travels.of.tara

The two flights from Tasmania to Cairns via Sydney were not great – my ears were hurting pretty badly from the pressure. But as soon as I stepped out of the airport and felt the tropical heat and humidity I immediately felt better. I was surrounded by green mountains and could already feel the chill vibe. Cairns is the biggest city in tropical North Queensland, and serves as a gateway to tons of outdoor activities. It felt like a Caribbean island paired with a tourist city. By New York standards it was also pretty cheap – hostels seemed to be about $15 per night, and mine was really nice. I got a free shuttle van ride from the airport to the hostel, which featured a pool and large deck with lights and music playing. In the surprisingly soundproof rooms I also found so many friendly girls – this was the most chatty hostel I stayed in so far, and while some were into staying up late and partying at a nearby hostel with a nightclub, many others seemed to be on an early touristy schedule like me. Most were in the middle of long trips and working holidays (a special type of Australian visa), and most were from Europe. One night I joined some for trivia on the deck, and ended up leaving my contact info for two of them who I talked to a lot over the few days I was there.

The nights I was there for dinner I walked about 10 minutes down to the Esplanade, the area by the water, and grabbed some food overlooking the water. There were tons of stalls, many Asian spots and lots of other worldly cuisines. Australia doesn’t really seem to have its own type of food, unless you want to sample kangaroo, emu, or crocodile meat, but those seemed less common than normal burgers and other things you’d find in the U.S. or Asia. There was also a cool night market there, and a sit down restaurant when I wanted one on the last night (no tipping expected!). Along the walk there were huge viney fig trees, and at dusk looking up there were tons of bats flying around! I also saw many aboriginal people in Cairns, which was surprisingly different from the cities. I had asked Megan a lot of questions about them in Tassie, as their existence in modern Australia was hard for me to grasp. The best way for me to grasp it is to equate them to Native Americans, i.e. the white people stole their land (and their children, at one point…) and now they are generally living in normal society but with their distinct cultures somewhat preserved, but lots of problems with alcohol and other vices. They have a distinct dark skin tone that looks different from African or Caribbean Americans.

The beach by the Esplanade was sort of muddy and dry by the shore, so it’s not swimmable, but there’s a huge swimming pool just behind it that was full of kids when I walked by. I saw some wild pelicans chilling on the mud. On the first night I was a little disoriented to see some kind of Christmas festival, with really weird costumes and a Santa wearing a short sleeve Hawaiian shirt. The weather was a steady 86-91 degrees during the day in Cairns, with no rain in the forecast while I was there. It dropped as low as 76 at night, and the humidity made you sweat really easily.

Queensland doesn’t observe daylight savings time so it was an hour earlier there, and it got dark around 6:30pm and light before 6am, so my day trips started pretty early. On my first full day I met a van and driver for what ended up being a 13+ hour day tour to the Daintree Rainforest. Before we get going, I should mention that I finally figured out the hostel coffee situation, and it was pretty obvious: instant coffee. Yup, just add hot water and stir. Gross but did the trick for quick and free caffeine. Anyway, our driver Adrian picked up 10 of us, all pretty young and including people from the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, England, Thailand, Italy, and California/studying in Sydney. Most were traveling alone minus one couple and one set of friends. I somehow got assigned to sit in the front seat, which I actually loved because I got the best views, got to talk with Adrian a lot (and hear his stories; he wasn’t super loud), and at the end control the music when a Swiss guy wanted to blast bad hip hop.

The tour was awesome. We drove a lot, but stopped frequently at beaches and lookouts. The longest stretch was at the final drive in the dark from the cute town of Port Douglas back to Cairns, about an hour and a half. We were basically driving straight north, into the famous rainforest and going as far as Cape Tribulation, a famous beach/lookout area. Our first brief stop was Ellis Beach, which was nearly empty in the morning. We saw a swimming net to keep out sharks (and presumably stingers). While we walked on the beach Adrian was collecting mangoes from the wild mango trees for us to eat. They were so delicious. I’ve had mangoes before and really like them, but never eaten one fresh off the tree – you just peel them and bite in. You get tons of strips stuck in your teeth, and Adrian was prepared with floss.

