Australia - Port Douglas - March 2008

The latest trip was to Cairns, Australia. It's in Queensland on that east coast of the peninsula coming out of the north east corner of the continent. We actually stayed in Port Douglas - Cairns is a metropolis because it was one of the first towns to boom with the Great Barrier Reef tourism - much too city for our tastes though we spent the last day there, more on that later. Port Douglas is a smaller town one hour's drive north of Cairns, that has lots of charm still while catering to the reef visitors (lots of places to eat/bars and shops). It's also closer to the main rain forest areas.

Our accommodations were at the Port Douglas Retreat - stay 6 get 7th free, worked out to be about $95AU a night which is pretty good price there (it's also off season which helped). Nice place - have little kitchenettes which we didn't utilize but should have, a cute pool area, enclosed parking (it's rainy season so getting out of the car and in the building without the rain pouring on you is nice). The managers always had good advice on tours without pressure to use any one in particular...the downtown "tour info" are totally fronts for specific tour groups.

While we were there...we did a ton of stuff! There are a million more tours and things to do in the area (different reef tours, different rain forest tours, you name it). We also tried to amuse ourselves with free entertainment too - like a hike and taking photos (total on the way home was over 200 - we deleted a lot there and then slimmed it down to what you see on flickr - Stephen was quite funny with the captions this time around). Back to what we did:

The Shannonvale Tropical Fruit Winery - just a bit north going towards Mossman. Tony Woodall greeted us and set up our wine tasting. He's a funny older Brit who relocated to Australia back a few decades. He's now in retirement doing this great job of introducing people to fruit wines and explaining everything we could quiz him on about it. Neat environmental note was the winery gets cardboard boxes from the local market and shredded paper from the local printers and that's their mulch - nothing store bought other than some minerals to correct the soils! (what a change from Guam - where aluminum can recycling has just been introduced in intro program this past year). We tried 12 wines: Mango, PawPaw (papaya), Pineapple, Jaboticaba, Ginger, Lychee Dessert Wine, Mango Dessert, Yellow Mangosteen Dessert, Lemoncello Port, Orange Port, Grapefruit Port, and Black Sapote Port. We actually agreed on favorites (the same top four - in different orders, but the same): The Mango Dessert and the Yellow Mangosteen both of which cry to be savored for cocktail hour in the summer by some body of water, then the Jaboticaba - a light tannin/light acid red wine. The Black Sapote Port by far was the most amazing. This fruit is bazaar. In the raw it does not taste like anything, until you pair it with something else or do something to it. Then it can share up to 16 different flavors! The wine does just that...here goes: chocolate, licorice, dates, prunes, malt, aniseed (anise), sarsaparilla, maple syrup (Stephen tasted that right away), raisins, coffee, caramel, vanilla, black musket grape, molasses, figs and English Christmas pudding (though we didn't know what English Christmas Pudding tasted like so we took Tony at his word).

Daintree Rainforest area - we too a river tour on the Croc Express from the Daintree Village. Wound up not seeing any crocs :( but we did see a kookaburra in the wild, some snakes, and a water dragon. As we past a section of old rain forest (never been chopped down for farming) you could feel the cool air rushing down the hill and over the river - almost gave me a chill. We did skip the "other side" of Daintree up towards Cape Tribulation ("cape trib")...it seemed like a lot of boardwalk type hikes to the water and other expensive tours things that we'd be doing elsewhere or had done (hello zip lines in Costa Rica = Jungle Surfing in Australia).

Mossman Gorge - The river there has cut through the rain forest and somehow grown nice walking paths, bridges and safety railing lined lookouts. There's one circuit loop hike after the bridge which took us an hour with our photographs of nature that did not like to cooperate. The over looks of the gorge are beautiful, with lots of rounded boulders sticking out of the water. There were peopl swimming in the water but we decided it wasn't our cuppa tea when we saw the weird euro guy get out of the water in his dark colored (thank the Lord) underwear. Enough said.

