Port Douglas - Day 3 - The Daintree Rainforest

Our 3rd day brought the sun!  This rainbow greeted me as I stepped out of the house first thing in the morning!

Today we loaded in our party bus for the Daintree Rainforest - Wikipedia tells me that Australia used to be rainforest all the way out to Ayers Rock.  This is obviously no longer the case and the Daintree is one of the last remaining remnants of the tropical climate of the past.  The Daintree River runs through the rainforest - this river is saltwater 30 km inland and follows the tides of the oceans.  We took a Daintree River cruise to see if we could locate some of the famous Australian crocodiles.... they promised us we would see some or they would give us a free cruise... And at first, we saw only babies....

Can you find the two baby crocs?

This guy was a little easier to spot

And then came this guy... meet Scarface...

This picture does NOT do him justice.  HE WAS HUGE!!!!  4 meters!!!

I could NOT believe how big he was.  Our guide told us he was in his 70's and they gauge that from his size.  Crocs never stop growing so the biggest ones are the oldest ones.  

Our river guide had some stories and I don't know exactly how many were true, but the biggest croc around was 5.4 meters in length.  He was killed by a farmer as he kept stealing cows.  Seeing Scarface was the highlight of the river cruise... unbelievable!

This good lookin' guy is Duke.  He settled right in with the girls.  

He was the croc spotter, we think.  He got pretty excited when our guide thought he saw something and was pretty into the snake he brought out at the end.

I just thought her hair looked cute like this :)

 After our croc tour, we got back in the car and took a ferry over the Daintree River to explore more of the rainforest.  Cassowaries live in the rainforest and we were hoping for a glimpse of one, but didn't get it... just a whole bunch of speed bumps making us slow down for them.  :)  A highlight was this orchard/ice cream shop, Daintree Ice Cream Company,  where they make their own ice cream from unusual and delicious fruits.  Passionfruit, black and yellow sapote, jackfruit, coconut... yummmmmmm.....

I think Aubs is about done with all my picture taking!!!!  ;)

Back in the car after ice cream to finish our drive to Cape Tribulation... We found beaches there and we scoured the beach for shells, crabs and anything we could find!

We found this little hermit crab

Then we found these hermit crab villages everywhere!!!

No three people I would rather follow!

These little balls of sand are everywhere. They are made by the sand crabs that live in the holes you can see.  These guys made these all along the beaches we walked.  We called them crab-originies because their sand art looked like the aboriginal dot art.

Absolutely gorgeous....