Cape Tribulation - Yungaburra

We were originally going to head back to Cairns after Cape Tribulation however lots of people have recommended exploring the Atherton Tablelands so we tacked on a couple of extra days with the car. We have a hostel booked in Yungaburra for 2 nights so today we would be making our way slowly there, stopping off on the way to see the sights.

The top half of the Atherton Tablelands is very dry and a direct contrast to the rainforest where we have spent the last week. It actually reminded me a lot of Peru with mountains of rainforest in the distance. There isn't much to see up here so the first part involved a lot of driving. We did stop at Coffee Works in Mareeba for a nose which is a coffee museum however it cost $19 each to look round, so we opted for an iced coffee instead. The coffee came with a large scoop of ice cream and lots of whipped cream so was incredibly naughty but delicious.

We then continued on down through Atherton and on to Mt Hypipamee National Park to take a look at The Crater and Dinner Falls. The Crater is quite literally what it says on the tin, a giant volcanic hole filled with water which was pretty impressive to look at. Dinner Falls was also very nice.

We then headed back up to Yungaburra with a quick stop off at the Curtain Fig Tree. We have seen a few fig trees now but this one was pretty spectacular and HUGE!

Yungaburra is a very small place so there was only one choice of hostel, On the Wallaby Lodge. It is however lovely. It's clean, chilled out and the kitchen is well equipped (all important things in a hostel). We even have a 6 bed dorm to ourselves which is pretty nice. On check in, we were told about a place nearby where you could potentially see platypus in the wild so just before dusk we made our way down there. We hadn't even been there 5 minutes and we saw our first platypus swimming through the river. They are so cute and a lot smaller than I was expecting. We had to wait a long time before we saw our next one however after a lot of patience and a strategic change of location we saw 2 more swimming down the river.Read more