The Rainforest Habitat Wildlife Santuary - (right in Port Douglas) - We did "Breakfast with the Birds" there, a buffet and actual birds hanging out around you, staring down your sausages. Once we were fed and didn't feed anyone else, we had a full three hours of checking out all the animals and of course the photograph taking. They have all the animals you'll want to see - koala, the birds including two cassowaries, emu, kangaroos of all sorts and their relatives, crocs (estuarine and freshwater). Stephen took the best picture of a Kookaburra ever there (see inset), and then a bunch of the Cassowary. I think we're obsessed with the cassowary because it's considered a keystone species there - which means their whole ecosystem there depends on it, and with it's slimming numbers they're scared of what may happen if it does disappear in the wild altogether. Sort of like when we hear people talk about frogs in the Brazillian rain forests. We spent a lot of time messing with our camera trying to take pictures of the animals as you can see by the flickr. I even hung out Pepper the (slightly disgruntled) koala - they don't let you hold them there, but I pet him and he seemed to want nothing more to do with me

The Coffee Works tour - in Marabee about an hour drive. We tried 20 coffees, 4 teas, 2 liquors, and 12 of their 24 chocolates (not all coffee flavored)...oh, and we checked out the super hokey museum of coffee and tea related items. The off season price made it okay, but if in season I wouldn't pay the double price. The funniest thing was the guy who did all the recordings for the personal tour handsets in the museum. He must be the collector of all this stuff and quite proud to know all of it's history - and kept stammering through the dialog and telling us how each piece is a must have piece in a collector's collection. The whole drive to Marabee was worth it because on the way back we saw kangaroos in the wild (but couldn't get the camera out quick enough, dough!)

Diving the Great Barrier Reef - we went on Poseidon as was recommended to us by the hotel people. Had a light breakfast, lunch and two teas with snacks over the course of the day. Stephen was diving, I was snorkeling. Went to three different spots on the outer edge of the reef (better on the outer edge). Agincourt Reef, Ribbon Reef, and Castle Rock.

A Sunset Cruise on Raggamuffin 3 out of the Port Douglas Marina . 50ft sail boat - think America's Cup Race Boat retrofitted for living on. Us and two other people and the captain. we went fast, on keel and got wet. It was wicked fun and Stephen got to drive (that's when the big wave came over the bow and soaked us).

Hanging at the Marina - We spent a whole day just checking out boats, walking around and spending our imaginary budgets on the vessels we thought we'd like best.

Four Mile Beach - walked a little bit of it, being lazy Americans we couldn't walk the whole thing of course. It's stinger season so you have to check the board in front of the lifeguard station to see if swimming is allowed. The deadly stingers are like a cm cubed - so you won't see them and the netted area at the beach doesn't keep them out (just the large ones). The dive people said they are rare but everyone wears the stinger suits to be safe. The beach isn't really a nice beach to sit on or anything anyway - more of hard wet sand.


We also went hiking on part of their version of our Appalachian trail. This part was called the Bump Trail. From port douglas, go south on capt cook. Take a right on Mowbray River Road. Go over one bridge, take the right onto Oconnell? At the fork in the road, follow that over a "high" bridge and past a trail ride place. when you see the private property signs, park on the side of the road - the trail head is on the left next to the cow pasture - there's a sign for it. We hiked about an hour and got to "the landing" which is the top. we tried to go further but it was way to wet and gross, so we headed back. It's pretty steep and rocky, formally the only road over the mts into the plains area - some neat signs along the way tell the history. Bring water for sure and good shoes.

The last day with a midnight departure was hard. We didn't plan anything, so we took our time after a 10am checkout to eat breakfast and drive to Cairns. We hung out at a beach along the way (just went into a town along the way), then hung out at the cairns esplanade laughing at some tourists. There is a swimming pool there (public) and i saw they have changing rooms with lockers - but our stuff was all packed. Would have been a good idea.

Oh, and there is a departure tax - you pay seperately when nonrevvin' (I think it's built into the ticket price for regular pax) at the Continental counter when you leave - $85AUD.

First Class on the way back and planning the next trip hopefully for April (or May?).