WILDLIFE! Friday, 19 May

Today was definitely wildlife day. We spent Thursday night deep in the rain forest, and even without A/C we were comfortable. Of course, we and all our belongings were clammy-wet, but we'll be back in A/C soon and all will dry out. We hope.

The day started with coffee and fruit -- farm-fresh grapefruit, mangosteens, and passion fruit. We packed up and returned to the farmhouse to check out, and there was an adult male cassowary with two chicks in tow nosing around the deck eating fallen soursop fruits. The cassowary is an endangered species (only around 1200 left), so it was a spectacular treat two see an adult and two young that close up. It's got a dangerous set of claws that it can use to disembowel attackers. one of the owner's dogs bore the scars from an altercation with one and it wasn't pretty.

We drove south from Cape Tribulation along Captain Cook's Highway and stopped at the Dubaji Boardwalk, a nature walk through a mangrove forest/swamp that illustrated the transition from forest to the ocean. It's also the place where two UN World Heritage Areas intersect -- the Daintree rain forest and the Great Barrier Reef. I got some good photos of a peppermint stick insect. This creature feeds on sedges at the edge of the swamp and to deter predators it emits a noxious, irritating liquid that smells like peppermint.

Heading farther on, we stopped at a rainforest interpretive center that included a boardwalk through the various levels of the rainforest, from the ground up to the canopy. We were hot and sticky from all our walking and climbing so we stopped off at the center's coffee shop for a capuccino & Gatorade and a chat about cassowaries with the staff.

'Round about 4:00, we checked in to the Daintree Mangroves Wildlife Sanctuary, where we'll be spending Fri and Sat nights. We took a quick tour of the sanctuary before we cleaned up for dinner. I'll add more about this place next time, but I assure you it will all be good. Our host showed us up-close-and-personal how terrifying the Australian Saltwater Crocodile can be. She threw a couple of pebbles into a pond beneath a boardwalk we were on and the water exploded with the jaws of a huge male croc leaping from the water. Except for a small stream of bubbles, there had been no indication of his presence. April caught it on video. We saw two baby marsupials (joeys): a Euro (or wallaroo) and an eastern grey kangaroo. They were carried around in hand-sewn pouches and were about as cute as anything I've seen. We saw many birds and took many photos - more next time!