– MAY 17, 2015

The hop on/hop off bus tickets we purchased for Australia included a tour at Cairns in the Atherton Tablelands.  It’s a mountain with a lush rainforest, waterfalls, natural pools, and nice hiking trails.  Our guide from Barefoot Tours picked us up at 7:15am and we went out for the entire day (returned at 7pmn that evening).

First we stopped by to see a huge Cathedral Fig Tree.  He called it the “whoa tree“, as when we got there he distracted us and then pointed to the tree ass all of us automatically said “whoa” without thinking.  He got us good.

Next we drove to Lake Eacham, a fresh water lake right on a volcano!  It was instantly vastly deep and if you dropped something in the water you could forget about it.

Our guide, Wade, put out a morning tea spread for us as we swam in the lake.  It was a hearty spread of fruits, tim tams, muffins and of course tea/coffee.

Then Wade drove us to Millaa Millaa Falls.  This is the spot where the herbal essences commercial was filmed (where the woman goes to wash her hair and is transformed to this lush location).  That’s not why we came here, but it was interesting nonetheless.

That’s me under the pelting water.

Then we took a drive to Ellinjaa Falls, which is one of the most photographed waterfalls in Australia.

The highway provided a view of the Boulders Gorge views to come.

Then we went to Josephine Creek, a freshwater river that can instantly flood without notice due to the rainforest activity upstream.

There was a portion that acted like a natural rock waterslide.  It wasn’t long, but it was fast!

About 700m from the waterslide was the areas Devil’s Pool and Boulder’s Gorge.  See below.

A cool day that was made more fun by our guide, Wade.  He was a fin loving person who insisted on giving everyone a hug when we were picked up in the morning and when we were dropped off in the evening.

That’s it for Australia.  Tomorrow we fly from Cairns to Bali, Indonesia (via a stopover at Darwin, Australia).  We have everything set up for a blast in Bali…warm weather here we come.

Thank you Australia for the memories…it was fun here and well worth it.  But its time to move on the start the next adventure.

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For more photos of our adventure go to our flickr account here.