2019 Australia Trip

Today we went to the oldest Rainforest in the world called Daintree Forest. The drive on the coastline was absolutely lovely! We crossed a river that’s full of crocodiles on a river ferry! Too bad we were not allowed to be out of the car, so we could take a closer look.

We arrived at Daintree Discovery center, and took some nice walks in the rainforest. Went up to the canopy tower that had a nice view of the top of the forest, and learned a lot of fun facts about the plants and animals. As we were leaving the center, we drove to the wrong direction and had to make an u-turn. After the u-turn, we suddenly saw a car’s headlights! It’s driving directly at us! Steve suddenly yelped “I am driving on the wrong side!” The Australian driver politely waited until we corrected ourselves and drove on.

Continue on to go deeper into the forest, we passed by an ice cream shop called Floravilla. Let me tell you, this is one of the best ice cream shops in the world! All ice creams were made by hand by an old lady named Betty Hinton, and all flavors were so unique! She made them with local fruits and herbs. I am pretty sure some flavors are not available anywhere else in the world except this very shop! The shop itself is also a garden, with beautiful native flowers surrounding us while enjoying some really amazing ice creams! How awesome is that!

Next, we went to a boardwalk to a beach. Steve got lost a bit, drove in circles a couple times. Just as we were laughing about it, 2 cassowaries suddenly apparently on the side of the road! Cassowary is a native Australian bird that has some very unique lifestyles (as we just learned at the Discovery Center). The female bird usually lay 4 eggs. After she laid them, she walks away and continue enjoying her life of party. It’s the male cassowary spends 80 days sitting on the eggs until they hatched. Then the Dad will bring his kids around with him for the next a year and half! What we saw, was the rare sighting of a Dad and his chick! Poor guy has to bring his kid with him while trying to find mate. Good luck nice bird!

Next, we headed to Jungle Surfing - zip line through the rainforest! One fun thing about this zip line is that in order to get to the first canopy, someone has to run in a giant human hamster wheel to get the line moving. Evan had a lot of fun doing it. As we zipped through the forest, the super knowledgeable guides also showed us many cool things to see. Very nice!

We were finally heading to Cairns and plan to check into the coolest property of the world: a treetop house in the jungle. The owner waited for us to arrive, and showed us around.

Let me just say this: there is no word to describe how cool this massive tree house is. When we first lay our eyes on it, our mouths didn’t close for at least 10 minutes!! I will try to describe it in details tomorrow, since it’s late now, and we have all day tomorrow to fully utilize everything in here.

Dinner was 15 minutes drive away at a place called Red Beret Hotel. A very interesting place that’s a hotel, a sports bar, a casino, a kid’s playground, and a fantastic restaurant! Saturday night, many locals were here.

Evan ordered a 18’ hotdog, and didn’t quite finish it. LOL!

Finally! After a full day of activities, time for bed!Read more