Merry Christmas!!! (Dec 25th)

Merry Aussie Christmas!!!

Queensland Pt. 3- Barefoot Tours!

My tour was meeting at 07:45, a 15min walk from my hostel. 7am alarm, plenty of time, add goon to the mix and problems occur. I woke up at about 07:20, still needing to pack, with my alarm still going off at regular intervals. Needless to say it was a bit quicker than a walk across town... Oops!
I somehow made it on time, amazingly, and somehow without a hangover. Great start to the tour: a hug from the tour guide. Then as most of the people on the tour were traveling alone, I ended up sitting next to a Scottish guy most of the day, and if you're ever on a Barefoot Tour in Cairns be prepared to answer 'do you fold or scrunch toilet paper?' as a welcome/get to know everyone question. (Europeans tend to fold, British roll and Aussies scrunch.)

Basically it was an INCREDIBLE day! Exploring the rainforest in a crazy bus. My shoes didn't leave the bus. I did Barefoot Tour barefoot. -That should be a t-shirt slogan.
First stop of the day was the Cathedral Tree. Like the vine-like trees I saw in Townsville, but huge. You could fit about 20 people in the middle. There were some seriously awesome shaped trees in the rainforest; spirally vines and some really weird roots... I like trees.

Then on to the first swimming stop- we all spent the majority of the day in swimwear. This stop was a crystal, clear, blue crater lake, complete with little turtles. Water was entered by jumping off the fence of the pontoon. Of course it could be done more gracefully, but where's the fun in that? Perfect way to start the day though, and a fantastic way to wake up. Floating around in the lake on pool noodles, and afterward; tea and fruit. This was one of the best parts of the day; tea and fresh, local fruit at the swimming stops. Josh (our guide) would set it up while we were swimming. All local fruit; bananas, mangoes, passion fruit, melons, papayas, kiwis, dragon fruit, pineapples- BEAUTIFUL!!

And on to the next stop. No swimming here, just a really deep crater filled with water and green algae. We threw rocks in just for the noise, the splash and to see how quickly the algae regrouped. I'm not quite sure what the point of this stop was but it was quite interesting anyway.

The second swimming stop was a pool at the base of a waterfall. It was colder than the lake, and apparently the place where the Herbal Essences hair flick advert was filmed. This of course led to a lot of hair flicking. I really don't have enough hair for this, but it works quite well with a Santa hat, it was Christmas after all.
It was a beautiful place to swim, despite the cold. You are able to swim right up and under the waterfall and scramble out behind the waterfall. The water falling on you is brilliant, like a personal massage =)

There was even a guy in the group who couldn't swim so he was put onto a pool noodle and swum out so he could enjoy the experience too. Another brilliant place.








On route to the third stop we pulled up at the side of the road where there were passion fruit trees growing wild. After a quick scrounge round for any which had fallen, we had a few for our next serving of fruit.

Josephine Falls was our third swimming spot. This was a trio of pretty little falls with a pool at the bottom. Easiest way to get into the pool? Scrambling up a rock and jumping in of course. Many flips and cannon balls ensued! The main attraction here though was on the other side of the pool. After swimming across, scrambling out up a very slippery slope, inching across the lip of rock at the top; the water flowing down the rock created a natural water slide, which was absolutely hilarious to go down face first!

All in all an incredible tour. Passion fruit fresh from the tree tastes so much better. The passion fruit we get in the UK, makes me so sad in comparison. We stopped at a little road side fruit stall on the way back, where we could buy all the fruit we'd eaten during the day. The passion fruit was amazing. The dragon fruit I brought was amazing coloured but I found it quite bland really.


We also stopped at a random garden on the way back. I still can't decide if it was someone's home or just a road side attraction. If it were someone's home, they must get so fed up with tourists traipsing all over their front garden. It was really crazy colourful and full of statues. Really quite strange.

And back to Cairns. We arranged to meet up in Gilligans, a pub/club in Cairns. I really wish I hadn't arranged to be back in NSW for Christmas and could have stayed in Cairns longer. The people I met, both on the tour and in my hostel were brilliant, and the tour itself, well I wish it had been longer. A 3 day rainforest tour would have been fantastic. It was so much fun, it could have only been improved by increasing the length.
Still missing some friends from the trip anyway, and the Lion King wasn't even showing in Sydney the day I got back.