The Daintree Rainforest

Friday, February 29, 2008
Port Douglas and the Daintree Rainforest

David picked us up at 7:00 for the 80 minute drive to the forest. It was a beautiful drive, much of it along the coast. We sure were relieved when we saw the Queen Victoria anchored offshore! Many people were stopped along the road to take pictures.

We arrived at Thylogale (scientific name for the Pademelon) which is the name of David's property and a wildlife refuge and nature conservancy. We were lathered up with insect repellent as instructed, but luckily there weren't many bugs.

We set off on our walk into the rainforest. Part of the area was new forest that had been cleared years ago but was regrowing due to the nearness of the original forest. This land was adjacent to the old forest, so it was good to see the contrast.

We were greeted by a Pademelon named Elizabeth. She was very tame and hopped along with her joey in her pouch. (More photos on David's website.) David fed the Pademelons sweet potato slices or something that looked like that anyway. They were very tame with him and he knows them all by name. These other creatures that look like rats were also members of the kangaroo family. I forgot their name, but they are very rare. I would say there were at least 10 Pademelons that hopped along with us at different times and many birds etc. We fell down on the photos on this trip. It was kind of dark in there and it was hard to photograph. We learned a lot about trees, fungi etc.

Toward the end we had a break for tea. David heated the water in t his little shelter and all of the animals gathered around.One of the best things about it was the slow pace and the feeling we were really being absorbed into the forest. We had a great morning and learned a lot. Sorry we didn't get more photos.

David drove us back to town and to the marina to catch our tender back to the ship.

As we were going through the marina on the tender, I saw a man sitting near us that had on a light blue polo shirt with a small NASA insignia on it. I had this urge to joke to him…”Is that shirt a souvenir or did you earn it?” It turns out that he was a lecturer that had come aboard in Sydney after we left. He is Walter Cunningham the astronaut. He is a great speaker and we really enjoyed him the next day. One of the fun facts he told us was that he figured out that he earned $700 to fly to the moon, but if he had been paid 40 cents a mile he would have made millions. He did say twice that it is a job that any of them would have been happy to do for no pay. I would really like to read his book The All American Boys, but they are out of it in the onboard bookshop.

When we returned to the ship we were greeted with a nice treat of fruit and champagne from our Marco Island friends Vince and Debbie (the drawer shoppers from our Ft Lauderdale port day).
The next day we met Bob and Cathy, friends of Vince and Debbie from Brisbane that boarded in Sydney while we were off the ship. We had a fun lunch in the pub and talked about how much we wished Vince and Debbie were on the ship with us. I know one thing, if they were we would be having SkipBo Tournaments!

Great Barrier Reef by Air

Cairns, Australia
Thursday, February 28

This was the day we were to go to Lizard Island, but the weather didn't cooperate. They offered a one hour flight seeing trip instead. It was $350 less per person, so that was one advantage to the shortened day.

They arranged to pick us up at 10:30 to go to the airport for an 11:00 flight. At about 10:35, a taxi pulled up and waited. We asked if he was there to pick us up. I didn't think it was going to be a taxi, but I didn't really know. He said yes and we got in. He asked, “Where at the airport was it again?” We told him. He pulled up in front of Daintree Air and waited. We went in, but there wasn't anyone there, just a number on the door to call. Jeff asked if we were to pay the cab. I said I didn't know so he did as there wasn't anyone else there to pay him. We finally did call the number and they said that their shuttle was waiting for us at our hotel. They had even called Sandra looking for us. She notified Liz. We had been scammed by the cab driver. The flying people said that it is a common scam there. They cruise along looking for people waiting for a shuttle and do the same thing they did to us. The only thing was, the guy gave us a receipt with his info on it, so the air people are after him. We are still out the $15 though.

Anyway, it all ended up OK. The shuttle came back to the airport with the other 2 people and our flight began. For about 45 minutes we flew over various reefs. We saw a huge area, once again very beautiful. The Great Barrier Reef is the only living thing that can be seen from space. We saw less than 5% on our flight.

This little sand Island had a yellow helicopter on it. We were told that some people take a helicopter out to some of these islands to get married.

We saw lots of islands and beautiful reef areas. We could see the trails the rays leave in the water with the sand they stir up. Once we could see the trails, we could see the rays.

I think we even saw the pontoon we had been on earlier it in the week.

Here are some pictures from our land portion of the flight. It was great to fly over a portion of the rainforest before our rainforest walk on Friday. The cleared areas with crops are sugarcane. We learned that they are doing a lot to pollute the areas with the reefs.

We were dropped in town and went to Mondo's for lunch. Great grilled garlic prawns and a beautiful view!

In the evening we walked around town, had grilled prawn pizza for dinner and checked out the didgeridoo shop!

Email Updates from Jeanne and Jeff

I just received the following email from Dad...

Cairns is in 'off-season', which means that
it is hot, rainy, but no crowds.
Big Japanese presence here. I imagine that
even the Aussies are out-numbered during season.

Diving the Great Barrier Reef was more amazing
than I thought it would be, and I had high hopes.
More to see there in 20 minutes than a lifetime
in the Keys.

Plane ride today, then worrying about (catching) the boat
in Port Douglas will likely get Jeanne's full
attention until we climb aboard ;-)

___________________________________________________________________
And Mom's version of events...

Lizard Island was canceled due to weather, but we are going to be able to do an hour sight seeing flight in 2 hours from now, so that is good too.

We went on a river dinner cruise last night which was good and may do some rainforest stuff later today. We have our thing with David tomorrow morning in the Port Douglas area.
Weather seems OK to re-board the ship, they are not anticipating anything.

Cairns, Australia

Cairns, Australia
February 27, 2008

This was kind of a down day. Jeff had a haircut form this odd guy. He reminded us of Martin Short when he was the triangle guy on Saturday Night Live. “I must say,” (the character's comment) he did give him a good haircut though.We walked around town and had a good breakfast at the Calypso Café.

We headed for the yacht club. Jeff was going to go sailing there for the afternoon, but there wasn't any wind, so we just checked it out and left. It was a neat little yacht club that reminded us of NLYC, our home club in Wisconsin.

That night we went on a catamaran dinner cruise in the harbour. We walked to the wharf to get the catamaran and saw this neat city lagoon. It starts out really shallow and as it gets closer to the sea, it gets deeper. It is the city pool. It is really neat. I wanted to try it sometime but we never got the chance. If you look way at the end in the second picture you can see people swimming.