This weekend we headed out to the rainforest. My host Rob had another couch surfer coming over. Bekran is a Turkish doctor who is traveling to an amazing amount of places in 8 months. He is keeping a blog which even won some awards back in Turkey. I’d recommend having a peak at his blog over here: http://bekransarsilmaz.com/
So after about a 2 hour drive we came across a river we could only cross by ferry. This is where the actual rain forest begins. We headed in and soon found our first place to go for a swim. A nice cold river with really clear water. After that refreshment we were ready for some ice cream.
A local family makes their own ice cream. There are many different flavors, but there are never any queues since you don’t get to pick a flavor. You may say “one ice cream please” and get the 4 flavors of that day, easy as that. I don’t remember the flavors, but they were exotic. One fruit tasted like chocolate (but it wasn’t!).
The next stop was a sacred place for native women to bath in. We only went down for a quick look (there were no women bathing there). It was called the blue hole, cause the water is really that blue. And about a hundred yards from there, there was the green hole. That’s the sacred place for men. You may only go in once you get invited by the natives who live there. Apparently the mayor got invited to swim in the blue hole, and did. This inside knowledge is provided by my host, he’s working as the right hand of mayor of cairns. I’ve had some great insights into local government these last two weeks.
After all this sight seeing, we got hungry. We went to Mason’s cafe, a small place run by a family. They had a nice place to swim in their back yard. Which involved a rope hanging from a tree. After some encouragement from Bekran and Rob I went for it. Great fun, definitely should have done that more as a kid. The water again was cold (which is a welcome surprise in this heat) and very clear. Very refreshing to swim in, and no danger of deadly jellyfish.
Next up, was a great beach. Very tempting to go in the water, but again, way too dangerous. There was just one local swimming there, we’ve established that he must be mad. There was enough entertainment, Rob caught a small sand crab with his bare hands.
On the way back we stopped at Port Douglas for some dinner at the pub which also featured some live music. A long day, which exhausted me and made me feel like the proper excuse to sleep in the next day.
Bekran was only staying for two nights, so I felt like we needed to head for a bar the second night. We ended up in the local bar in Trinity Beach on a Sunday night. Barely anyone there, but the pints were good and the chat got better as we finished each one.
Another surfer arrived. Stephan from Austria. We decided that getting some beers and drinking them in the pool (which is part of the apartment complex) was a good way to spend our day. After I had to pack my bag. Tomorrow morning I will have to get up at 5:30 to get into Cairns on time. Getting the Greyhound bus towards Airlie Beach. There I will sleep for one night, then I get on this sail ship.
The ship will set sail towards the Whitsundays Islands, which are supposed to be amazing. We will sleep on the ship for two nights, should be fun. If there is no update in about a week, I stranded on a tropical island. Bit like Lost.
