Horse riding at Cape Trib

I wasn't the kind of girl who was really into horses when I was growing up, but on the very few occasions that I've had an opportunity to ride a horse in the last dozen years, I've loved it.  It's a special treat and, since Cape Tribulation is a special place, I decided to shell out.  It was a perfect Cape Trib experience; through the rainforest then straight out onto the breathtakingly gorgeous Myall Beach, back into the forest where we stopped for a refreshing dip in a natural swimming hole, then across some farmland and back to the stables. Alfie, my horse, was lovely and easy to ride.  It was a joyful couple of hours.

To Cape Tribulation

For someone with a great fondness for both trees and water, Cape Tribulation was an obvious destination.  It is the only place in the world where two World Heritage areas exist side by side: the Daintree Rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef.  I was desperate to see both.

Given that I don't drive, the only way for me to get up there was to join a tour. There are plenty of one day options that go from Port Douglas.  I picked the only one that would allow me to split it in two: go up with the morning of one tour, spend a couple of nights up there and come back with the afternoon of another tour.

The tour with better than I'd expected, largely due to an excellent guide.  The first activity was a croc-spotting cruise on the Daintree River.  I didn't learn anything more than on the Mary River cruise during the Top End Tour, but we did get a good look at both a very big (4m) croc and a tiny baby one, which was cool.  And the river itself was no bad place to spend an hour:

The next stop was for an interpretive rainforest walk.  The forest here was denser than on Hinchinbrook and although I really getting into the thick of it on the Island, as opposed to a boardwalk here, it was good to have a guide to tell us about the different trees and animals around us:

Port Douglas

Heading back north from Cardwell, I had to spend another night in Cairns, which I continued to dislike and couldn't wait to get out of the next day.

Port Douglas, an hour further north, was a joy in comparison and would have been a joy even without comparison. I like it immediately. It is the place in Australia with most millionaires per capita and it feels suitably classy, not to mention expensive. I was still pretty tired from my exertions on Hinchinbrook and so spent a happy afternoon pottering around the town, eating lunch on Four Mile Beach, watching birds in Anzac Park, and soaking up the unhurried environment that comes from being in a tropical Far North Queensland. And just when I thought the day couldn't get any better, I found a hotel screening the French Open on a big outdoor screen. Happy times!

A note about dates

When I first started writing this blog, the dates of the posts corresponded to the date I actually wrote/posted them. Around the time I went off on the Annapurna Circuit, I got hopelessly behind with blogging and am still yet to catch up.

Starting with my posts about Australia, I have been altering the post options so that the date that appears with each entry corresponds to the date that I actually did the activity, not the date that I wrote about it. This post, for example, is being written on July 15th, but is dated June 1st as that is the point that I'm currently up to in terms of recounting my adventures.

I have been handwriting a daily journal plus have a good memory for what I've been doing and how I felt about it, so writing accurately about what I did a month and a half ago isn't be a problem.

Hinchinbrook: Day 4

I was woken at 4am by the sound of rain pounding down on my tent and the consequent realisation that the clothes I'd left out to dry would be anything but. I had been warned that the tent I'd been lent was not waterproof on the bottom and I was swimming in the evidence of that being true (the big piece of thick plastic that I brought to lay under the tent proved thoroughly ineffective). I've no doubt that the sight of me attempting to squeeze myself and all my belongs onto my tiny sleeping mat would have appeared comical to anyone watching, but it didn't seem so funny to me.

Three hours later, I got dressed into soaking clothes, put on my drenched boats and packed away the sopping wet tent and damp through sleeping bag. Thank goodness it was the final day!

I then had a strangely comical showdown with a shoal of fish. As I was filling up my water bottle my bare foot was dangling in the water.  I looked down and saw about twenty trout in a perfect semicircle around my foot, all staring intently at my toe, in a way that seemed, at least to me at that moment, like they were poised for attack or at the very least seriously contemplating the deliciousness of my digits.  Having already had my toe munched on by fish once this holiday, I wasn't keen for a repeat experience and wasted no time removing my foot from the equation.

From the campsite, it was only two hours walk to the point where we were to be picked up ferry, the last hour or so of that along the beach.  It was grey, bleak and drizzly:

We still had an hour after we'd reached the end point until the ferry was due.  I changed into my only remaining dry(ish) clothes, which was of course the cue the clouds were waiting for to unleash their fury.

In conclusion, the walk was absolutely fantastic.  I know I've written more about the mishaps, but that's only because it makes for more entertaining reading.  Most of the time I was just happily ambling along.  For the first couple of days the weather was perfect, and it was only in the last few hours that the rain became a drag. Whatever the case, the scenery was never less than stunning and I relished every moment of being in this totally unspoiled environment.  One of the main reasons I'd come half way round the world to Australia was to really get into the rainforest and this was an excellent way to do it.  The introduction video we'd watched at the Cardwell information centre before setting out promised that we'd feel 'close to nature'.  It's cheesy but true.

Whilst requiring neither the physical nor mental stamina nor the covering the altitude range of the Annapurna Circuit, the Thorsborne Trail provided a whole other set of challenges and it was wrong of me to be so blase beforehand about how easily I thought I'd cope with it.  For a start, carrying a pack makes a big difference, as does camping and everything that goes in with that. Whilst not long, the trail was extremely technical in places, in ways that the Annapurna Circuit was not.  It wasn't easy walking by any means.  But, like any successfully completed challenge, the Thorsborne Trail was all the more rewarding for its toughness.  I'd do it again in a heartbeat.  It was a definite gap year highlight.