Fully loaded, we've got snacks and supplies

I woke up at around 6.30. At this point it was light outside so I could take a closer look at the booth I was sleeping in and the ones next to it. They were all for boat tours on the river, main attraction being, of course, crocodiles.

The first boats were set to leave at 9.30 so I figured I could probably sleep for about an hour more without anyone coming to disturb me. Nevertheless, I knew that ferry had started running at 6 already so I thought I would try hitchiking again.

No luck for 2 and a half hours.. not that many cars passing by at that time of day. I had started reading a book on the side and was making good progress with that though. Nevertheless, I figured it was good time for a break so I walked up to one of the booths and asked about the tour. 20 bucks for 1 hour and 15 minutes of tour... Seemed reasonable, especially considering they were also serving coffe to the clients - which I quite badly needed at that point.

The tour was well worth the money. I got to see 4 crocodiles in the wild.. including a big fat 4 meter dominant male ("Fat Albert") and about a year-old baby croc hiding in the plants on the riverbank.

Now for some interesting facts about crocodiles. Males keep growing all their lieves. The largest male found in Australia was 8.5 m long (i.e. about the length of my appartment). Females usually grow to 3.5 m and then stop. Other than growth, it is pretty hard to tell males and females apart (besides literally taking a finger to their privates). The scales on the back are like tree trunks in the sense that if you cut one off, you can count the growth rings to get the age of the croc.. along with info about which years were good to him and which were not.Crocodiles are cannibals. Dominant males sometimes let young males set up their territories within theirs because they can then be counted to be there on the bad years where they then constitute a good meal. Chances of a newly hatched croc making it to maturity are about 1 in 50 - most just get eaten, either by sharks, eagles or other crocs. During colder months, crocs eat just once a week or even less often. They live to be about 80 and mature at around 25 - quite like humans. They have very good senses of sight, smell, hearing and vibration sensitivity (to detect ripples in the water) and use all four to hunt. They are also quite intelligent, remmembering patterns (i.e. stopping to let a ferry past). They are also very lazy (so standing back a few meters from the water will usually keep you safe - not because the croc could not get you but because it would be too much of a hassle for him to do so). And yes, only salties (salt-water crocodiles) are dangerous in Australia. Fresh-water ones feed on fish only.

Once I got back from the tour, I raised up my thumb again. After about half an hour, I finally get picked up by a small van. I ask whether they are going to Cape Tribulation. "Yeah, sure", the guy getting out of the car answers. The van was packed pretty full of stuff already, but my bass and backpack still fit in, and thankfully, so do I (but just barely).

I pretty soon realize I have hit the jackpot, when it turns out that
a) they also plan to go hiking in the Daintree park (just like I was)
b) they need to go back to Cairns the next day (just like I do)
c) they even have a spare tent, a spare sleeping bag and even a spare pillow

So more about the gang. I was sharing the backseat with a Taiwanese girl called Amy. Driving was a german girl called Franzisca and the guy who helped with my stuff was a scot named Lewis. Lewis and Franzisca seemed to have just gotten together as a couple, using every opportunity to make out. Amy was also a hitchiker, although a bit more organized than me - she had used a hitchiking website called Gumtree to get picked up instead of just standing on the side of the road like me. All three had been in Australia for months already.

So we first went to the camping grounds to set up a tent and have lunch. They offered to share their food with me and take me back to Cairns the next day, provided I pay them for gas. It was quite a good proposition so of course I took it. This meant handing them the last paper notes of australian dollars I had in my wallet - good, as I now did not need to worry about exchanging them back in estonia.

After lunch we did indeed go for a walk.. two actually, first on a very beautiful beach at Cape Tribulation itself and second a jungle track a bit south of it. The jungle track was a large boardwalk, so uncomparable to the up-close-and-scars-still-visible-personal experience of the previous day. Nevertheless, it was very beautiful. What more, we actually got to see a Cassowary.

Now, for those that do not know, a Southern Cassowary is a human-sized black bird with a bright blue head that is related to Ostriches and Emus. Meeting one in the nature may mean serious injury or even death if the particular specimen happends to be in a bad mood.

The guy we saw had a chick with him. You know, a smaller, more monochrome version of himself.

Of course, all of us tried to be very careful around him. Trouble was, though, he was pretty much right on the path, so we could not really go past him. He was clearly aware of all of us, but he was much less scared of us than we were of him. So it created quite an interesting situation...

That got resolved about half an hour later when we just gathered our courage and walked past him at about a meters distance. I was in front of the row of people... and it was pretty scary. (although, to be fair, by that time, 4 people had walked by him already one-at-a-time, but he was a bit further away in these cases).

