Which side are we on?

Dad and I just returned from two and a half days and at least 300 kilometers driven. Most recently, we had a late lunch in a restaurant on stilts, where I felt like a tree kanragoo while eating – we were so high up in the trees! Although they don’t normally eat Caesar salad from tables covered with white cloths, so there is a significant difference there.

Yes, a tree kangaroo is a real animal, and it is native to the rainforest in Far North Queensland, where we have spent the past few days driving around, sweating, getting rained on, and eating. Dad wanted to see the Great Barrier Reef during his visit, so I decided that we were going to visit the rainforest as a contrast to my earlier visit to the Outback.

It certainly is quite different – we’re here during the rainy season and it is humid, wet, and rainy. Thankfully today didn’t rain much, and we went to go see Mossman Gorge, a big river gorge in traditional Aboriginal territory. There is a big bluff overlooking the gorge, and the Aboriginal owners believe that the bluff keeps out the evil spirit (i.e. keeps the evil on the other side of the bluff) and protects them on the gorge side.

The gorge itself has crisp, cool water to swim in (without any jellyfish or crocodiles) and we did that almost as soon as we arrived off the little bus that takes you from the visitors’ centre to the gorge walk (which was the first time we didn’t transport ourselves since we got on the plane). After cooling off from the muggy heat (we started sweating on our walk to get coffee), we eventually ventured out to the gorge walk.

Our hotel hostess recommended that we walk counterclockwise around the trail. I’m not sure why she did this given that the signs, and everyone else, pointed the opposite direction, but I’m glad she did. They weren’t that many people on the trail anyway, but going the other way let us be on our own for the majority of the walk, which meant we got to stumble upon little ponds and huge behemoth trees with weird roots all by ourselves. It also meant that when we weren’t chatting, we had the sound of our footsteps and a whole lot of rain forest noise. The birds (which sound a lot better here than in New South Wales), the rain drops, the wild brush turkeys walking by, and the cicadas contributed to our soundtrack, and we heard that most of the day. It was absolutely lovely to hear only natural sounds without any of the normal distractions.

Yesterday we drove up to Cape Tribulation, which is about 100 km north of where we are staying and was named by Captain Cook after his boat crashed on the reef. Too bad he was in such a sour mood when he made it there – it’s a gorgeous sandy beach with great green mountains and puffy white clouds (or storm clouds) all around. The only downside is that you can’t swim in the ocean during this time of year because there are stingers in the water – all the beaches have bottles of vinegar to pour on your wounds in case you get stung.

Dad drove the whole way up to Cape Trib on a windy, two lane road and did a great job, despite the fact that he was driving “on the wrong side of the road” and kept asking me which side he needed to turn onto. Plus he had to handle some finicky roundabouts and could never figure out which way he needed to look before turning. We also crossed some train tracks while the lights were flashing – did I say he was a good driver? Maybe I need to rethink.

We never took many driving trips when I was growing up, so I was a little surprised by how much fun we both had at driving around, stopping at random boardwalks and beaches and lookouts and enjoying the natural setting. We found some good radio stations (in the middle of the rainforest) and talked about everything from the landscape to who influences car purchases more, men or women.

We also stopped at an ice cream place (where I ordered mango juice because mangoes are infinitely better than ice cream and better than most other things on earth) and started talking to a couple from Perth, who told us about the best restaurant in town. We made reservations for 8.45 pm tonight so we both have time to write blogs before dinner.

After finishing up at the ice cream place yesterday, where it was raining, we got back in the car to drive to our hotel, and that’s when the sky opened up and we got pelted. It might be more accurate to say that we drove our car directly through the raincloud – all other features of the landscape disappeared. This is normally a frightening occurrence made more so when you are driving on the wrong side of the road, at the end of the day, behind a car which has decided not to turn its lights on.

In the end we made it home, and today was less rainy, although it’s making up for it tonight and sounds quite wet outside. That doesn’t matter because we have a reservation at the best place in town, and Dad borrowed/stole an umbrella from the hotel so we will hopefully be able to make it there mostly dry!