Port Douglas

We landed in Cairns airport early morning, picked up a rental car and headed to Port Douglas, a quaint little town about one hour's drive North. 

Road from Cairns to Port Douglas from a lookout - beautiful

The drive to Port Douglas is gorgeous with a 20 kilometers section of the James Cook highway classified as UNESCO world heritage. It was spectacular. 

We got there and checked in our bungalow. It was self contained and very comfortable. 

Race winner is no3. - we tipped it!

Over the next days we did quite a few amazing things. One of them was attending the Cairns Cup at the Cairns racecourse. It was really beautiful and everyone had dressed up for the occasion, except us obviously ... We had a great day and almost broke even from a gambling point of view. We got a winner and a couple of places. 

Not your average punter - ladies putting in the effort for the cup

On Sunday we paid a visit to the local village market. It was unexpectedly big. We bought a few items and tasted some freshly pressed fruit juice. 

The girls on the deck of the Catamaran enjoying every minute

Monday was a big day for us and we were looking forward to it. We were going to the Great Barrier Reef! The Great Barrier Reef is more than 2,300 kilometers long and in some places up to 60 kilometers wide. It covers the area of a country like Norway. To go there, there were plenty of options to choose from in Port Douglas and we decided to go with a smaller family owned operation (Sailaway) with a beautiful catamaran. 

Apart from the obvious advantages of sailing on a boat with only 30-40 people (as opposed to up to 400 on some other bigger ships) like personalised service and more intimate contacts with the crew and other guests, our boat sailed earlier than the other bigger operations who have wait for people to arrive from Cairns about one hour's drive away. 

Posing on the Coral Cay

We sailed to the Great Barrier Reef and snorkelled at a spot called Mackay. The water was cool (23C) and the visibility was good. First couple of minutes in and we see a black tip reef shark! It was small, a juvenile and it swam around us for a few moments and then made its way to another part of the reef. We had put two wetsuits on Mara who is usually cold. That helped but we still went back to the catamaran after about 20 min. We left the girls playing on the boat and jumped right back in. After that we had a nice buffet lunch on board. It was very good. 

In the afternoon we had a another snorkelling session at Coral Cay and spotted many more fishes, rays, several turtles. The ride home was pretty rough and many a guest were seasick. We got back to port safely and were very happy of our day. 

Taking a walk through Mossman Gorge

Over the course of the next days, we enjoyed most of what Port Douglas and its surroundings had to offer. We went to several wildlife parks and zoos, including the Mossman Gorge and the Rainfoest Station. At the former we went for a nice 2,5 km walk through the rainforest and the girls did brilliantly while at the latter we did a tour with the Duck Army truck, which is an amphibious WWII vehicle, fitted with 6 wheels, a propeller and which has 10 forward and 4 backward gears. The girls loved it when we went in the water 

Mara trying her skills at boomerang throwing

Duck Army Vehicle - floating away in the water

Roxana and the girls did a cable car ride over the rainforest. I dropped them uphill and picked them up about an hour later below. This Northeastern rainforest is the oldest continuously surviving rainforest in the world and has more bio diversity than the amazon!

Mara feeding a small Kangaroo

We even went to a Cane Toad Race. Where you guessed it, they race cane toads! I was more than just a mere spectator as I tried my luck at being a cane toad jockey. This consists of blowing a whistle up

the back side of the toad and making it advance. I bet on the wrong toad, putting 20$ on Fat Bastard who wouldn't budge! That was 20$ down the drain but a fun night. 

Girls getting cozy with the local fauna

Another thing Roxana wanted to do for a long time was a helicopter ride. And what a better place to do this than flying over the Great Barrier Reef! She had a great time although she confided that the flight was just too short. 

All in all we had a great time at the Port Douglas, it was very relaxing and life seemed to be good to its inhabitants.

We would see how our next stop would be, it was going to be Darwin.

For more pictures of Port Douglas...