CAIT AROUND THE WORLD

April 19, 2023 — For the first time in several days, I woke up at a very decent hour — I would go so far as to say early, in fact — as I was going on Uncle Brian’s two-day Best of Both Worlds tour, which combines their Waterfalls tour with their day trip to Cape Tribulation, with the night spent in Yungabarra. I’d packed the night before, so I didn’t have too much to worry about in the morning. I tossed the last couple of things in my bags and went downstairs to check out after having breakfast in the kitchen.

I waited outside for the bus and since I was at least fifteen minutes early for pickup, I tried using the hostel wifi to get some more data on my phone. Unfortunately, the wifi at Gilligan’s was so bad that it could stream Disney+ but it couldn’t connect well enough with the Optus servers to top up my data. Ah, well, it’s not like I really needed it since I’d have a busy couple of days.

We got picked up outside the hostel right on time, but got held up waiting for a guy named Callum. Our tour guide, Kurt, straight-up asked if anyone knew Callum and there were a couple of girls on the tour who must have met him the night before because they wondered aloud if the Callum they met was, in fact, the Callum, and if he was then they weren’t sure that he knew he was on the tour. Our guide was able to get ahold of him and he eventually made it on the bus. And then, for the rest of the trip, he was labelled The Late Guy and unless he was on the bus we never assumed that everyone else was there. (We still made sure that everyone was there if he was on the bus, though. We’re not savages.)

We picked up people at two more stops (where Callum was thrown completely under the bus as the guy that threw the schedule off because before Gilligan’s, the bus was on time 😆). After that, we truly go on our way.

Now, Uncle Brian’s tours are some of the most fun I’ve ever had while on a tour. Pretty much every second of the tour is interactive in some way and the whole reason behind that is that they want to create the impression that you’re on a family road trip; the tour guides are “Cousins” and you become members of the family for the duration of the trip. It’s literally the cutest thing and I loved the vibes of the tour. We all went around and introduced ourselves at the beginning and the bus ride wasn’t quiet after that!

By the time we arrived at Babinda Boulders, our first stop, I was feeling quite at home on the tour and my seat mate and I enjoyed some morning tea, coffee, and treats before we took a walk down to see some more of the rainforest. We were looking for the Devil’s something-or-other and never really found it… But we still had a good time trying!

After we came back to main area, we headed down to the main swimming hole and cooled right off. We even did some lite cliff jumping! And even though I’ve now jumped out of a plane and the “cliff” was really just a rock situated a tiny bit higher than a normal diving board would be, I was still a little freaked to jump. Considering that, I did not climb/hang off of/jump off of the tree that hung out over the water, either.

Cousin Kurt announced our first game shortly after we got back on the bus, where we passed a little loop between each other via matchsticks hanging out of our mouths. I couldn’t stop laughing the whole time we played, it was comical to watch everyone try to float the ring from one person to the next inside a moving bus. Plus, we were all still basically strangers at this point.

It sure did break the ice even more, though!

Our next stop was Jospehine Falls, a cascade-style waterfall that forms a natural water slide! This was so much fun. Sort of difficult to climb up (it really irritated my shoulders since you had to flop on to the rock and then pull yourself up to standing to get up) but so much fun to slide down! There’s nothing like the current of water spitting you out at the end of the slide to teach you to go with the flow, or to “just keep swimming”. I must have gone at least six times.

We stopped for lunch at a farm next, and had chicken drums and pasta salad and other excellent food, plus cake with heavy cream manufactured right there on the farm. It had started raining in earnest at the natural water slide, then tapered off a bit, but it came back in full force while we were eating lunch. It was a mad dash to the bus to get back on before we were completely soaked (again), not that we’d had much time to dry off. It was recommended that we wait to dry off at all until the end of the day and honestly, that was good advice. We were getting in water, in some form or another, every ten minutes all day.

After lunch, we headed a few minutes away to Millaa Millaa Falls. This is the biggest, most amazing waterfall I’ve ever seen in my life (so far). It was so cold to swim but the view from behind the waterfall, watching the water cascade down, was like nothing I’ve ever seen. I even swam underneath the pouring water and it was amazing.

