Our first vacation in Australia

Clo and I had not taken any real time off since we got here, and we had not been anywhere further than 1 hours drive away, so we decided to book a last-minute week off and head to Port Douglas, about 60km north of Cairns in northern Queensland.

Grab a chair and some bandwidth, this is going to be a big post ...

Day 0: Arrive late afternoon and settle in.

We booked a 1 bedroom apartment in a nice resort just off the main stretch, and only minutes from the beach.

The view

Our private "hot" tub ... it wasn't really hot, but we got a little BBQ !

Day 1 - Breakfast with the birds

We had heard about this place from a few people. It's a wildlife sanctuary that offers a breakfast buffet. No you don't eat the wildlife, you have your breakfast and if you're lucky, birds come and steal your food! You're officially not supposed to feed the birds but one of the ladies working there told us if we gave the lorikeets grapes, that would be ok. After breakkie we went through the aviary and got to feed more birds. It was great.

Clo tries to touch the busy lori's. She got bit shortly after this pic was taken :-p

The rest of the day was spent at the beach and around town, checking out the many shops.



Day 2 - The Daintree Rainforest and Cape Tribulation

We really wanted to see the Daintree forest, it's listed as a world heritage site and it's a true tropical rainforest. The hikes were short, mostly-paved and packed with other tourists, but the road driving in definitely made my top 5. Imagine a super twisty single-lane through lush rainforest canopies and vine loops hanging above the road. Too bad the rental Kia (automatic) wasn't worthy.


In the middle of the Daintree forest is Cape Tribulation, a small beach where the rainforest meets the Reef. The boulders in the panorama are actually coral formations.

Badly stiched panorama, but you get the idea...

Oh, and the beaches are FULL of coconut palms! Needless to say, I went out hunting and found a few of them and enjoyed the true tropical experience of eating fresh coconut on the beach.


Day 3 - The Great Barrier Reef

"The freakin' Great Barrier Reef!" That's what I kept saying over and over in my head for the first 10 minutes in the water, I swear. We booked a day trip with SilverSonic, which included 2 dives and unlimited snorkeling time. The water was pretty cold (remember, "winter") and Clo's lips were dark blue coming out from the second dive, but it was worth it. I have to admit I was expecting more soft coral (think Anemones) and more brightly colored coral and fish, but maybe that's just from too much Finding Nemo. It was great, we saw cool things on the dives, but most of the life is at 1m below sea level, so snorkeling is great too. Plus Steve was nice enough to lend me his Canon Powershot and underwater housing so I could take pics while snorkeling. Here goes...

Our trusty vessel

This is what the reef looks like from the surface

... and this is what it looks like up close

This is the closest I came to finding Nemo

Look at the colors on this fish!

He kept swiming around my mask and got into half of my pics at this site ... hihi

More of Nemo's friends

These giant clams can grow up to 2m wide, this one was ~1m, very colorful

Day 4 - Atherton Tablelands

If you go inland from Port Douglas through the aboriginal reserve village of Mossman, you'll go through rainforest. Then, as you go around the mountain range, it gets really dry. We stopped off at Mossman gorge, which had a nice hiking trail that ran along the gorge.

Me taking the picture above this one

There's lots of Sugar cane plantations on the lower lands and lots of different crops growing in the highlands. We visited a mango plantation as well as a coffee plantation. Then we visited a place that roasts coffee from all over the world. This place also had a coffee culture museum with lots of old machines.

Sugar cane harvest around Mossman

Mango plantation, they keep the trees small to help with picking

Termite mounds are everywhere in the tablelands

Ripe coffee cherries

Custom-build coffee harvester

Vintage coffee machines

... and grinders

Day 5 - Crocodiles

If you're going up north, you have to see crocs. All of the rivers have warning signs that say not to swim in them because of crocs, but you'll rarely ever see a croc. So rather than take the chance and book a river tour, we decided to visit a more touristy croc farm. They had hundreds of 'em.

Croc show, would you get this close ?

Taunting the locals with a headless chicken

Day 6 - Beach

On our last day, we spent a fair bit of time at the beach. Probably too long actually because we both got sunburns even with SPF30+ sunscreen. No pics, but I did take this one at another beach. If you look down at the sand you'll see thousands of tiny sand balls a few millimeters across, and if you stick around long enough you'll see who makes them. Tiny crabs roll up wet sand and move it away to dig a burrow.


There you go, if you read all the way here, thanks. Hope you enjoyed.