The Daintree Rainforest is the oldest rainforest in the world, even older than the well known Amazon Rainforest. It is located on the northeast coast of Queensland stretching 1200 kilometres, with some areas of the tropical rainforest growing on the edge of the sea.
Daintree Rainforest tours operate out of Cairns, Port Douglas and Mossman and are an excellent way to see this Wet Tropics of Queenland World Heritage site. I can highly recommend Discovery Tours Australia, having just been on the below tour with Steve our tour guide, I couldn’t fault the experience at all.
1 Day Daintree & Cape Tribulation Tour
The tour is approximately 11 hours and costs start at $185. The best part about this tour company is that they limit their tours to smaller groups with a maximum of 13 passengers. I was lucky enough to tour with a small group of four, including myself.
Being an 11 hour tour, I expected that the drive to and from Cairns would be long and boring, but Steve, our tour guide, was a fountain of knowledge. I learnt so much in that 11 hours, I didn’t think it was possible for someone to know so much about so many aspects of this beautiful part of the country.
I also didn’t expect to be so impressed by trees. There is an abundance of different types of flora and fauna in this tropical region, each with intriguing stories. For example; the Strangler Fig grows on top of another tree and slowly, using its vines, wraps itself around the tree making its way down to the trunk. The strangler fig begins to strangle the nutrients out of the tree and eventually kills the host tree. It hollows out leaving only the vines that have wrapped around it in an impressive fashion. The result is spectacular and completely amazing to see, but for larger and older trees this process can take decades to occur.
I can honestly say that my tour of the Daintree Rainforest was as impressive as my tour of the Great Barrier Reef.
The tour includes:
Port Douglas
Morning Tea
Mossman Gorge (where you can swim in the gorge, highly recommended, although cold)
Lunch
Daintree River Cruise (crocodile spotting)
Daintree Rainforest
Cape Tribulation (where the rainforest meets the reef)
Daintree Ice Creamery (ice cream purchase is at your own expense)
What to wear/bring:
Swimsuit
Towel
Footwear suitable for walking
Sunscreen
Camera
Money
JESSICA PASCO
