There's a rain forest too????

Our next destination was about 1 hours drive north of Cairns in a town called Port Douglas. We picked here simply as it was the best place to dive the Great Barrier Reef and arrived on Sunday 6th Jan.

 

We booked a full day's diving for the Tuesday as there are certian rules about diving too close to flying, which left us Monday free. When booking dive, the operater we chose also suggested a day trip to the Diantree Rain Forest. I had no idea there was a rain forest here, but thought it would be a fun day out.

 

Ross, our guide for the day, picked us up at 7.20am and, having collected 6 others en route, made our way to Daintree.

 

We've been to forests before, namely Yosemite and Yellowstone, but Daintree was very different. It was bloody humid to start off with and very warm, but what I noticed most was the sheer density of the plants and trees. You could barely see the sky if you looked up and could only see a few metres infront of you.

 

Ross, was a very informative Aussie chap, dishing out facts such as the Daintree and the Amazon used to be part of the same forest about 100 million years ago and that they are discovering new plant and animal life all the time.

This place is full of activity. Bats, birds, crocodiles, spiders, crabs and fish. This beast, which was as big as an open hand, was hanging around the ladies loo at one desintaion.

 

Harmless (by all accounts) but I really didn't want to take any chances so snapped it at a distance!

After a BBQ and some light refeshment, we headed to one of the clearest rivers I have seen for a bit of a dip to cool down. The water was about 25C but very refreshing.

 

Absolutely brilliant day out and a real surprise. We were in need of a few VBs that night!

The Tuesday was our Great Barrier Reef diving trip. Very excited about this one.

Glen, our private instructer for the day, picked us us at 7.45am and drove us to the boat, where we met 50 more excited divers. We had no idea we were getting our own chap all day, but it made the whole diving experience even better as we were away from the main groups of divers and snorkelers.

Cazzie and I both did 2 dives and they were both spectacular. Went down 12 metres and spotted all sorts of marine life including sharks, parrot fish and baracudas, as well as swimming through some magnificent corals.

Again, the whole day was brilliant. Very well organised with the friendly crew making us all feel very safe and the lunch buffet was top notch.

Sadly, no pics from this trip, but we are planning on getting some underwater ones when we are on the Whitsundays cruise in a few days time.

What made both of these trips brilliant were the people we were with. If you get a happy bunch the day has a different feel about it.

There had been quite a few weird coincidences the past 3 days too.

There was one chap on the Rain Forest Tour that was a) born in the same village that Cazzie grew up in, b) lived in Nottingham where Cazzie went to uni, c) lived on the same road at the same time as my brother did in Sheffield, d) lived in Bollington for 12 months and has tickets to the same session as us for the Aus Open tennis.

On the diving trip we met a chap that used to drink in the Grapes in Formby and knew a load of people we did.

And, to top it all off, when we checked into our hotel in Cairns, in the same hotel was a mate from the Freshie. Utterly bizzare but very cool at the same time.

Of course, beers were enjoyed with all three of these people!

Photos....as always, can be found on Facebook.

Lots of love

Stuoobs

xxx

 

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