19 Mar: Daintree Rainforest (QLD).

View of Daintree Rainforest from lookout point during search for tree kangaroos

So today was going to be the day that we accomplished the near impossible. Find a tree kangaroo! What? Kangaroos don't exist in trees! Well, they do in very rare instances including the Daintree Rainforest.

Of course, when have we ever been deterred by a "small" challenge, right? Sure they are shy, but so what?

View from Cape Tribulation looking north

Well +Marc and I got up bright and early, and our tour guide made some arrangements for us to see public and private land where the tree kangaroos would be hanging out. Well after a few hours of hiking in the rainforest, rain and other elements, we had to concede that we were going to come up empty handed. A bit unfortunate but oh well. We have had so much luck on seeing other native Australian animals in the wild that it would be incredibly ungracious to complain in this instance. Juan was a great guide as his family has been residents of the area for a couple of centuries and he can talk about the "mission" (occupation) times of when the Australian government took over the land from the indigenous folks living there. Juan was purposeful in discussing what happened, but never, ever bitter. Even when he could have been.

For the record, it wasn't because of a lack of effort from our guide, who was awesome. Anyway, we split off from him (the guide) and spent the afternoon looking at Cape Tribulation, cassowaries (type of animal in region), nice coastline and other areas of the rainforest. It was fun even if we came up slightly shorthanded and put on a boatload of Deet (aka poison) to protect ourselves from critters.... except....

Poor Marc had a visit from a couple of leeches

Marc got a leech or two on his ankle. So those wounds needed to be cleaned out and bandaged. Truthfully we have been lucky on this trip with respect to injuries, bites (more worrisome types), etc. That said, we needed to be mindful of bleeding with the leech after they were removed, etc.

We got back to Daintree Eco Lodge & Spa, walked to a local religious waterfall used by the local Aboriginal tribe and caught a drink at the bar for dinner. Nice dinner and we got to see a Canadian couple staying at the lodge who were avid trail runners. Puddle Thumper and Rocks 'n Roots would have loved this chat!

We crashed as we had a somewhat early start the next morning to go river snorkeling. I am told that NO CROCS ARE INVOLVED! We shall see!