I took the bus from Airlie Beach to Townsville and then the ferry over to Magnetic Island. I got to the island around 1 pm and it started raining. It would rain the rest of the day. I got settled at the hostel and eventually went to the hostel bar with Eloi and Alex (Spaniards) from my Whitsundays trip. Around 11 I decided to call it a night.

The next morning I watched the Celtics game and hoped for the sun to come out. Eventually it did and I went for a hike from Nelly Bay to Arcadia. It took 30 minutes to walk to the start of the trail and then 2 1/2 hours to hike the trail.

The saddle of the mountain overlooks Horseshoe Bay on the other side of the island. The best views I got on the hike came when I ventured off the trail and climbed to the top of some boulders.

When I reached Arcadia, I walked down to the beach for a little bit and then walked an hour along the coast back to the hostel.

When I got back to the hostel, Ellys and Nicole had checked in and were sitting on the deck having drinks. I got showered and then joined them. The view from the hostel bar deck was terrible.

We ate dinner, drank and waited for the bar games to start. Timo and Sebastian were staying at another hostel on the island, but came to drink at our hostel. The first bar game was a pool competition on the worst pool table I’ve ever played on. Sebastian won though, so he got 2 free jugs of beer.

A couple more games went by and then came musical chairs with a twist. If you didn’t get a chair, you could stay in the game by taking off an article of clothing. The first couple people to lose took off their shirts and stayed in the game. I lost the third round and went for the power move. I dropped my pants (I had boxers on). Everyone knew I meant business now. I won without having to take off anymore clothes because nobody else was willing to take off more than one item of clothing. The intimidation move had worked!!! The win earned us 2 more free jugs of beer and we partied until the bar closed at 1.

The next day I relaxed on the deck until it was time to take the bus back to the ferry terminal. We took the ferry back to Townsville and then a bus to Cairns.

I checked into the Waterfront Backpackers hostel in Cairns at 7 pm. After I got settled, I got some dinner and then relaxed the rest of the night.

The next morning, I walked 2 miles to the Cairns Botanical Gardens. I explored the gardens for a little while and then headed back towards the hostel to find somewhere to eat lunch.

I spent the rest of the day relaxing and the next morning I met up with Alex (from Connecticut) at the casino to watch Game 7 of the Celtics-Wizards series. Somehow I got drunk off 4 beers (I think from exhaustion) and after the game I went back to the hostel and took a nap. The East Coast party had taken a toll and I needed some down time, I guess.

The next day I took a bus to Kuranda for the day. My first stop in Kuranda was the Australian Venom Zoo. I had officially given up my quest for a wild snake encounter.

At the end of the zoo tour I got to hold an Olive Python.

My next stop was the Koala Gardens. They had lots of different animals: freshwater crocodiles, koalas, kangaroos and wallabies, a long nosed potoroo, ring tailed possums, bilbys, and my favorite, the quokkas.

I entered full tourist mode and paid $20 to hold a koala. How many chances am I gonna get, right?

I left the gardens and walked around town exploring the shops for a while. I ended up buying a book on Aboriginal dreamtime and creation stories and then I headed to the railway station to take the scenic train back to Cairns.

The train rode along the edge of Barron Gorge and stopped at Barron Falls.

We continued on past the suburb of Camaranga and past Stony Creek Falls.

The scenic train ride took about an hour and 45 minutes to get back to Cairns.

I strolled around the city a bit that night, got some dinner and relaxed back at the hostel.

The next morning, I headed back to the casino to watch the Celtics game. When the Celtics ended they put on the Sox game so I stayed for the end of that too. I left the casino with a good buzz going and grabbed some beers at the bottle shop.

Timo and Sebastian came over to the hostel and we drank the beers. They hadn’t seen the nightly flying fox parade yet, so around sunset we went outside to watch the sky fill with giant bats.

The hostel was giving away free drinks at the Woodshed, so when the beers were gone we headed over to the bar. Most of the time the free drinks are watered down cocktails, but this was some kind of goon and fruit juice mixture.

At some point I started talking about wanting a tattoo to commemorate the trip, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted. I’m not 100% sure which one of them said it, but I think Sebastian suggested a kangaroo playing a didgeridoo. Being as drunk as I was at this point, I thought it was the best idea ever. We left the bar and headed straight for the tattoo parlor. Neither of them had ever gotten a tattoo before, but a couple hours later……

I think I’m pretending to play a didgeridoo 😂😂.

After tattoos, we went to the party hostel, Gilligan’s, but the night gets really Fuzzy at that point.

The next morning I had to wake up early for my trip to Cape Tribulation. Getting out of bed was a struggle, but I was still laughing about the tattoo.

We stopped at Mt. Alexandra lookout and then went for a walk at Marrja in Daintree National Park.

I was spending the night in Cape Trib so I got dropped off at PK’s Jungle Village around noon. I ate lunch and then booked jungle surfing for that afternoon and the jungle night walk for that night.

The jungle surfing was fun, but I’m not sure it was worth $100. The night walk was interesting, but the cool, rainy weather kept some of the better animals like snakes and tree kangaroos away. I did see my first huntsman spider and we also saw a Boyd’s Forest Dragon and some really big insects.

I got back to the hostel at 10 and the bar was already closed on a Friday night so I went back to my room and went to bed a little while later.

The next morning I walked outside and there was a peacock strolling through the hostel kitchen.

I wasn’t getting picked up until noon, so I had breakfast and went for a short walk to take pictures of signs that amused me.

Right before getting picked up, I saw some Ulysses butterflies on a flower bush near the hostel.

The bus picked me and a few other people up and we met up with the rest of the group at Cape Tribulation Beach where they were finishing lunch.

After a short stop at the beach, we headed to Daintree River Cruises to hopefully see some crocodiles. The sun was shining and it was warm out, so we were in luck. We saw lots of crocodiles, including Scarface, the 4.8 meter (almost 16 ft) long resident alpha male of the Daintree River.

On the cruise, I learned that a baby crocodiles gender is determined by the nest temperature while the egg is incubating.

After the river cruise we headed to Mossman Gorge for about an hour and then made one last stop at the Cairns (rock) towers on the way back to the city.

The rock towers are man made and get knocked down by strong surf sometimes, but people keep rebuilding them.

When I got back to Cairns I checked back into the hostel, got dinner and relaxed the rest of the night. The next day I flew to Brisbane and spent the night before flying to Vanuatu for my adventures with Matthew Thomas Hardwick!!!