Cairns, Cape Tribulation, The Daintree, The Great Barrier Reef and Sydney- February 10 - 20

What can I say about this part of the trip? Words can't describe how beautiful this part of the world is. Both the Daintree Rainforest and The Great Barrier Reef are world class sites, and truly unique. We luckily decided at the last minute to stay in the Cape Tribulation area, about 2 hours north of Cairns. We stayed at a great place, the Heritage Lodge, with an incredible proprietor named Darren at the Lodge. Here is a link to their website if you ever plan to be in the area.

http://www.heritagelodge.net.au/

All of the properties in Cape Tribulation are off the grid, so the hotel has to do its own power, water, sewage, etc. Its a testament to the Lodge that it seemed like a normal place, no different than any other. Also, Darren helped us plan many details of our tours. It truly made our trip memorable.

We drove to Cape Trib on Friday, and had to take a car ferry at one point to get across the Daintree river, which has salt water crocodiles in the area. We didn't see one, I guess luckily, right!

On Sunday we went out to the reef - I decided to try scuba, my first time! It was great, but scary at first until you learn how to breathe, but I had a great teacher and it was like a private lesson since I had only one other person in the group along for my dive.

I also did some great snorkeling in the afternoon, and you can see some shots below that I took with my digital camera in a wet bag, sealed from the elements, which accounts for the flare in many of my shots, till I got the hang of the bag! We also went to an exotic fruit farm, which had some really tasty fruits for us to sample. Here is their website, if you want more information. They raise over 150 different fruits, in fact, and pick different ones daily for the tour.

http://www.capetrib.com.au/freshfruit.htm

On monday we did a 4 wheel drive tour of the Daintree Rainforest, the world's oldest rainforest. We saw many exotic plants and the like, and we visited a stunning mangrove beach. Truly stunning.

Then, to top it all, we had an amazing nocturnal tour of part of the rainforest, with a fellow named Neil, who runs tours on his property at night - he really knew his stuff and could spot little animals and insects 20ft away in the dark! We also saw birds sleeping on branches, just feet away...


All in all, a special place - if you ever decide to visit this area, just go up to the Cape Tribulation area so you can be close to the Rainforest and the Reef.

Also, in Cairns, we went to a placed called Tjapukai, which is an aboriginal culture center where they explain things about the aboriginal life - among other things we learned how to throw a boomerang! Then, on Tuesday, February 15, we took flights number 7 and 8 on Virgin Blue, ending up in Sydney. We had a lovely time here, getting a real sense of the city by walking around alot downtown. We stayed in the Bondi Beach area, and had lovely folks host us for meals for shabbat - thanks again to Shani and Lisa for help with this as well! What would we do without you guys! (have no shabbat meals, thats what!)

Its on to New Zealand for our next phase of the trip.