Daintree Rainforest

We arrived in Cairns late, picked up the tiniest car that I have ever driven, and found our condo.

The first day, we explored the area a bit and found this beautiful waterfall.



On our second day, we headed north to the Daintree Rainforest. We stopped along the way to try to find information about hiking in the forest. In the guidebooks and people that we talked to really pushed us to hire a guide service. Dire warnings of crocodiles, pythons, and plants that would rip the skin right off of our bodies were presented... We really wanted to just spend the day exploring. My impression is that the Queensland Park Commission has really given in to pressures from commercial guides. There are only a handful of boardwalks .5 - 1 km long for hiking. Other trails that we read about have been allowed to grow over and are impassable now.

We ended up going to the Rainforest Center in addition to the boardwalks and the forest was quite beautiful, but we couldn't help but feel that everyone that we talked to was trying to make a buck off of us.

Our first overlook after crossing the Daintree River. Much of the vegetation and landscape in this area reminded us of Hawai'i.


The boardwalks were in quite good shape.


The cassowary fruit is poisonous to just about everything except cassowaries (they swallow them whole).


The butterflies were absolutely beautiful. We saw the giant Ulysses butterfly, some green triangles, and this blue triangle.


We thought that these berries were very cool.


The buttress roots were very big.


A katydid type insect just before being nabbed by Jacqui...it promptly bit her, much to her dismay...


There were lots of big spiders along all of the trails.


This strangler fig long outlasted its host and looked really neat with the empty space where the original tree had been.


The epiphytic plants were amazing. They root to the trees that host them and catch water from the sky.

One of the boardwalks followed a mangrove swamp.


Showing off some flowers for the camera.


Basket ferns...another epiphyte.


We didn't see any cassowaries in the wild, but we thought this sign was pretty funny. There were speedbumps about every 5 km to keep speeds down.


We found these sand balls at the beach that we stopped at before heading back to Cairns. Crabs sift through the sand for food (invertebrates) and leave behind these patterns.



We saw this carnivorous pitcher plant when we stopped for ice cream and a cool roadside stand.

The Daintree River ferry was the only method of crossing into the Daintree.