Cairns

After our big road trip we stayed in Cairns for four days with Olli and Becky and their two dogs. On our first day we went snorkelling on The Great Barrier Reef on a trip we booked through Olli's travel agency Travel Finns. He also helped us book our Jucy van. On the reef we saw an amazing amount of very interesting corals and colourful fish, that really made us think about getting an underwater camera someday. It also most conveniently happened to be Ville's 30th birthday so in the evening we went to Macalister Brewing Company to try some craft beer.

On our second day we went fishing with some friends of Olli and Becky. We went to a beautiful place called Big Sands and even got to experience a short leg of 4-wheel driving on the sand on our way down to the river. Here we spent half the day swimming, fishing and just sitting on the sand. And Ville even caught a fish called Sooty Grunter!

On our third day we didn't do much, except some planning for our last month of travelling. In the evening we had an amazing seafood dinner with prawns, mud crab and bugs. They were delicious!

On our last day we went on a tour to the Tablelands just a bit inlands from Cairns. We stopped to look at some huge trees (too big to be photographed properly with our camera), swimming in a crater, eating delicious scones and local cheese and gazing at nice waterfalls and the beautiful landscape.

East Coast Australia Road Trip, Part IV

The last two nights of our road trip we spent in the Daintree National Park, and that was so beautiful it's worth a whole blog post.

On our way up we took a small detour to Shannonvale Tropical Fruit Winery, who makes their wine using fruits instead of grapes. And they were actually very good wines! And the views from the nearby hill was stunning. Here we also met a 75-year-old women who was originally from Finland but who had been living abroad since she was 15. Last year she climbed to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro! A real iron-granny!

To enter Daintree you have to cross the Daintree river with a ferry. And the way the landscape changes during that 300m ferry ride is amazing. First you are surrounded by sugar cane fields and then you are suddenly in the middle of the rainforest!

Daintree is one of the oldest rainforests in the world. And it was amazing. So versatile with a lot of different plants and animals, including some very loud flying foxes (very big bats).

And so photogenic!

We were also camping next to a nice, long and quiet beach. There were like a thousand small crabs on the beach who all made these patterns with pearls of sand. So all the darker areas on the sand you can see in the pictures are all just sandpearls.

We didn't see any crocodiles during our road trip but we did taste them in a burger and a croc-o-dog (hot dog).

And just as we were about to leave Daintree we spotted a cassowary with its' baby!

Then it was time to follow the beautiful coastal road a little bit back south. We stopped at Port Douglas for a last campervan lunch and a swim.

Exactly 4234 km later we arrived in Cairns, just as scheduled. Goodbye Jucy van! We had such a great time driving around with you! Maybe we'll see you again!

East Coast Australia Road Trip, Part III

Next up along the coast was Airlie Beach. A chic place with nice boats to look at. We especially liked to stroll down the coastal boardwalk and look at the ocean on one side and nature and modern houses on the other side. The sunset was also stunning.

Here we also spotted a Honeyeater - a bird that much resembles a humming bird. Can you spot it in the picture?

After Airlie Beach we did a quick stop at Bowen that we had heard had good snorkeling spots just off shore. Unfortunately the sea was so rough that it stirred up so much sand that the visibility was so poor that we didn't really see much interesting. We did see a big mango on the way, though!

During the summer months you can't really swim in the ocean in the northern parts of the coastline since there's very dangerous stingers (jellyfish) in the water. There's also always the risk that you meet a crocodile during your swim. Therefore a lot of towns have their own lagoons (swimming pools) where it's safe to swim. We got acquainted with quite a few of them on our way. One of them was in Townsville, where we headed next. This was quite a small one but good for chilling.

Just south of Mission Beach you find a lovely seaside town called Cardwell. The town was compleately destroyed by a cyclone in 2011, but there was no signs left of that now. Here we just stopped for an ice cream but as we were walking along the pier you can see in the picture we were lucky to see a glimpse of a sea turtle as it came up for air! Probably should have stopped for ice cream more often during the way...

Then we also stopped at Alligators Nest just outside Tully to have lunch with Olli and Becky with whom we were going to stay in Cairns. Despite the name this was a very nice place to swim and although the water in the river was a little bit chilly it was very refreshing.

On Mission Beach we mainly wandered up and down the beach looking at everything the sea had brought in. Also admiring the beautiful patterns the small crabs on the beach had made with pearls of sand.

On the north side of Mission Beach we had a look at the Babinda Boulders, a river with really interesting stone formations: