Day 30, May 24: Last river cruise on the Daintree River

This morning we admired the sunrise at the sea once again. Then we packed the last few things and left at 7:30. A drive through the Daintree, Board Walk, a walk at the Discovery Centre, a viewpoint, but we didn’t spot any cassowaries.

However, during the 3km walk, we did see a huge python again. And it’s not, as initially suspected, the common carpet python, but an amethyst python, a specialist of tropical rainforests. The species Australian amethyst python (Simalia kinghorni) was only classified as a separate species from the actual amethyst python from Papua New Guinea in the year 2000. These animals can grow up to 5 meters long, making them significantly longer than the common carpet python. Today, the snake was seen looped around a tree trunk. It was surely over 2 meters long, but probably not 3 meters. We also saw a musky rat-kangaroo and some flying foxes.

Then around 10:20, we took the ferry across the Daintree River. On the other side, we had another, our last, river trip from 11:00 to 12:00. In contrast to yesterday, it wasn’t through narrow channels of the mangroves, but up and down the wide Daintree River, which is more than 100 meters wide. This last river trip was rewarding: we saw a nearly 3-meter-long female and a over 70-year-old male measuring 5 meters, who had only one tooth left in its mouth. More impressive to us were the small crocodiles, a one-year-old saltwater crocodile about 50cm long, and a hatchling from this year approximately 30cm long. Both were basking in different spots on a branch extending into the river from a fallen tree, at 2 distant locations. Finding these young crocodiles is significantly more challenging than finding the older ones.

After the boat tour, we took a shower in the camper, put on fresh clothes, and drove back to Cairns, where we returned it without any issues at 14:30, and then took an Uber to the nearby airport. The international terminal is very small, everything was still closed, but the Singapore Airlines counter soon opened. Everything was relaxed; the flight to Singapore departed as planned at 18:15 and lasted 6 hours. It became stressful there because the next flight was only an hour later, leading many Germans to run through the airport. However, the connecting flight was also easy to catch. At 12 hours, it was quite long. We landed in Frankfurt at 6:30, immigration and luggage were no problem, and we took the train to Kehl at 7:51. The trains were initially empty, then full from Baden Baden, overcrowded from Appenweier, but at least we managed to squeeze in. We were home by 10:45, and by 17:00 German time (1:00 AM Cairns time), we were so tired that we could barely keep our eyes open.

An impressive journey thus came to an end, a trip we will always look back on fondly.