The Daintree

The end of the line (as far north as we're going on the east coast) for us was the Daintree Rainforest, which was probably one of my favorite areas we've been to on this trip. I loved the cable-ferry crossing of the Daintree River to reach the upper parts of the forest, and I just in general love the atmosphere of the jungle. The beautiful flowers...

 

...and fruit tree orchards with misty rainforested mountains as their backdrop...

...complete with these ENORMOUS bats (which I assume are fruit bats, since they were hanging out in fruit trees?).

Even more fun animal crossing signs up here, and though we didn't see any turtles traversing the road...

...we did see two southern cassowary crossing! This is so exciting, as this species is very endangered (only about 1000 animals remaining), and they're just plain awesome-looking. SR and I are both baffled how neither of us managed to get a clear, good picture of either of them when they walked leisurely past, directly in front of our vehicle, as if to invite us to photograph them. But this is the best I've got.

We spent a lot of time exploring the rainforest-lined beaches of the coast. I particularly love how the mangrove roots are fully exposed at low tide.

SR particularly loved the ropes we kept finding hung from high trees for people to swing on.

This pic, from the Alexandra viewpoint just north of the Daintree River, is special in that it shows the only place in the world where two World Heritage-listed areas abut each other: the Wet Tropics of the Daintree cascading down into the Great Barrier Reef shore. Pretty much my idea of heaven.

And by the time we crossed back south of the Daintree, the weather was FINALLY starting to lift, with some promising sun poking through the persistent clouds of the past week...