Rainforest

13-3-2010 (Saturday)

Today is our trip to the rainforest and the rainforest town of Kuranda. But first we had breakfast in the hotel again. A Japanese waiter cleaned Sharai’s nose and we felt a little awkward at first, but he really liked doing it.
Just before our pick up for the tour Zeb and Sharai had over 15 Japanese woman applauding, laughing and taking pictures with and of them.
Like in the gold coast here in Cairns most tourist are Asian. Zeb and Sharai are like a first class attraction to them. Everywhere we are going, people take pictures of them and play with them.

We were picked up by a van, on which we were the only people, that dropped us at the bottom of the skyrail (http://www.skyrail.com.au/). The cable car is 7,5 km long and takes you with two stops over the rainforest and the river to Kuranda. On the first stop we took a nice little walk through the rainforest, the next stop was next to the river and it’s beautiful waterfalls: Barron Waterfalls.
On this station we saw the falls from three different lookout points. Leaving this station in our cable car we saw a giant spider hanging (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_silk_orb-weaver ), especially for Sharon.
The last stop is Kuranda. We walked around the town and had lunch with a view on the rainforest. It has a lot of aboriginal stuff, but seems all really touristic to us.

Our trip back was with the scenic railway (http://www.ksr.com.au). The railway was build some 120 years ago. It took us back in 1,5 hours to Cairns central were our “private” driver was waiting. The trip with the train was really beautiful. We had two stops, one overlooking the falls again and one in a place called Freshwater.
Zeb played with two 25 year old Japanese girls who took turn to have their picture made with him.

Back in Cairns the driver dropped us of at a Chinese restaurant that was recommended by the Footprint guide. The place is called Chinese Café and was really good, with nice Peking Duck.
We walked back to the hotel and stopped at a Aboriginal Art gallery and at the ice cream parlor.

Back at the hotel Zeb and Joey skyped. The 2 boys really miss each other so much. We wonder how they will react once they see one another again.

Sharon packed the stuff, cause tomorrow we will be heading for Port Douglas.