Palm Cove

Approximately 2 hours drive North and we arrived at our final "port of call" Palm Cove, about 20 miles north of Cairns. Idyllic palm-fringed white beaches, azure blue seas, upmarket resort hotels with umpteen spa centre, trendy and chic restaurants, bars and bistros - how the other half live!

Our apartment is very nice, light bright coours throughout, small balcony and we are next to a lovely decking area with bbq and pool with small cascading water feature, very quiet, uncrowded and relxing environment.

Plenty of prawns tonight on our "health concious" salad - lots of delicous tropical fruit available as well - and great weather!!

On recommendation on Thursday we drove further North to Port Douglas, along the scenic Captain Cook Highway which afforded us spectacular views of the sea, as well as lush sugar plantations.

We had a brief look round Port Douglas which was very upmarket, then we drove further on to Mossman Gorge, which had some excellent easy gradient walks through the rain forest across fast flowing streams and cascades - saw our firt unfettered snake about 3-4 foot long, black on top with a yellow belly - Chris was cooling his feet in a mountain stream, Sue sitting on a rock when it swam right in front of Chris!! we decided to err on the side of caution and return to our walk. We were told later when we described it that it was a harmlous ground python which was non-venomous!

After that experience we carried on up to Daintree and went on a river cruise along the Daintree River where we spotted a couple of salt water crocodiles -not to be messed with! the river itself is lined with Mangroves and is a have for several species of tree bats, pythons, river snakes and kingfishers.

As the flat bottomed boat was very manouverable we were able to get close to the bank, and to where the crocs were basking in the sun and took some "close as is safe" photos theres only so close you want to get to a crocodile in the wild!!!