The pools at the base of Alexandria falls are lovely. . .
. . .at least according to our guidebook.
The guidebook also mentioned that the falls were inaccessable in the wet season (i.e., now). Undetered, Mike, Anthony and I endeavored to reach them last Wednesday.
We drove up to Port Douglas on Tuesday in my new '95 Ford Falcon LongReach GLI Panel Van. It is bitching. Port Douglas was a welcome quiet respite from the tourist-prepackaged schlockfest that is Cairns. It gets quite busy in the dry season, but right now it was hot and damp and peaceful. Dinners were spent at the local community club overlooking the river, eating steaks and fish and drinking pitchers of VB (despite their boozy nature, Australians brew generally horrible beer). Evenings were spend lazing in the hostel pool and chatting with the other guests into the evening (Anthony got crushed on a cute but cold Dutch girl).
Just north of Port Douglas is the Daintree Rainforest, a World Heritage site and a very diverse and unique biome. We drove up there Wednesday from Port Douglas looking for a good bushwalk to get us some rainforest action. In perfect style, nothing quite worked out the way we would have planned. Acorrding to the book, the trail starts on the grounds of a forest resort, you're meant to check in at the front desk for clearance to get through their property and onto the trail. No dice. "That's being changed in the next guidebook, besides, the trail is blocked," said the proprietor. Instead, we're told to go back a bit down the road to a pullout, drive down to the creekside, park there and hike up the stream past their property and back to the trail.
What followed was several hours of slow daylight progress, sloshing up the chest-deep-at-times creek, following side trails into nothingness (save deadly brambles, mosquito clouds and leech breeding grounds). After having just too much fun and not enough progress, we realized that we'd never make the falls before dark, much less before we got hungry. We sloshed back down stream, happy to return to our car and find some grub.
We managed to explore a bit more of the Daintree from our car, including a few deserted stormy beaches.
Internet cafe is closing now. Pics will be up when I find a good uplink. Just got back from a 3 day overnight scuba trip, probably leaving Cairns tomorrow for the Atherton Tablelands. More to come. . .
The guidebook also mentioned that the falls were inaccessable in the wet season (i.e., now). Undetered, Mike, Anthony and I endeavored to reach them last Wednesday.
We drove up to Port Douglas on Tuesday in my new '95 Ford Falcon LongReach GLI Panel Van. It is bitching. Port Douglas was a welcome quiet respite from the tourist-prepackaged schlockfest that is Cairns. It gets quite busy in the dry season, but right now it was hot and damp and peaceful. Dinners were spent at the local community club overlooking the river, eating steaks and fish and drinking pitchers of VB (despite their boozy nature, Australians brew generally horrible beer). Evenings were spend lazing in the hostel pool and chatting with the other guests into the evening (Anthony got crushed on a cute but cold Dutch girl).
Just north of Port Douglas is the Daintree Rainforest, a World Heritage site and a very diverse and unique biome. We drove up there Wednesday from Port Douglas looking for a good bushwalk to get us some rainforest action. In perfect style, nothing quite worked out the way we would have planned. Acorrding to the book, the trail starts on the grounds of a forest resort, you're meant to check in at the front desk for clearance to get through their property and onto the trail. No dice. "That's being changed in the next guidebook, besides, the trail is blocked," said the proprietor. Instead, we're told to go back a bit down the road to a pullout, drive down to the creekside, park there and hike up the stream past their property and back to the trail.
What followed was several hours of slow daylight progress, sloshing up the chest-deep-at-times creek, following side trails into nothingness (save deadly brambles, mosquito clouds and leech breeding grounds). After having just too much fun and not enough progress, we realized that we'd never make the falls before dark, much less before we got hungry. We sloshed back down stream, happy to return to our car and find some grub.
We managed to explore a bit more of the Daintree from our car, including a few deserted stormy beaches.
Internet cafe is closing now. Pics will be up when I find a good uplink. Just got back from a 3 day overnight scuba trip, probably leaving Cairns tomorrow for the Atherton Tablelands. More to come. . .
posted by Scottley at 1:15 AM
4 Comments:
Every time you write about getting lost on some trail, it brings back haunting memories.
- T J or not T J that is the question.
PS: I had requested you to post some amateur porn earlier... would you at least think about it?
Rumour has it that Ant wasn't the only one to get completely shut down by a cute girl. Rumour has it someone wrote poetry for some alleged girl, and was shut down equally harshly.
Might have been just a rumour though. :)
Sounds like you've already had some pretty "bitching" adventures and you've just started. Let's hope that it is signs of things to come! Only thing you've missed so far Stateside: Cheney shooting someone in the face.
-tony
Bummer that you're there in the rainy season. There's some really pretty falls up in the Tablelands, though. If you want a really hokey tourist experience, go to the Djabugai aboriginal cultural center, just north of cairns. It's quite funny, and a little sad how they present themselves to the white tourists.
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