We went to the little town in the mountains just north of cairns. I believe it was started as an aboriginal city and now they have a very scenic skyrail that takes you up the mountains to the city. It takes 45 minutes and you need to transfer twice to other gondolas. It is amazing how high you are and the dense green canopy of the rainforest below. The other way to get u p to the city is to take the train, which i have remember from 1990 as being very scenic, however, there was a mudslide 2 months before we arrived and the train hasnt run since due to the clean up efforts. (again everything here is dangerous).
We stopped at both the places to transfer and took a walk along the board walk to see the different trees and view. At the first one there was a cool stick bug which is almost impossible to see as it looks like, you guessed it, a stick (imagine that). Then we stopped at the second place and walked to the lookout to see the barron falls. These are the falls that start well above the city and work there way down. The water was thundering over the rocks and it was very neat to see.
In Kuranda we walked around and looked in the shops and vertured the city in search of the market. Once we were there we browsed a few items and found a "local" artist that actually hailed from calgary. It was neat to see how far people come to see and evetually stay in this country. We had lunch at a little german bistro (of course beer) and then headed to our booked Rainforestation tours which is where it turns funny/weird (at least sort of)
At the first tour we were greeted by this crazy bloke named duncan. He was a Steve Irwin wanna be and was right away loud and abnoxiuos, and unfortunately for us there we only two other people with us, Pommies (british people). We were supposed to be treated to this wildlife tour which consisted of a few koalas, one giant croc named larry, a few snakes and lizards and that was about all she wrote. During this "amazing tour" the four of us were man handled by Ste... er Duncan as he had no idea about personal space, more so with the women than with me. I sat back and was ammused by the looks that katie kept giving him and saw how she tried to keep moving but was ultimatley cornered everytime. So not only did the wildelife park suck, but i paid to have my wife felt up... :) and to top it all off, he knows our names and is coming to calgary this year, saying that he is going to look us up and stay with us... ahhhh the memories, well i laughed about it.
Then we went on the next great tour.... riiiigghhhhttt. It was called the army duck tour and basically we went through a tiny part of rainforest which we had see earlier, (see daintree post) in an old WWII vehicle that was built by all women in Michigan for the war efforts. They were big open rood trucks that looked like big aluminum boats, because they also floated and were boats. So that was alright, but nothing special. Again the dutch in me thinks about paying twice to see the same thing... once again contributing to the whoops we are idoits fund we have been keeping track of - sa far up near $800 or so- on the trip thus far.
After these "fantastic tours" we headed back down on the skyrail again and headed back to town. This time there was now rain so we headed into the city and looked for some open shops or anything, well it seems that a vast majority of shops close a little early and we missed most of them. So after a few too many pints (st patty's day after all) we headed back to the hotel and got ready to fly out to Brisbane.
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