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| Hanging over the jungle. . the rest of the train in view |
Ok. So you know. John and I did two totally Tourista things while in Palm Cove. The first was to ride this historic train from Freshwater (a small town about 15 minutes from Palm Cove) to Kuranda. Kuranda was of course, an indigenous place before it was a gold rush town, but the gold rush bit is when the railroad was built to transport the goods from the inland jungle to the port city of Cairns. The rail line was hand hewn in the late 1800's, and it's hard not to be impressed. Not only does it wind through dense jungles, but it goes over rivers, through gorges and at one point, around a sharp bend that is built onto tressels. On one side, you can see the rest of the train, on the other, the cascading waterfalls. This is Australian jungle countryside at its most dramatic.
John and I sort of accidentally ended up in first class. They had sold out of regular tickets (called "Heritage" class. Isn't that priceless?), and we decided to bite the bullet and pay for the more expensive tickets. Good decision, it turned out. We went on a Saturday, which our guy at the reception desk assured us didn't make a difference in terms of crowds, but we ended up being very glad indeed for the comfy seats, the sparse population, and the first class service. Translation: coffee, tea or champagne? Anzac biscuits (more on that later), savories. Space. The final frontier. I'm appreciating the phrase from Star Trek more and more.
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| Waterfalls on the other side |
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| Champagne on the train. Yay. |
Ok. So John thought of taking the champagne-in- the-cabin shot. I hate to be such a snob, but it really was kind of nice.
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| John in deepest darkest touristic Australia |
And in typical form, the first thing we did when we got to the village (after an 1.5 hour train trip) was go for a jungle hike. We've been a little leery of going off on our own on hikes, as we would do in a heartbeat in the states, because of so many signs of "Beware of Snakes". . .and even more "Beware of Stinging Trees" (. . who knew?), but this was pretty well trodden, along the river. No wandering into the river to check for which insects live under the stones, though. This is, after all, prime croc territory, even in a tourista place.
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| The unexpected local at the skyrail change station |
We had a great time exploring the trails and markets. We didn't get to do the "eco" park, but that's ok. There's a limit to our touristic consumption. But! We took something called the SkyRail back to Freshwater to pick up our car. It's like a REALLY high ski lift, but with 6-seater gondolas and tall enough to be over the treetops of the jungle. It was great. We had to change lines in the middle, and look who we found: A Very Large Spider. I know you can't appreciate how big she is; but her leg span was at least 6 inches. She was shiny black, but all of her joints, and a bit of her belly, were highlighted in yellow. A couple we were riding with in the gondola told us that she is completely harmless, which is not a phrase you hear often with regard to Australian wildlife, especially the spider-and-snake sort. No venom. But clearly Not Shy.
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