To start, I joined up with my tour nearby and the bus took us to the Freshwater train station. It’s a lovely old-fashioned place, and there’s great plants and a little museum to keep you busy until the train arrives.
The train is an old-fashioned one, and the ride up is lovely. You go through 15 tunnels that were all made with dynamite and hand-tools by 1500 men. And the bridges feature tight turns and rivet-fastening.
There’s a lot of squeaking going on, and the views keep getting better as you go up the mountains. We stopped to take a look at Barron falls, which was nice.
Once into Kuranda, there’s time for just wandering the town. It’s a very small town, and a million shops. I did my part to support the Queensland economy yesterday, that’s for sure. And I had a lovely lunch at a little café. Then I went over to the Butterfly garden, and saw a million butterflies. They flew all around me, but it’s really tough to get a photo of them! My favorite is this one, which is just a blue blur.
And here's one of the movies I got of them fluttering
I decided to head down the jungle walk, because I wanted to see some rainforest, and that was a really lovely path. Animals are very difficult to spot in jungles, by the way, so I just have plants. But the vegetation was pretty cool.
Unfortunately, I realized at the end of the path that I was far away from where I needed to be to catch the skyrail back, so I had to hoof it down the road to get to the skyrail station. Treking up the road in the hot weather was not too fun, but I made it!
And that was when my favorite part started! Flat Stanley and I got our own pod, and the ride over the treetops was amazing.
There’s also two stops along the way to see more of the rainforest, and the other side of Barron falls, but riding over the mountains and then seeing the ocean from way up high was really the best part.
Tons of photos of the day, of course. I was having a rough time yesterday because I didn’t sleep well the night before, but I think I still managed to squeeze a lot of fun out of the experience. Even though it’s a bit of a tourist trap, there’s really a lot of wonderful things about doing the Kuranda trip.
But at this point I’m happy to be back to Brisbane for a bit more and then going down to Sydney and Canberra to meet up with more family. I think I need a few more relaxing days before I go to New Zealand, if Carins is any indication. This long-time-travel stuff is exhausting. :P
In my travels, though, I met Erika from Argentina, and shared the hostel room with some girls from Denmark, and a girl from Germany. We had plenty of Germans and Japanese on our boat the other day, and I've heard French and Korean around. Cairns is definitely a multi-cultural destination! And the girls in the hostel put my measly six week trip to shame, with 8 and 12 week trips themselves. Lucky them! So yeah, neat to meet folks from so many places. The world is very small when you travel!
Photos from the Kuranda trip are all here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/86747592@N00/sets/72157622872906334/
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