Cairns & Cape Tribulation (E)

It was not easy leaving Asia after 4.5 wonderful months exploring different countries & cultures, tasting fantastic food and meeting lots of lovely locals & travellers. But finally it was time to say goodbye to Asia with the promise to come back to see more. I could have easily spent the whole year on the continent and would have only scratched the surface.

Fancy some statistics?
I spent 147 days in Asia, 131 hours on buses, 77 hours on trains, 12 hours on boats and 21 hours in the air.

To tune the airplane-statistics I took another long haul flight from Tokyo to Cairns in northeastern Australia. I won’t have time to see much of Australia in only one month but I’ve chosen to concentrate on Asia and South America and use Oceania as a “transit continent”. However one month is still not bad to see some of the beautiful sights along the east coast. A bus pass for the national Greyhound buses gives me enough flexibility to hop on and off on my way to Sydney where another airplane is waiting to bring me to Auckland, New Zealand on June 11.

Most of modern day Cairns is built to cater for tourists who want to see Far North Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef. I took two days “off” without any activity other than relaxing and eating as I had to acclimatise to the tropical weather and the western lifestyle. Most people are travelling up from Sydney to Cairns and spend their last days and money partying big time before flying back home and I was a bit overwhelmed by the whole circus. However I met a bunch of lovely people at the hostel and together we enjoyed the sunny days relaxing on the city’s esplanade.


I decided to book a two-day tour to Cape Tribulation, a quite remote coastal town a few hours north of Cairns, for some rainforest exploration and wildlife spotting. An enthusiastic and very funny tour guide showed us the local flora & fauna where absolutely everything could kill you instantly – the reality was a bit less brutal, we didn’t spot anything too dangerous on our walks through the rainforest. Cape Tribulation itself is a very nice piece of coastline, the beaches are lined with mangrove and palm trees and only very few tourists seem to visit this part of Queensland at this time of year. Sadly swimming wasn’t possible as crocodiles and deadly stingers inhabit these waters. The second day of our tour was spent with more rainforest walking and a cruise on the crocodile infested Daintree River. We were lucky and spotted the biggest crocodile in the area, appropriately named Fat Albert, as well as several smaller crocs.



The next morning was another early start as it was time to discover the Great Barrier Reef. I have heard so much about how beautiful it is and was really looking forward to seeing it myself on a snorkeling tour to the outer reef. The weather conditions were perfect and visibility under water great. I couldn’t really believe what I was seeing - so many kinds and colors of fish, corals and even Nemo showed up. I decided to go for the optional scuba dive and spent another 30 minutes under water without having to get back to the surface to breathe which was a nice experience. It was a really amazing day out with lots of pictures remaining in my brain only as I didn’t have a camera with me…