Our last stop of the day was Lake Eachem. This was the promised “warm lake” and, thankfully, our guide was not lying. The water must have been somewhere in the neighbourhood of eighty degrees, which felt like heavenly bath water especially after the cold rain and other cold pools of the day. It actually felt a little like we were doing the hot/cold therapy thing from Norway 😄. An added bonus at this lake was turtle-spotting — there was a small family hanging out in the plants on the water’s edge and some of them were babies! A word of caution in these waters, though: there is an alligator. But he lives on the other side of the lake and who doesn’t like to swim with danger, amiright?

We drove to Yungabarra after having some afternoon tea at Lake Eachem, where two more adventures awaited us! Usually, you have to pick between one or the other, and we were supposed to take a vote for our group, too, but since we’d been such a good, on-time group all day, Cousin Kurt decided that we’d get to visit both spots instead of having to pick just one. Which was awesome.

Our first stop was the Curtain Fig tree — excuse me, the Curtain Fig Tree — the exact tree which was the inspiration for the Mother Tree in James Cameron’s Avatar. And it’s so easy to see why this tree inspired him and just how true to it he stayed, from concept to creation, looking back on the movie itself.

Our next and final stop before heading to the hostel was at a creek to try and see the elusive platypus! When I was in Tasmania, we tried to see the platypus that lived near the hostel in Strahan, but we didn’t have any luck. This time, though, we prevailed. I’m not sure how long we stood along the edge of the creek, trying not to make any sounds, desperately watching for the bubbles that would indicate a platypus was lurking just beneath the surface. Finally, we saw some bubbles fizzing up and watched them, tracking them with our eyes until they disappeared. And just when we’d lost all hope…there he was! Skimming along the surface, a sleek, brown, incredible creation of nature. I was so happy that I could finally check “see a platypus” off my Australia bucket list.

We made it to the hostel after just a few minutes more of driving and we all stood waiting for room assignments, listening to Cousin Kurt and Annie talk about how the night was going to go, rules, our room assignments, where things were, and what we could expect for the next day. In an extremely kind gesture, they took all our wet towels from us and set them in the dryer. When they finished talking, we all dispersed to get our stuff and take it to our rooms, clean up as much as we wanted, and chill until dinner.

I washed off my feet since I slipped in so much mud at the creek, got my stuff situated, and went downstairs hoping that my towel might have dried by that point. I didn’t have any such luck, but Annie was the nicest woman in the world and gave me one of the hostel towels to use. I wrapped myself in it and stayed that way all evening. (I didn’t want to change out of my swimsuit yet because of the night’s activities and because I didn’t pack many clothes — I only had my small backpack with me).

I stood near the big stove/barbecue contraption and chatted with Annie while she roasted vegetables and potatoes and then cooked the steaks — STEAKS — which was literally one of my favourite parts of this tour. Dinner was so delicious, too — the steaks were actually from a local farm and were super fresh. I loved, loved, loved it. I hadn’t had steak in three months at that point and it’s one of my favourite things in the world. This was such a treat.

After dinner, though, the festivities weren’t over! We all gathered in the dining area to have a briefing with another guide about our night canoe! We got life jackets and flashlights and piled into the bus once more, then drove a few minutes down the road to the start of the path that would lead us down to the river. It was really steep and kind of hard to walk in sandals, but you really don’t want to wear anything else when you’re dealing with water sports.

We split into groups and pulled out canoes, got into the water, and set off in the absolute dark, cut only by the flash of our torches. These night canoes can sometimes be very fruitful, and while we saw lots of bats and a few really cool things, we didn’t see a whole lot. That could have been because we were a bit of a loud group. But one of the best things was the stars. Out here, we were miles from the nearest city, and there weren’t even any major towns. Yungabarra is pretty small. The stars were so clear and so numerous in the sky. I could have laid there and looked up all night. There’s also something just so very cool about trips taken in the dark of night. Things that usually belong to day belonging to a different time.

We made it back around to the edge of the creek where we started and pulled the canoes into their resting places. I, of course, slipped on mud again and made a mess of my shoes. We piled back into the bus and drove to the hostel, where, when a shower was finally free, I enjoyed a very nice hot shower and got my shoes clean again. I brushed my teeth and went to bed pretty much immediately after that, tossing on an episode of some show to help me sleep, and dropped like a rock. The beds were really comfy, with real mattresses, even if the bottom bunk didn’t have much headroom. I would have loved to stay there longer.

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