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| Our Cape Tribulation accommodation was surrounded by the rainforest. This table was right outside our door, and the creatures of the rainforest ate there every night! |
| Erin's Journal for 2/10 to 2/11//03 Queensland We left Townsville around 9am, after a sticky wet morning and bug-filled communal showers. It wasn't all that bad, as I would discover... We hit the road to Cairns, driving through several rain storms along the way. This was our last big push, then we'd have a week in one place finally. We didn't arrive till almost 1pm, and went straight to information to find a place to stay. It turned out to be more expensive than we'd thought if we wanted a nice place. As backpacking capital of Queensland, Cairns has tons of budget places, but most of them are kinda skanky. Not very nice, with the humidity and heat skyrocketing, and the bugs and mosquitos that come out at night. We talked for almost an hour with the info lady, who was very informative after all, and came away with about 4 places to check out. She'd also suggested we head up to Cape Tribulation for a few days for the Reef snorkeling and rainforest experience. This too was expensive as far as accommodations, but we agreed that it would be better to do that section in the beginning of the week so we could get a place in Cairns for the weekend and not leave it. With that decided, we went to find lunch. The combo of the intense heat and almost 100% humidity combined with my hunger (it was now 2:30pm) to make me into a bitchy girl indeed, so poor Glenn was finally aware that we needed to stop and get some a/c and food pronto! We ended up in the mall, where we finalized our options and agreed to drive to Cape Trib this afternoon and stay till Wednesday. I was already exhausted from driving and moving around so much, but it didn't make sense to either of us to put this part off and break up our stay in Cairns, so we checked out a couple more places to decide what to book for the weekend, and finally headed out of town around 4pm. Distance-wise, it should only have taken about an hour to get there, but the winding roads and (surprise!) ferry to get up to Cape Trib's remote roads made it into a 2 hour ride. We got to the Beach House, where we'd decided to stay, and checked in, again shocked by how expensive it was up here, and I was pretty disappointed with the accommodations. We ended up in our own bedroom in a 'villa' with 3 other rooms and a tiny bathroom. The spiders we passed while lugging our bags down the hill to get there were huge, and I was cringing at the thought of finding these little jewels in our bed later...plus the heat was oppressive and unavoidable. We had a ceiling fan at least, and that was what got me through the night. We ate a quick dinner at the cafe, which was nothing special, and called it an early night. I think I was asleep before Glenn even came back from brushing his teeth! 2-11-03 I woke early to the sound of an absolute downpour outside our open windows, and listened to the bugs outside till around 7am, when we decided to get up. We went up to the shared kitchen and had cereal, then wandered back to lazily prepare for the day. We took the car back up the road to the local rainforest boardwalk, and did a 1.5 km walk through this immense spread of trees & ferns, being bombarded by mosquitos that have never heard of deet (bug poison that even Glenn finally put on). But it was really gorgeous, and all those rainforest sound effects you hear and think are somewhat made up, surrounded us! We didn't see a tree frog, but tons of just HUGE spiders everywhere! After about an hour there, we were hot and sweaty (more than when we started, that is), and stopped off at the local store for some very expensive milk and a few postcards. Then we headed back for the camp and changed into our suits. You can't swim in far north Queensland's oceans near shore during the summer months due to stingers, technically known as box jellyfish, which can kill a grown man with one sting. Most towns along the coast put out 'stinger nets' for their section of beach so people can swim there, but not this far north in a national park/rainforest! So the pool was our best option, and it turned out to be great. It was warm and still a relief from the oppressive heat of the air. We spent the afternoon in and out of the water, walking down to check out the beach only a couple of times. For dinner we made spaghetti, then joined the other folks we'd met at the pool down at the cafe for a drink and chats that night. As usual, the talking went on longer than I had energy, and I finally dragged Glenn off so I could go sleep! |
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| I failed to get a photo of one of the huge spiders, but this fellow was the size of Glenn's hand, perched on one of the dorm building walls. |