Road trip to Cains (I think I finally found Jurassic Park!) - Day 4, 5 and 6

So the boat trip round the Whitsundays on Thursday turned out to be awesome. We did our tour with Ocean Rafting (who I really recommend if you’re ever out here). Our boat left Airlie Beach before heading to Daydream Island to pick up a few other people, then onto Hook Island where we stopped at Maureens Cove to do some snorkelling, then heading off to Mantaray Bay for some even better snorkelling, at points I was completely surrounded by so many tropical fish, the colours of the fish and the reef were amazing, I was in a Pompey Boy’s wet dream!

The tour we did (the yellow route "Northern Exposure")

Daydream Island

Maureens Cove

Mantaray Bay

Mantaray Bay

Mantaray Bay

We then headed to Whitsunday Island, where we were dropped off to walk through the forest (and lick a green ants bum…it was sour….really sour (well the aboriginals used to do it)), before coming across Hill Inlet and Whitehaven Beach (where we chilled for lunch) which provided these views:

After a bumpy bumpy bumpy ride back to the main land (which included wake boating (trust me, I’ve typed that right!!!)), we head out for a few drinks with Tom and Kelly (from Adelaide), and speaking with Dan and I they ended up giving us too many options of what else to do in North Queensland, this road trip really has been spontaneous. Hopefully, looking forward to seeing both Tom and Kelly in Adelaide in October/November.

Stingrays

It's like leaving Jurassic Park

We headed off from Airlie Beach on Friday, carrying on heading North onto Townsville, where we met up with Emily’s friend, Ruth, (who is crashing with us in Brisbane next week (I think)) and heading for a Jamaican Joe's for lunch (So I'm in Australia, in a Jamaican restaurant eating buffalo wings (pretty American) and goat curry (pretty English) and watching San Francisco Giants Vs San Diego Padres (baseball (again, pretty American)))…and it finally rained  (again, pretty English), didn’t bother me too much, rain’s rare now, plus it meant I got to have a few beers, eat some awesome food and like I said I got to watch some baseball.

Townsville (maybe looking out to Magnetic Island?)

Townsville

Due to plans being a bit delayed we decided to make our way straight up to Cairns and we arrived last night at about 10:30. Dan and Emily decided to book a room in a hostel, so I decided to sleep in the car in the hostel car park…how trampy am I! I still had a bit of a chilled out wonder around North Cairns.

My first views of North Cairns

After breakfast (at Beethoven's Cafe) this morning we decided to head even further north and on Tom and Kelly’s recommendations we headed up to Port Douglas. We drove along the scenic and coastal Captain Cook Highway, stopping off at several points along the way. Now I thought Brisbane was nice until we arrived in Cairns (which is in an amazing location)…but that all got whipped out once we arrived in Port Douglas.

Cairns

Leaving Cairns

Leaving Cairns

Ellis Beach, down Captain Cook Highway

Ellis Beach, down Captain Cook Highway

Ellis Beach, down Captain Cook Highway

Ellis Beach, down Captain Cook Highway

Captain Cook Highway

Tawny Frogmouths

Rex Lookout, down Captain Cook Highway

Rainbow Lorikeet

Four Mile Beach

Four Mile Beach

Four Mile Beach

Four Mile Beach

Port Douglas

Port Douglas

So I had another little scramble whilst I was in Port Douglas

We then continued to head slightly further north to Daintree Village in hunt for wild crocodiles and ended up doing a Bruce Belcher’s Daintree River Cruises, which again was amazing. We were also impressed cos there have been points on this trip that we did question if we’d ever even reach our set destination of Cairns…and we cleared it!

I can ignore that, right!?

Kingfisher

Dan noticed that he had left his and Emily’s IDs in their Cairns hostel, so we started to head back south (I suppose the start of the long drive back home) towards Cairns but we stopped off at Mossman Gorge on route before getting back to Cairns picking up their IDs, driving down the long very whinedy Ravenshoe Highway and reaching Rocky Creek War Memorial Park where we have just set up for the night, them guys in the tent, me in the car! I have no idea how high up we are right now, it aint too cold, but Ravenshoe Highway was always climbing, and we didn’t decline too much once we were off of it. We found out after we got here that we can’t have any open fires, which really really sucks cos we were all pretty much up for another bonfire, ah well, there’s always tomorrow. We decided to stay here as we want to check out a few of the surrounding areas (again that Tom and Kelly recommend). We are currently about somewhere in the rainforest 50Km South-West of Cairns, I can’t remember exactly what we’ve got planned tomorrow, so I won't bother written what I THINK we may be doing, and I’ll just write what we ACTUALLY DID in my next post. Just looking forward to seeing what this area’s gonna look like when we wake, as once again we arrived here in the dark!

The walk to Mossman Gorge

Yes I did fall in, with my wallet, phone and camera in my pocket, it surprised me at how deep it actually was, but more amazing then that everything important was dry! 

On the drive back to Cairns

OK I’ve just turned on our Pocket WiFi, and shock horror, it’s not connecting to any internet (although I kinda understand we are about 15Km from the nearest town…even though my phone is getting reception), so this post was written on Saturday night, but I am unsure when I’ll actually be able to publish it, I just know that I’m not going to re write it now!

• Right, I'm in a new location, a lot further south than yesterday (just north of Townsville), so our pocket WiFi is working now, so I'm only posting this a day late (everything above this bullet point was written last night). I will more than likely post about today and the rest of the trip once I arrive back in Brisbane later on this week.
• ..And now the battery on my netbook is about to die whilst I'm adding my pictures to this post, so I'll have to publish this at a later date.
• OK, so now it's Tuesday and I'm back in Brisbane, I wanted to add the last few days to this entry, but this has taken me long enough (so many photos I know, but I took over 1,160 over the last 9 days), so I'll add the last three days soon!