So this morning we all woke up nice and early, packed our bags, and eagerly waited for our shuttle to come and take us to our very first rainforest and waterfalls tour. Shuttles came and left and there the three of us were sitting on the curb waiting.
Ten minutes after we were told they would be there we hop onto our shuttle bus and take our seats. And then it dawns on me... everyone on the bus was much older than the group of girls I was traveling with. Much older. Like hearing aid older. But, I shrugged it off. There are a lot of field biologists and conservationists that do these types of things their entire lives. Perhaps we were with a group of those sorts of people?
But then I saw the bus driver put a head set on and he began narrating as we cruised around town. That's when I knew. Something wasn't quite right.
We set off towards the mountains. I heard the man mumble things about the old highway and the new highway and cattle and stuff.... I can't quite remember. We made it to a lookout point and that's when we sent Katie to ask the man what happened. He said that we got switched to his tour.
After the lookout we hopped back on the bus and headed towards Lake Barrine. Which by the way, is an extinct volcano! And the lake is completely formed by rain water! I think that's pretty neat. At the lake we sat down for morning tea of scones with jam and cream and coffee. After tea we set out for our lake cruise!!! It was pretty neat, I have to admit. The lake was practically crystal clear. We were able to see all of the rain forest that had fallen into the lake. You could see the roots of the lillies and the trunks of fallen trees. My favorite part was the animals that we saw. We saw a mating pair of Amethystine Pythons, which are in fact Australia's largest snake reaching lengths of 10-16 feet! That was pretty cool to see. And because we could see through the water I saw about a dozen soft shelled snapping turtles and a hand full of eels, along with a couple of fish.
After the lake cruise we headed to a cattle farm. Why? I don't know. But we did manage to see a freshwater croc soaking up the sun on a river off the road. Apparently freshies, as they are called, aren't as aggressive as their salt water cousins and the girl who grew up on the cattle farm grew up swimming in the river that the freshies lived in. Crazy. Now I would never be able to do that in a million years. Never.
We had lunch at the cattle place. It was a pretty property and had a vine of flowers growing over a type of wood canopy. While we were walking through it though, I noticed a very large and fuzzy brown spider, about as big as my pinky. ;laihd f;agjkabkjabdv Just thinking about it makes me queezy!
After the cattle ranch we headed back to the bus and drove to a banana plantation! Of all places. And this one survived Cyclone Yasi. We saw banana trees and how bananas grow. We even got to eat a banana smoothie (the best I've ever had) and a free banana. Free bananas are a big deal in Australia right now because the cyclones wiped out so many of the plantations. It was my first banana since I have been here.
And then we drove home.
No real rainforest tour. Oh, and at some point we saw one water fall. Kind of a let down because it wasn't what we were expecting. But, it's nice to see the types of tours that old people sign up for :)
Turns out the company we scheduled the rainforest tour with dropped the tour and gave us to a AAA tour of the Queensland Tablelands. None of us are very happy about that, but we made the best out of it and had fun throughout the day. We even enjoyed some parts of the tour. But, I will call up Oz Experience and attempt to get my monies back.
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