Travel del Sol: Reef and Rainforest

A week and a half into our Australia journey, and we have done so much, and spent sooo much money. I don’t know how we can ever top our experiences here, or how we can cut down on the spending.

Great Barrier Reef was more than I ever expected. I have never really done proper snorkeling in the past, so having this as my first experience was maybe not wise, as it will never be the same anywhere else. The colours, the corals, the fish, it was breathtaking (and sometimes forgetting I was snorkeling, I did smile under water or open my mouth in amazement, and then very quickly out of breath…).

I did not know that fish came in so many of my favourite colours; blue, turquoise!,, blue-green… Beautiful! At one moment I was thinking, maybe I should have a fish tank at home, but no, luckily I came to my senses, it will not be as good. And of course a fish tank will not accommodate the two big sharks we swam over at one of our snorkeling sites. I was guessing they were about 1 metre long, but talking to the biologist onboard the boat, he confirmed that these sharks were between 1,60 -1,70 m long. Torkilds size in other words!

Talking of Tork, he did his first dive on our day at the reef. He had to go through a long info session about how you can easily make mistakes, and basically kill yourself while diving (he keeps talking about how easy it is to puncture one’s lungs while diving…), but he still dived in style!

Just back from a two nights stay in the Daintree Rainforest. To have a bit of contrast we went from staying in an apartment at a resort with 3 swimming pools, to staying in swag tents in a cheap campsite. Interesting experience, especially wading through the cane toads to go to the communal bathrooms at night. But the Daintree Rainforest and Cape Tribulation was all worth it. We did a day of homeschooling at a discovery centre, on canopy walks, learning about some of the different trees, plants, vines, birds, butterflies, and we kept looking out for the local Cassowary. We did see some amazing butterflies; Blue Ulysses, Metallic Starling, White lipped Green Tree Frog, big unidentified lizard, but no cassowary. The Cassowary is a huge bird, similar to an Ostrich, they can be as tall as 2 meters, and weigh about 60 kilo. They are endangered, and local to the Daintree Rainforest. They also tend to run out onto the roads, just like our elks, so there are warning road signs everywhere.

Today we went on another scary adventure. Crocodile Safari! The banks of the Daintree river were searched for any signs of crocodiles, and we got lucky. At the end of the safari we had spotted 5 crocodiles, from a small 20 month old baby, to a 4 meter long female. All of them staring straight at us from the river edge a few meters away. As an extra bonus we did see a little python snake curled up on a branch just above our heads.

While we are counting animals, I must not forget that on our little stay in Melbourne we actually saw 1 Koala and about 15 Kangaroos without going to the zoo. Did not expect that on our little city break in Melbourne, but on a Sunday walk just outside the city, that is apparently quite normal!