Port Douglas and Mossman Gorge

Last Tuesday evening we arrived in Port Douglas, a small town north of Cairns, and spent 2 days there. It was a little vacation within our vacation for Andi and me :D The town is actually a tourist village and consists mainly of hotels and resorts. There is also a shopping street with slightly more expensive shops, a port, and a beautiful beach with a supervised swimming area. Many people go there on vacation to do nothing and enjoy the expensive suite. That's why there is also a high demand for cleaners and housekeepers, so Karo and Matze found good jobs there. If we had known how chill it is there and how easy it is to make money, we would have also looked for a job there instead of picking tomatoes! But in hindsight, our farm work was also an experience.

We stayed at Karo and Matze's campsite for 3 nights. On the first day, we went to the beach, explored the town a bit, had a swim in the pool in the evening, and played SkipBo and Uno after dinner with the other two. We played every evening, it was really cool :D Always until 10 o'clock, then the lights go out in the kitchen and the two wanted to go to bed because they had to work the next day. We also made delicious burgers for dinner one time and another time bought a "Mangrove Jack," a native fish, at Coles. It was 50% off because it was getting late in the evening, so we treated ourselves. It was really delicious prepared on the grill with lemon and the herbs from the campsite's herb garden.

On the second day, we took a day trip to Mossman Gorge. It's a beautiful river in the rainforest where you can hike and swim. The whole thing is set up for tourists again, meaning you can drive to the visitor center by car and buy a ticket for the bus that takes you the last 4 km to the river. You can also walk, but it's 4 km and the path goes through an Aboriginal community that asks people not to walk through their village. I think that's a bit exaggerated, just like the bus price of $9.20 per person. But we followed the rules nicely and took the bus.

There in the forest, you could hike really nicely despite the many people. On the 2.4 km long walk, everything was well spread out and most people came just to swim anyway. At the beginning, the walk was a boardwalk, which means a wooden or metal walkway leads through the forest, and then it changed to a normal hiking trail over roots and stones. It led in a big circle through the forest and then to some lookout points on the river back to the bus stop. We took the big loop, enjoyed the dense forest and admired the huge trees and palms, and then cooled off in the river. And cooling off is the right word here because the water was really cold! After all, it's a flowing body of water. But it was still really beautiful and almost paradisiacal with the jungle-lined banks. We even saw some fish in the clear water.

After hiking in the forest and swimming, we felt totally relaxed. We had no time pressure at all, so we could really enjoy the walk. In the afternoon, we went back to Port Douglas. There we quickly drove up to a lookout point that we had already looked for the day before, but then we realized that it is better to drive up there by car. From above, we had a great view over Four Mile Beach (where we went swimming) and the coast to the south.

We spent the evening playing games as usual and the next day our journey continued. Heading north to the Daintree Rainforest and Cape Tribulation. But we made plans with Karo and Matze for New Year's Eve in Sydney and are now looking for a party where we can celebrate together. Let's see if we can find something good and not too expensive.

I'll write about what we experienced in the rainforest in the next entry :)