I call the bird a guy, by the way, because we were later told that males usually care for the chicks once they are hatched. Equal division of labor :)

After that encounter, it was getting dark already so we headed back to the camping ground, had dinner and then went to bed. I shared a tent with Amy, but got to sleep before she had even entered.

And woke up at 7.30, the other side of the tent packed up just like it was when I went to sleep. Turned out she had woken up at 6 already. There was to be a crocodile feeding at 8.30. When heading towards that, we saw Lewis waking up too.

Croc feeding was fun. The guy told pretty much the same things about crocodiles I had heared the day before, though. But watching the croc follow the feeder with his eyes and ocasionally reposition itself.. reminded me of the beginning clip from Dr. Doolittle 2 - there may well be truth to that, actually.
We went to the hiking trail that was right behind the camp site.. and then drove to another one a bit southwards. Then headed back to the ferry and started driving south, making a stop in Port Douglas to stock up on supplies and look at the sights, briefly.

We then drove to Barron Gorge.. or well, would have if it would not have been a 20 km uphill drive. The car was quite heavy and was guzzling fuel at a bit too fast of a rate.. so Lewis and Franzisca decided to turn back at a lookout point that was about 5 km drive from the base.

However, as it was still fairly early (3 a clock), I was pretty intent on going up to see the Barron falls - so I asked them to drop me off at the base so I could hitchike up. We said our goodbyes, grabbed my stuff and started hitchiking.

About 20 cars later I got picked up by a woman in her thirties. On the way up, she showed me where a good spot would be to hitchike back, and also how to get there best on foot. She then dropped me off at the center of the small town just up the mountain and also pointed me to the direction of the falls.

The falls were 3 km away. I had a 25 kg backpack and another 5 kg of bass guitar with me. So instead of heading straight for the falls, I took a small detour towards a youth hostel. I asked the receptionist if I could leave my bags there for 1-2 hours. He was somewhat sceptical, but agreed once I explained I will definitely be back as I have a plane early next morning. When I said "Back in a few hours", he corrected me though, saying "1-2, that is a couple. A few is a few more than that".

I was now free of my burden for two hours, so I started towards the falls. 40 minutes later I arrived, only to experience what was truly one of the most beautiful sights I have seen in my life (yes, quite comparable to the road up to Port Douglas I mentioned about a week ago.. or the cliffs I saw at the first rafting trip. I do have pictures to prove it). I then also headed to the other nearby lookout point that supposedly had a good view of Cairns itself.. which it did..

By now I was running out of the 2 hours I had been granted.. so I raised my walking pace a bit and raised my thumb up whenever I heared a car passing by. Halfway I was indeed picked up and got a ride back to town in a pickup truck. Went by the hostel to collect my stuff and then followed the directions to get to the hichiking place I had been shown before.

It was quite nice, next to a long stretch of straight road, with a very wide roadside where a car could easily pull over. Two problems though. Firstly, it was a long stretch of straight road so cars were going quite fast. More worryingly, though, it was pitch-black dark again, I was still dressed in black-and-gray and there was no streetlight.

Ok, so there I was, at 7 a clock in the evening, with the whole night ahead of me and only 35 km to cover.

Well, except that the traffic was quite light, the cars did not see me before passing by (as they were going too fast) and oh, right, I could not go forward either because the downhill road did not even have enough room for a person to walk there safely without being run over, much less enough for a car to pull over. So I was, in effect, stuck, and in a pretty bad situation.

Thanfully, one driver did eventually notice me (after about 40 minutes of waiting), and managed to stop just right before the downhill trail so he still did have room to pull over. Driver turned out to be a youth worker, currently working with a problematic autistic kid who used to be pretty violent but seemed to be doing ok after three years of care. The driver was nice enough to drop me off at a good hitchiking location before heading into the opposite direction himself.

So, set out looking for the next car to pick me up. Decided to start counting cars again. I got to 2 - as the second car already pulled over, driver giving me a friendly greeting and introducing himself as Mick. He said he has a small errand to run before going to Cairns. I said I had all the time in the world.

So, he drove to a small town at the waterfront just outside Cairns - just to go check when a restaurant he had once visited would be open. He said he had been there once and really liked the food, but had not found them on the internet or on white pages once he got home.

That was a short detour and we were pretty soon at the airport. He dropped me off at the domestic, we exchanged contact info and then parted ways. I went into the terminal, sat down, made a cup of coffee and then...

...got kicked out, as the domestic terminal was closing for the night. I was directed to the international one next door, though. At about 4 a clock I got back to the domestic terminal and got on the 5.45 flight to Sydney, thus concluding my vacation in Australia

All in all, it was by far the best vacation I have yet to have. I got to swim underwater as well as to climb a mountain, meet interesting new people but also enjoy solitude, challenge myself but also do things easy and familiar to me. In short, it had everything I want in a vacation.

Well, nearly :)