The scheme of the holiday was to have one busy day followed by one slightly more relaxing day. After the big snorkelling adventure on Monday, Tuesday was a "relaxing" day!
The day started with the perfect sunrise - clear blue skies as far as the eye could see. Pity we weren't snorkelling today!
We picked up a hire car from Thrifty in Port Douglas. It was a great car. Only had about 27,000 on the clock. I think it was a Mitsubishi or something. Very nice to drive and it was soooo good to have cruise control again! (I smashed the cruise control buttons off my steering wheel one day when I went for my horn in a hurry and missed ...)
After a leisurely breakfast we drove down to The Rainforest Habitat Wildlife Sanctuary. I thought it looked a but like a poor man's Healesville Sanctuary so I had low expectations going in. Turns out ... it's a pretty cool spot! We ended up spending the whole morning there and actually planned to go back (you get a three day pass) but ended up forgetting.
The Sanctuary was split into three main sections: The Wetlands, the Rainforest and the Grasslands.
We hit the Wetlands first and the whole thing was in a huge net because of the birds. There were hundreds of the buggers. From the little cute ones - one of which was so friendly he sat on my finger for a few photos - to the rather large and scary looking Cassowary.
I liked the parrots. There were a few different types and the colours were beautiful. There were also a lot of ducks - but ducks are boring. Even if they can fly!
We eventually headed over to the Rain Forest. Lots more birds - this time we saw some Bush Stone Curlews which reminded of us of our Grange home near Brisbane because we ended up with a Curlew trapped under our house one evening. There were some Kingfishers and a Tawny Frogmouth sitting in an enclosure near the entrance and while we were taking photos of them a keeper turned up with a small fresh water crocodile.
That croc was the most patient animal I have ever seen! He had a bit of tape around his snout so he couldn't hurt anyone anyway - but he sat quiet still while a bunch of kids (myself included) patted, poked and stroked him while the keeper did his spiel.
The Grasslands were last, and probably the most fun. We bought some Kangaroo food - which is poorly named since there are no kangaroos that far north - and wandered around being accosted by various forms of wallaby! There were even a few carrying joeys which were really cute. The bloody ducks though - they'd come running in, shoulder the wallabies out of the way and steal all the food.
On the way out we passed one of the biggest Croc's I've ever seen - and we've been to Australia Zoo! He (or she) was massive. Wouldn't like to see that coming out of a creek in my direction!
After lunch we headed into Cairns. Cairns is about an hours drive south of Port Douglas. The coast is gorgeous but most of the beaches are empty because tehre is no where to park and no paths down to them anyway. So we just cruised past miles of empty beaches.
We stopped at Palm Cove which is a little north of Cairns. The beaches there were just as nice, the water just as blue but there were plenty of people soaking up the sun. Palm Cove also has huge paperbark trees that are protected so it isn't unusual to see a building built around the trees!
Once you get into Cairns the beaches turn into mudflats in a lot of places. There is a man made beach near the centre of Cairns which has just been reopened after a major facelift. It looks very nice now and has a sandy bottom. No idea what it was like before and we only knew it had been recently refurbished because it was on the local news on Monday night.
Cairns is a hole. There's no nice way to put it. It's yuck. We drove around it a bit and then moved on. Nothing nice to see or do in Cairns Central!
We were going to head out to Mareeba - no idea why but that was the idea - only I managed to get lost when I ended up in the wrong lane. Somehow we ended up heading to Gordonvale instead. Cairns has nothing on Gordonvale! :)
So after our unanticipated trip to Gordonvale, we headed back up the coast to Port Douglas for the evening. It starts getting dark around 5:30pm.
We had to have an early night though because Wednesday was a BIG day and we had to be up and moving by 5am!