Jan 19 2010
Day 12 – Daintree Rainforest (January 19)
Today we went to the Daintree rainforest. The Daintree rainforest is well renowned for a diversity of flora and fauna and is thought to be one of the oldest rainforests in the world. Well, probably to the students chagrin, it lived up to its name. Specifically, it brought the rain to rainforest. Shortly after leaving Cairns this morning the skies started to open up. It seems that there is a front coming through and they believe it could turn into a cyclone. That could be fun.
After about a two hour drive north of Cairns, we arrived to the entry of the Daintree rainforest. To get into the rainforest we had to crossover a cable ferry which is always quite interesting and then we had a 20 minute drive to the Discovery Centre. After some tea, coffee and biscuits, we then went on a short interpretive walk. I will emphasize short because it was much shorter than normal because of the rain, but we did get to see a fair amount and had the opportunity to go up the discovery tower to lookout into the rainforest. Our guides Tom, Tom and Rick were fantastic. This is the third year that we have gone with Wilderness Challenge and once again they provided us an excellent experience (even if they can’t change the weather).
After our interpretive walk, we then head north a bit further for lunch. Probably for many, this may have been the highlight of the day. We ate at the Cassowary Café which is amongst the Ferntree Resort. The café was very nice and the food was excellent. After lunch we headed back to the cable ferry where we met up with our Crocodile Cruise. Unfortunately, the company sent a boat that was not quite big enough for all, so I had send Lauren with the students. Unfortunately, the poor weather greatly influenced what could be seen. For the first time since I have been doing the course, NO crocodiles were sighted. This was a big disappointment. Following the cruise we had some more tea, coffee and biscuits to try and warm back up and dry out and then we headed back to Cairns. The scenery of the drive was beautiful, unfortunately we were not able to see as much as normal on this day, but hopefully the weather will cooperate with us tomorrow.