We continued on our scenic drive, passing awesome sloping coastline and Elton John’s house. Our next major stop was Mossman Gorge. There was a café/gift shop, and from there we hopped on a bus for a few minutes. Then we followed an elevated walkway through the green rainforest, where we learned a little about the wildlife and were all sharing bug spray (though the bugs weren’t too bad – I only got 2-3 bites and I think they came from the hostel). In a few minutes we veered off to the water, a swimming hole with huge rocks and crystal clear fresh water – safe from jellyfish and crocs. We all got to go swimming in the cold refreshing water for about 45 minutes and it was just lovely. We also saw some kind of wild turkey with a red and yellow head sniffing around our stuff for food.

After changing out of our wet clothes and getting back on the road, our next stop was a boat tour down the Daintree River to try to spot crocodiles. We stalked the edges of the river through some cool viney trees. The boat driver saw one and we spent about ten minutes looking through the trees to see it, but I don’t think anyone else actually saw it. It was a nice boat though; we saw some other cool birds and a big tree snake. We met Adrian on the other side of the river with the van, which had crossed by ferry, and we continued on.

Now we stopped following coastline and felt we were really in the rainforest; this part of Queensland is off the grid – there’s no local police force or sanitation pick up, and extremely limited services like electricity, wifi, or cell phone reception. The state tends to the roads. People do build houses and live there, and technically there are building codes and zoning laws, but it seems they are not really followed and no one says anything.

We stopped for lunch at a café/campsite/wildlife sanctuary. After eating we went and fed some wallabies, which are similar to kangaroos but small. They were so friendly and cute and I fed a few some sweet potato strips. We continued driving to our northernmost destination, Cape Tribulation, a popular rainforest beach spot. You have to walk a few minutes through rainforest to get to the beach, where you see a pretty cliff that points out. It was just a perfectly beautiful beach. We couldn’t swim for fear of dangerous stingers, but most of us put our feet in the steaming hot water for a few minutes before being scared out by a passerby who warned of the jellyfish. We went back toward the trees, where Adrian was doing something with coconuts that had fallen from the trees. We all gathered up and he taught us how to crack open the hard-shelled brown ball using a sharp tool he had brought along, and we each took a turn chopping off pieces of one. I had never seen the coconut shell like this before, with the hard exterior and soft fibers before you crack open the fruit. Once we opened it we drank the water inside straight from the shell (not as sweet as I’ve had from the store), then tasted some shredded coconut (pretty good but not the best snack raw), and then had the real treat, squeezing fistfuls of shredded coconut into our palms to make cream of coconut and slurping it up – soooo good and sweet. We all walked along the beach a bit while Adrian mixed up a batch of cream of coconut and mango, which we all sipped out of a wok. Surprisingly not everyone likes coconut, and as I ended up the last one to taste it and was in fruity heaven I finished it up and had the most. It was a really special experience. We headed back to the van for a few more scenic stops on the way back to Cairns.

One of the driving features here was to be on the lookout for the infamous cassowary, the giant black bird as tall as humans with a blue head. I saw one back at Featherdale in Sydney; they are fascinating and reminded me of the bird from the movie Up, but apparently they kill humans if they feel threatened. There are not many left but I think most are up in the Daintree, as there were tons of street signs to look out for them. We were bummed not to see any, but then on our drive back from Cape Tribulation, my front seat really came in handy as about a quarter mile up the road I spotted a big black bird crossing the road, unmistakably a cassowary. Adrian hit the gas, but by the time we caught up it had disappeared into the bush. (The bush: as I had Megan explain it to me, is Australian woods, distinct from forests or the woods but effectively the same thing.) Still, it was a thrill that stayed with me.

We stopped at a local ice cream shop with homemade treats from local fruits. Here we saw a missing person sign of a Canadian man whose abandoned car we had just passed on the side of the road; pretty scary and a reminder of the deep wilderness we were in. There were a few more stops at scenic lookouts, including one in the beach town Port Douglas for an awesome sunset. We chatted a lot on the way back as it got dark, comparing cultures and sharing music, before departing at our various drop off spots with a hug from Adrian and a wave goodbye to our group. It was an amazing day in an amazing part of the world!

I wrote this a little out of order, so skipping ahead past my dive tour, I spent my last night and morning in Australia reflecting on what an amazing time I’ve had in this country. I’m a little sad and nostalgic to leave – it feels like the end of an epic vacation filled with adventures and memories. But of course, I’m only halfway through. On to New Zealand!