We are back from our 1st roadtrip around Cairns!

Our itinirary

We’ve started our trip with Cape Tribulation. Cape tribulation is located 2 hours drive North of Cairns, where the rainforest meets the ocean and the great bareer reef. The area is less touristic, beaches and landscapes are wild, how beautiful! But the area seems to have suffered a lot from the lasts cyclones because many places (restaurants, shops) are closed and abandoned.

To reach Cape Tribulation, we have to cross the Daintree River. This is the opportunity to take a cruise on the river to spot a few crocodiles! Thanks to our experimented guide, we had the chance to see some saltwater crocodiles. We may have not mentioned that before, but even if the beaches and rivers look nice in the area, we don’t take the risk to take a swim!

After Cape Tribulation, we’ve visited the Tablelands area: its green hills and vales, its rainforest, its rivers and waterfalls. We were not expecting that kind of landscapes in Australia, but we loved it!

We’ve finished our journey in Mission Beach, another loooong (2.5 miles) and beautiful beach.

The RAINforest

This program sounds great, doesn’t it? Plus, from May, this is the dry season, so we should really have a great time in the far North Queensland. We SHOULD… Because the rain almost didn’t leave us for a minute (which is quite exceptional at this time of the year). So, we couldn’t make all the walks we were planning to do, and had more coffees than expected…

So we got wet, but we still enjoyed the area, the rainforest and the wild beaches. Edouard also took the chance to use his spare time to his new hobby: playing didgeridoo! (Apparently, it was not challenging enough for us to travel with 2 massive backpacks, 2 small backpacks, and a guitar, we decided to add a didgeridoo!). In most of aboriginal tribes, playing didgeridoo is dedicated to men. In respect for these traditions, I prefer not to play (and not because this seems extremely dificult!)

Local Wildlife

The area is inhabited by the famous cassowaries, some kind of emus with a blue neck and some kind of “hat” on the head. We didn’t have the chance to see one, but we are not too disappointed because those nice animals can apparently be quite agressive. We wouldn’t have been happy to be face to face with one of them in the middle of the rainforest!

We’ve also missed the tree kangaroos, the platypus, the pythons and other tree snakes, and the cute white-lipped tree frogs…Luck was not on our side this time!

On the contrary, there is another little creature that we would have prefered to stay away from!
We were quietly walking in the rainforest. Well, no, actually we were a bit stressful because the path was steep, muddy, not well-marked, and we were listening to all the noises, afraid to meet cassowaries! Once back in the car, we took the road again. That is when we’ve noticed that we were not really alone… We each had leaches on our legs!!! That’s when we started to panic! We stoped the car as soon as we could, and managed to get rid of them. Fffiu, we can keep going now… Unless… Apparently, the battery of the car is down! Hopefully, a few minutes later, we found someone to help us. What an adventure!

We are now spending a few days in Cairns, before doing some WWOOFing again in a few days!