Sunday 15 March 2015

Road Trip: Croc Spotting on the Daintree

This post has been sitting as a draft for ages now! The first part was posted back here, but then my unplanned blogging break, followed by my current obsession with Cherry Heart's Blanket-Along, have meant that a draft this has remained...

So, I decided a non-crochet post was well overdue, so here is part 2 of a trip we took before Christmas!! 


The next day began with a trip to Palm Cove for breakfast. This is another beach resort, more developed than where we were staying, but still with the same friendly wildlife!



As we carried on further north, the road was closer to the coast.



The views were so spectacular! I just had to keep stopping to take a look, just perfect tropical beaches – white sand and palm trees.




Eventually (despite all my stops!) we reached Daintree. Our plan for the day was to get to the Daintree River, and instead of spending hundreds of dollars on a reef trip, we would spend $40 on a river trip – looking for crocodiles!!

It turns out it’s currently a bad time of year for spotting crocodiles – in the ‘winter’ here the crocs spend more time basking in the sun for extra heat. But at this time of year, it’s plenty warm enough and so they are mostly active in the water and you can’t always see them. Therefore, while we waited for the next boat trip, I paid another $5 to hold a little crocodile.



We were the only people there, and the lady in charge was clearly quite pleased to have someone so interested in the crocs, so I got to hold the little fella for a good long time.




He was ever so cute – and quite feisty!

Then it was our chance to head out on the boat trip – and rather excitingly, we heard that there had been some crocs around, which we would also hopefully get to see!

The guide headed the boat straight to where he had seen a croc earlier, and we were very lucky that he was still there!! They have a very low profile when they’re in the water, so can be quite hard to see; but using a scattergun approach of taking loads of photos, I did manage to get some that turned out quite well:





It was so exciting to see this ancient predator in his natural habitat! They really are incredible creatures, and even if they are not quite your cup of tea, you can't deny that they are something special to have survived as a species for such a long time. Very awesome!




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