Cairns: Jet Lag and Jungles.

Cairns:

Jet Lag and Jungles.

What’s the first thing you do when you arrive at your hostel after a few flights across the world? You book the first tour suggested to you at the first tour shop you enter. The guy selling you the tour will no doubt be from Essex. You’ll accept it because you're tired, overexcited, and can’t get used to thousands of giant fruit bats gliding overhead, like you’ve just time-travelled to the apocalypse.
Welcome to Cairns.
This was our first stop in Australia, and it couldn’t have been further away from home, literally and figuratively. Luckily for us, most things in Cairns are kick-ass cool, and the tour of the Daintree Rainforest was no exception. The only uncool thing in Cairns is the temperature. Cairns' heat and humidity are next level, and we went in spring…

With the Daintree Rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef on its doorstep, it’s very hard to think of a reason not to visit. I would even go during peak summer heat to experience it.

The first tour we did took us to explore the Daintree. We booked this tour because our camper van wasn't ready for another couple of days. The tour took us to three different activities with several locations and viewpoints to stop at along the way. The tour was definitely worth it, and was a very good jet-lag buy. The only issue I have with any tour is that you have to stick to their schedules. Many of these places I could have stayed at for a lot longer, especially as I was seeing it all for the first time. With a vehicle, you would be able to easily travel to all these locations yourself. The first stop was Wildlife Habitat: www.wildlifehabitat.com.au. Wildlife Habitat is a Queensland wildlife park that focuses on animal conservation and observation. There are a variety of colorful birds, kangaroos, wallabies, saltwater crocodiles, and lots more to be seen here. It was really cool to see all the efforts going into helping the residents of the Daintree Rainforest. It was also super dope to see a saltwater crocodile up close and personal.

We then went on a rainforest walk where, in typical Australian fashion, we learned about a tree, Dendrocnide moroides, that can cause severe stings. Naturally, the tree's nickname is the stinger tree, and it can cause severe pain for months and has also caused death. We were then told about a separate tree that can blind you… and people complain about the animals! Not long after this, we stopped off for lunch and went for a swim in a lagoon. This is where the tour guide's knowledge is vital because in Cairns, you are very much in croc country. At almost every body of water, you’ll come across signs warning about crocodiles being in the water. Our tour guide even told us that the lagoon they used to visit is now off the tour because someone was attacked. This lagoon was too small for a salty, but if I wasn't on a tour, I wouldn’t have been getting in, that’s for sure.

The final leg of our tour was a river cruise with Solar Whisper: solarwhisper.com. Our skipper was an absolute legend - highly knowledgeable, infectiously funny, and not afraid to tell you the true beautiful, but savage nature of the jungle. As we glided down the river, I struck up a conversation with Daniel, a fellow adventurer, and we couldn't resist discussing our survival rate if we were to swim across the water. We both assumed that although there were crocodiles in the water, they probably wouldn’t be right underneath us and put our chances of making it to the other side at a solid 90%.

Our tour guide soon put us in our place, revealing that these waters were infested with crocs every 100 metres or so. He warned us that if we took the plunge, we would be eaten and very quickly at that. And to hammer home his point, a scaly creature suddenly popped its head out of the murky water under the low hanging trees. Well it wasn’t like I was ever going to get anyway.

As we continued on our journey, we marveled at the sights and sounds of the Daintree Rainforest. We saw snakes coiled up in the branches of trees that hung over the river, and spotted a stunning array of birds, including the aptly named Butcher Bird, notorious for impaling its prey on a twig and stripping the meat off. How Australian.