Australia: Day Twenty Three and Twenty Four - The Daintree Rainforest

We woke up in the hostel and packed up our backpacks while Dad went to pick up a rental car. When he got back we threw our backpacks in the trunk before starting our drive up to the Daintree Rainforest. After a few hours of driving and one stop for groceries we settled into our apartment to relax. The apartment had two floors and there was a huge pool right outside the door. We relaxed in the pool for a bit before dinner and played cards at night.

The next morning we got an early start and headed to an aboriginal guided walk of the Daintree Rainforest. On the tour we saw a bunch of the plants that the Aboriginals used to heal diseases and even a few that could cure types of cancer. We also saw some that could kill you with a touch of a thorn and and a fruit that's juice would make you go blind if it got in your eye. We saw a lean-to-shelter exactly like the ones they used to make and had some of the famous breakfast tea made from the herbs in the rainforest.

After the tour we thanked our guide before heading to the Daintree Rainforest National Park to try and spot a Cassowary. They look like emus with black feathers, blue and red neck and a horn like crown on its head.

                   

(This is the one we saw at the sanctuary.)

We drove to the park and had to go on the slowest most useless car ferry that took you across a tiny river when they easily could have built a bridge instead. Once we were across we drove through the park looking for Cassowary. We saw a group of wild boar in a ditch and saw a huge goose but no Cassowary yet. We stopped at a nice trail and hiked a two mile loop through Swamp and Rainforest but didn't see any there either.

Once we got back to the car we had some sandwiches for lunch and drove through a fruit farm to a gelato shop. All the gelato was grown on site. They had Coconut, Papaya, and one fruit that I had never heard of before. There was also Cacao which seeds are made into chocolate. We all got a small scoop of each and they were all really good. After gelato we walked around the farm that was made to live along side the jungle with diversity of fruits native to the land. On the way back to the car we even saw some Rainbow Lorikeets up in a palm tree.

We left the jungle farm and headed to a nice trail up the road. We walked the boardwalks through the lush green vegetation of the rainforest and saw some ground turkey foraging below us. Once we finished the hike we headed to a lookout at the far side of the park before heading back to our awesome apartment.

We didn't see any Cassowary but we got to hike through the amazing emerald green Daintree Rainforest.

Total vans: 1

Total slow ferries: 1

Total miles walked: 2.4 and 5.3 miles