Day 5 - Saturday February 17, 2024 - Mossman Gorge

 

Today we left at 9 am on a bus ride to Mossman Gorge where we had a guided tour by the local indigenous aboriginal tribe.  The walk was called the Aboriginal Dream Time walk.  It was about two miles through the oldest Rainforest in the world and also a UNESCO  World Heritage site.  

The starting point of our walk through the Rainforest 

Some kind of vulture hanging around our starting point 

Huge spiders all over.

Circled o. Lye do you can really see it.  If you get too close, they jump.

Give you an idea of the dense Rainforest and our 2 mile trek through it.

The tour was led by Angeliba a member of the Ngadiku (Nar-di-gul) mob.  That's what they call themselves.   Not a tribe.  Ngadiku means stories and legends from a long time ago in local Kuku Yalanji language.

Let me talk about the weather.   It was 82 degrees and 87 percent humidity.   It was God awful.   The last time I felt this bad was when Howard and I were building a deck on a new house we were building and I got sunstroke from a combination of heat and humidity.  Today, I started to feel faint and sat down.  Our odyssey tour director stayed with me.  When I was able to get up and walk again, we found that Angelina had taken the shuttle bus down with the group and left us.  It took them 30 minutes to realize we were missing and come back and get us.   I never felt stranded as we were together.  

More of our walk:

Angelina little some paper bark on fire and we all had to walk around it and get some smoke on us to ward off anything bad in the Rainforest. 

A 400 hundred year old red oak that's used to send signals by banging a rock against it.

A strangler tree, strangling the other

In the past, members were married at these rocks.

We reached our turnaround point, a rover with some rapids.  This is their rainy season. 

Our gui5, Angelina  showed us how they use the rocks found in the water to create paint with which they paint themselves.  Some produced an ocre color, done a red color and then ther was charcoal to produce a black color.

We were able to keep on schedule and boarded the bus at 1 pm for the ride to Kuranda.   Here is where our guide was trying to pack too much jnto one day.  We were given 30 minutes to walk around the town and shop.  There wasn't any need.  We had to board our bus at 2:50 in order to take the SkyRail gondola the Rainforest.   The Skyrail Rainforest Cableway stretched 4.7 miles descending and skimming over the treetops of the Rainforest.   AmaIng sights to see.  

Views from the descending gondola ride over the Rainforest. 

Our first stop at the huge waterfalls on the gondola ride.

Wayne and his feat of heights. 

A view from our gondola, ahead to see all the cablecars on the ride down.

The cable is so long that they had to run 2 cables.   There were two stops.  We got off twice, once to view the amazing waterfalls. After all this is the end of their rainy season and the water cascading down the falls was tremendous.  The second stop we just transferred from one cable to another cable and gondola.   

At about 4:30, we left the. Skyrail for our return trip to the hotel.   It was raining at that point and Wayne and I decided not to venture out for dinner.  We were both beat!  Dinner jn the hotel was fine and early to bed.

Today, as I'm writing this at 4 am, we board a boat for a once in a lifetime day in the Great Barrier Reef.   We'll be able to swim, snorkel  or just relax and enjoy 4he water.  There usbalso a ride in a glass bottom boat so even if I don't snorkel, I hope to see the coral and fish beneath the water.

Queensland, the state we are in, in Australia is 2 1/2 times the size of Texas.  There are over 90 million gray white kangaroos I. This state/territory.  I haven't seen any yet but I'm sure we will.

Thus is also mango season.  They grow eight different varieties and make everything from mangos  including toothpaste.   If I see any, I will have to buy some.