Eleanor's Travel Adventures: Where the Ocean meets the Rainforest...

After Magnetic Island I headed to Cairns where I spent a week hanging out with the always lovely Trent...

and the boy with the biggest heart ever Conrad.

Cairns was mainly cloudy with no real beaches and I got pretty sick when I was there (probably Swine Flu!) so I decided to take a short 2 day/1 night trip to Port Douglas/Cape Tribulation where the Ocean literally meets the Rain forest. It was so beautiful there (even though it rained most of the time and I was running a pretty high fever and had to get some hard core drugs to help me cope). When the driver came to get me at 7am he said that I was the only one who had booked that day so I had a private tour. I thought it would be weird at first but he was very personable and I was happy not to have to make small talk with strangers while I wasn't feeling so well. Here is one of the first look outs we went to...

Then we went to Mossman Gorge where we saw some turtles...

This was a sign that someone had cleverly tampered with (the top pic used to just be of a speed bump).

These signs were all over the beaches. Luckily I was there in the dry season when Stingers are not present. I remember when I was reading Bill Bryson's "In a Sunburned Country" he talks about how some bloke went swimming in the summer in North Queensland and got stung by a king jellyfish and it was so painful that even when he was unconscious he was still screaming!

Another one to add to my "You know you're not in Canada when..." collection...

This dude was just hanging out in the bathroom at the hostel I was staying at. The hostel was pretty chill and luckily there was only one other guy in my room so I got some much needed rest after taking some of those miracle drugs.

My private tour guide also took me on a rain forest walk which was really enjoyable. Everything in the rain forest is connected with something else. All of the roots and plants are intertwined to help each other grow.

These roots on Cape Tribulation Beach grow upwards because they are situated on top of volcanic rock which they can not penetrate.

The little balls of sand, made my crabs when they are digging a hole are all over the beaches but until this point I hadn't actually seen a crab in one. I had to wait very still with my camera because he could feel the vibrations of me walking and was very skeptical to come out.

Capr Trib beach...

Me being a tourist and asking someone to take a pic of me looking out over Cape Trib Beach...

This was another one of our stops. There was very expensive property for sale nearby. I considered making a bid...

Being strangled by a Strangler Fig Tree. These trees slowly wind their roots around other trees and eventually end up killing the host tree. So mean! Although it takes about 300 years. Talk about commitment.

The leaves in the rain forest were huge!

If you're ever stuck in the rain forest, use these for shelter.

This Basket Fern is using this other tree as a host as well but won't kill it. Basket Ferns are obviously much more friendly then Strangler Figs.

Another plant that latches on and grows up a tree. I feel like I'm giving some sort of science lesson here. Now children, the rain forest is a very magical place. If we could all just co-operate and grow together the way these trees do the world would be a much nicer place...