Friday October 1, 2010

Friday morning we had another early morning, getting up at 6:30 again for a rainforest tour. Sadly, the weather was not very good today. It rained off and on, but most on. Our day started off in a bus that took us to a wildlife habitat where I got to see my first koala since being here. I also got to pet my first wallaby and crocodile! As excited as I was to pet the crocodile, I felt bad for it because it was a baby with its mouth taped shut. I mean couldn’t they find something better than tape to hold its mouth shut? Anyway, at the wildlife habitat we were given a presentation on koalas, which was followed up by a presentation on snakes and crocodiles. After the presentations we roamed about the place until 10:30 seeing all sorts of cool birds and animals. Just before leaving Nicki and I ran to the grocery store across the street to pick up some snacks for the day because we were certain we’d be hungry come the ride home. I forgot to mention that prior to the habitat we stopped at a lookout point and got to take some cool pictures. This is the place where I have a picture of the instructions that are given on how to cross the street as if people don’t know how to do that. After the habitat we went to a gorge where we were supposed to be able to walk through the rainforest, but most of it was closed off because they needed to reconstruct the bridge that allowed you to get to most of the rainforest. The part that we did get to see was really cool, but it was kind of lame that we weren’t able to see the whole thing. We ended up hanging out there for a while because you were able to go swimming in the river. Only Katie and Carrie actually went swimming, while Dani, Nicki and I just put our feet in. Once we left the rainforest we ate lunch at the place where we were going to go on a crocodile cruise later. The crocodile cruise here wasn’t nearly as cool as the one in Darwin. I think that’s due in part to the fact that our tour guide was not very good and it had started raining again. Rain and boats never mix very well. We did get to see a couple crocodiles though which was cool, but they weren’t nearly as big as the ones in Darwin. The crocodile cruise lasted about an hour, and then we got back on our tour bus and continued up towards Cape Tribulation. The day trippers on our tour (aka us) were supposed to stop at a beach for a little while, while our tour guide dropped off the two-day trippers at their accommodations for the night. However, due to the bad weather she dropped us off at the only place nearby with a roof, which happened to be a bar/restaurant with a grocery store next to it. There was a beach that we were able to walk down to, but we only went down to it for about 10 minutes. The rest of the time we just walked around and contemplated buying some snacks but the grocery store was insanely expensive. Once our tour guide picked us up we headed home, which took about 3 hours. We were pretty lucky about when we left Cape Tribulation because apparently there is only one road to get there and when it rains the road floods. If the road floods enough then no one is allowed to cross it, and once we got across the road our tour guide told us that it was highly unlikely any of the two-day trippers were going to be coming back the next day because the road would probably be too flooded. The prospect of getting stranded was something that the tour group did not inform people about ahead of time, which was kind of obnoxious, but thankfully we didn’t have to deal with it. For the majority of the ride home I just slept; anything to not have to listen to our tour guide who seemed like some rando they found on the street and asked to drive a tour bus. She had no idea what she was talking about most of the time and actually provided us with some wrong information at one point. The bad weather combined with our tour guide’s lack of etiquette and knowledge made this my least favorite tour, but it was still a cool experience. Once we got back to Cairns we met up with our friends from home for some Indian food. This was of course followed up by some gelato and another night walking around the cute downtown area. We once again didn’t stay out too late because we had an early flight the next morning.