More than the odd nightmare!

Leaving Cooktown on the Bloomfield track we at first wondered what all the fuss was about. We had been told that this was extremely bad, yet we went for the first half of it almost half on bitumen, and the gravel road while narrow in places was just great. Then we came to a roadside notice which ended Tea Coffee 100Mtrs. Hmmm... maybe we hadn't seen the worst then. On a couple of ks and we took a short walk and came to a river with a lovely waterfall. This is the Bloomfield River, crocodile ridden as are all of them on this coast, but beautiful.

We crossed the river on a low bridge, which no doubt gets completely flooded in the wet, and will be impassable, but at the moment the river runs quietly under it.

Then we found out why we had been warned. The road narrowed even more, and when vehicles came towards us one of us had to find a place to pass- ofetn with a cliff at our left. Hills- we have seen nothing like them! Although they had been concreted for safety they were at least one in three, and one was one in two and a half. (40%). The first one we were taken by surprise and Betty was unable to change down in time, and she suffered. Lights flashing on the dash, struggling in the wrong gear, she almost gave up as she climbed over two humdred metres. We had to give her a rest to cool. Mea Culpa!
She recovered quickly, but there was more to come, almost as bad. No photo can show those hills, but can show some of the terrain we had to cross, huge rocks, narrow lanes, steep drops to our left without barriers, just trees, cliffs to our right. A nightmare! And the downhills were just as bad- one in three for two or three hundred metres, first gear job with the brakes hard on, in four wheel drive. That was undoubtably the worst road we had been on in this area.
We arrived at Cape Tribulation- so called because that was where Cook's troubles had started, just off the coast here he had run aground and taken three days to get off again, only to find he had a big hole in his bottom, which he bandaged with a sail.

Anyway, we had booked the most lovely cabin in the rainforest, at the Ferntree Rainforest lodge, which would rival the hotel we had in Mallacca. The manager had only been there a month, and he was aware that the whole place needed a little TLC, but we think it will be wonderful when he gets hold of it. Certainly it was a very restful place, and we had a good breakfast this morning before we set off.
Hah we had time to spare we would have stayed there a lot longer- we would reccommend it.

Yesterday afternoon we walked through the rainforest on a boardwalk, we were fortunate to see  two wild pigs and yet another casuary. The casuary was the fourth we had seen, there are only about 1200 in the whole of Australia so we have seen a lot more than our share, we have met many Australians  who have never seen even one.

We also witnessed tree ants building a nest- they fold two leaves together and glue them, the leaves are about eight inches long and the ants only half an inch. They work as a team- marvellous!

Today we travelled through the Daintree National Park, an excellent bitumen road which winds it's way along the coast down to the Daintree river. We had a view of the mouth of the river and of Kimberley Point from a viewpoint on the road. It was a lovely run and eventually we came to the river itself, which we crossed on a ferry.
We decided to talk a trip on a solar powered boat up the Daintree River, during which we saw a great number of crocs, some just a few months old and about twelve inches long, some two and even three metres long, male and female. We saw where a very large and agressive male had taken a bite at the boat- not very encouraging! But a very good trip, during which we saw quite  few birds, including a kingfisher, an Astralian Dart and another large bird I can't remember the name of! I'll leave you with a few pictures of the wildlife- tomorrow Betty is due to have here service and a new windscreen so it will be a busy day for her!