribly getting behind, sorry if it was rough reading….BUT now it is definitely time for bed…..night to all!! Miss you all, see ya soon!
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