Hard to believe, but this is my second Tuesday here in Port Douglas. Today I went on a safari (although it was, as the Irish say, a bit of an OAP ride). We left from the hostel at 7:30am (ouch, especially since two drunk British chicks came into the room late last night and apparently didn’t care that there were already two people asleep… this is why I try to get quad rooms and stay away from the teenager partiers– they tend to be new at this backpacking thing). End rant.
So I went up to the Mossman river gorge with a group of mostly retirees, a 20-something couple from Italy that made out more or less the entire day, and a father/daughter pair from Tasmania who were wonderful. This trip would be incredible with a small group of quiet, respectable people. It was still great, but the group was a little too boisterous for the wildlife. Either that, or I just needed some coffee. 
After the Mossman river, we went up to the Daintree Rainforest, which is supposedly the oldest rainforest in the the world, undamaged by lava for something like 130 million years. That was followed by Cape Tribulation, which is parallel to where Lieutenant Cook ran onto the reef on his way up the Australian Coast. During all of this, we saw 3 Cassowary birds (one was a baby), which are like emus in drag. Very large, very nearly extinct. Something like 70 left I think, so seeing 3 was pretty impressive. We went for a walk and saw a golden orb spider (not dangerous, but Huge). Lots of neat birds. A king fern, which basically hasn’t evolved at all since the time of the dinosaurs. I think that might have been my favorite for the day.
Later on we took a nice lunch and then went on a river cruise up the Daintree.
We saw a green tree snake, a python of some sort, a brown tree snake digesting a bird, two types of kingfisher bird, a few small crocodiles (1.5m or less, supposedly we just missed a 5m croc by an hour or so because the tide was coming in), and a feral pig. Also some strange owl-like bird with a rediculous name that i can’t remember. So all-in-all it was a pretty great day. The loud people just got a little annoying at times, especially during the ancient forest walks.
I hope hope hope that my phone shows up here tomorrow. I’m really ready to move on, I think. This weekend promises to be interesting, getting a bit of a local tour from the people I met from Cairns.
I think it’s about time to track down a pizza or something like that. Cheers
-Dave