Cape Tribulation Tour Part 1

Cairns is also a good takeoff point for tours to Cape Tribulation, which is getting into far-North Queensland.  The tour was pretty good overall.  Our first stop was the Daintree River for croc spotting.  We only saw three: a couple little ones on land and one biggie, but he was mostly submersed in water.

It was really hard to spot this little guy from the boat.  Even when the guide had pointed him out to us.  I'm amazed that he was able to see it while the boat was moving!

Apparently, it wasn't a very good day for it because of the wind.  Any sort of breeze makes them cold really quickly, so they spend as much time as they can under shelter.  And unfortunately, or actually forturnately, in Queensland it is illegal to interfere with the crocs (e.g., feed them, poke them) unlike in the Northern Territory where they will taunt giant crocs with raw meat getting them to jump out of the water, snapping angrily just feet away from your boat.  There are far fewer incidents of croc attacks on humans in Queensland.  Surprise, surprise.

Our next stop was for a quick walk through the Daintree Rainforest.

This is a fig tree that grew around an existing tree eventually strangling and killing it.  The original tree has long since decomposed leaving a hollow tunnel through the roots of the fig tree. 

We were dropped off to spend the night in Cape Tribulation.  A teeny, tiny town in the middle of the rainforest.  I made friends with a nice New Brunswicker named Ashley and poked around the area together.

Sign on the way to the beach.

Pattern left in the sand by a feeding stingray.  They lie down on top of a hole that a crab or other unfortunate creature is living in and blow the sand out of the hole until the can reach it.

Female Golden Orb spider.  This one (including legs) was probably about the size of my hand.  The males are so tiny that you can't see them in this photo.  There are about five of them in the web though, I swear.

Edward the bat at the Bat House.