Trip to the Great Barrier Reef--Daintree and Cape Tribulation

Daintree rainforest is a world heritage site and famous for its reputation of being one of the most ancient ecosystems on earth. The idea of visiting Daintree forest and Cape Tribulation bought MM on board for our Reef trip. He wasn't attracted by the Reef itself, which is more famous. Bears always like forests better :)

It was another cloudy day, no wonder Yoyo didn't feel like getting out of her burrow.

We had to take a ferry across the Daintree river before getting into the Daintree National park.

Our first stop was the Daintree discovery center. Rain forests could be both deadly attractive and dangerous at the same time. For those who don't know much about them, like Yoyo, it is better to be safe than sorry. The discovery center offers elevated boardwalks so that one can stay on the path to avoid unpleasant surprises (stinging tree, for instance). It also has a lovely canopy tower that one can climb onto for an overview.

The view on top of the canopy tower.

To survive in a rain forest it is all about fighting for limited sun light.

I hadn't seen such tall tree ferns before.

The beauty of the stream made it difficult to leave the place.

On our way to Cape Tribulation Yoyo spotted a couple of cassowaries! There were only 1200 left in the world so that was definitely a low probability event. YoyoMama took this picture because Yoyo was too close to the birds.

It was touching to see four vehicles, including ours, all stopped and patiently waiting for the birds to pass the street.

We had lunch at a place called Jungle Village, which is some sort of resort but also open for outsiders. Pretty decent food with a good price. I even found something on their menu to satisfy my parents' Chinese palate.

Cape Tribulation at last.

The rain finally stopped for a while and we had a leisure stroll and spotted more tropical wonders.

This will probably become my all-time favorite. Some creature likes to make sand sculptures on the beach. Often you see their artworks like these:

But I happened to find one that looks like...!!!

By the way, that was MM's toes in the picture. The idea was to use them as a scale but keep in mind MM got enormous feet.

Cape Tribulation marks the end of paved road. The blue sign in the picture actually says "No toilets 30km". At that point we thought we'd better turn around.

On our way home we stopped at a Biodynamic farm for some freshly made ice-cream. They had a lovely garden full of tropical plants.

I saw kiwi trees for the first time but at least I eat kiwi fruits often. Here is something I had never heard of, soursop. It doesn't look like anything edible, does it? But our ice cream was soursop-flavored (along with wattle seed, berry and sapote flavors)!

If you are curious about how soupsop tastes like, well, it was um, sour.

Guess what is this plant called?

Cat Whiskers!

Here is another pretty one but I didn't find its name.