Mossman Gorge

We’re down to our last full day in Port Douglas, and hoping to get in a crocodile tour before the temperature heats up, we grab a quick breakfast and head back to Daintree Village. There are a host of places with boats on the river so we just pick the first one we see. In turns out to not matter a whole lot, as after we’ve paid we learn this is pretty much the worst time of year to see crocodiles in Queensland (a combo of the water being warm and breeding season). We do see on medium sized croc resting up under a ledge, and a tiny eighteen month old sunning itself on a log, but that’s about it. Nevertheless, we’re in Australia, we’ve seen crocodiles, put a check in the box.

The last stop on our list is Mossman Gorge. It is the closest part of the rainforest to Port Douglas so gets the most tour groups, but it supposedly has a good swimming hole, which Joey is very excited about.

The area around Port Douglas is sugar cane country and this is harvesting season, so as we’ve been driving around the past few days we’ve noticed a fair number of trucks and trains loaded up with cane. Today, however, we pass a farm when the big machines are in the field doing the actually cutting. Having grown up in a farm town, it’s interesting to watch how quickly a towering field of sugar cane turns into nothing more than stumps.

Mossman Gorge is pretty much as advertised. A short walk in is the swimming hole, very much like Carlos’ Place in Puerto Rico that the boys enjoyed so much. We spend a few hours scrambling over rocks and floating through the rapids before moving on to a short loop through the rainforest. We’ve seen a lot of rainforest this past week so not everyone is fully on board, but a month from now, when it’s cold and rainy in Seattle, we’ll be wishing we had the option.

For the number of tour busses in the parking lot, there are surprisingly few people willing to walk a couple kilometers and we have the place more or less to ourselves (to the point of almost being eerie). Along the trail there are a bunch of places where it looks like something has been digging. The source is unclear, but wild pigs are quite common here and I know they aren’t particularly pleasant to meet up with. This is one case where having more people around might actually be a good thing, and not really knowing what might be out there, I crank up the Spidey Senses a little. However, knowing that a wild Angela is equally, if not more dangerous than a wild pig, I opt not to share this nugget of info with my fellow travelers.

Back in the car we make a quick stop at the supermarket, where Joey finds his new crack cocaine – double thick vanilla custard. The tub we walk it with is something most people probably use to whip up a couple dozen tarts for a dinner party, but paired up with a plastic spoon, it’s a single serving for a suddenly very quiet passenger in the back seat.

Tomorrow we’re off to the reef and then moving on to Cairns. It has been a whirlwind few days, so much so that we realize we haven’t even been to the pool or the beach here even though they are both just steps away from our room. It seems like that’s a good thing though.