On to Port Douglas

Birthday!

We started off my birthday by getting up at 4am (ughhhh- not planned well) to fly from Sydney to Cairns, followed by the drive up to Port Douglas from there. We’d heard from a few folks that Port Douglas was time better spent than Cairns and after seeing Cairns, we agree.

The theme of the trip, unfortunately, was rain rain rain- apparently that comes with a rain forest. Once we reached Port Douglas, first thing we did was head to the wild life reserve- it was really fantastic! You could basically browse among the animals and the animals browsed among us.

These birds started screeching at me- we thought they might attack.

JR was ready to take video if they did.

Me feeding a Wallaby

We did the “behind the scenes” tour, so we were taken back to the animal hospital and the rescued animals area. There were a couple of sweet little joeys whose mothers had been hit by cars- so sad. :( We were shown the food prep area too- could have passed on that though- a dude was snapping cockroaches in half and the rats were up next.

rescued baby joey- so cute!

Last we got to hold a koala- yay! They’re so flipping cute, I want one for my own. Except that it would probably tear off my face. We also got to hold a python and pet a baby crocodile. Woot! Everyone was totally freaked out by the python, but I actually really like how they feel- I kind of want one of those for my own too. :)

That night, JR surprised me with a birthday cake! He’d arranged it ahead of time with the hostel- so nice! The cake was awesome, but there was waaaayyy too much for us, so we made friends at the hostel by handing cake out. For the big birthday dinner, we went to Salsa, which is not at all Mexican but quite tasty (and yay dessert before dinner!)- I had the kangaroo. I thought it was a nice way to come full circle- me feeding a kangaroo, a kangaroo feeding me…).

Later we headed over to the Ironbar to meet up with Nick and Amy- a couple of folks we met at the hostel- and for the Cane toad races! What could be more hilarious than watching tourists racing cane toads, right? ME racing cane toads, turns out! They assigned us numbers when we bought our tickets and my number was called! First they made me kiss it. Then we were supposed to prod it on by using those little party noise-maker, blowy things- and I won!! Woot! And after the announcer was making fun of Americans- take that Ausssies!

The rest of the night we hung out with Nick, Amy and a few other folks we met and sang karaoke. The highlight of the evening was definitely whan Amy sang “My Humps” with our friend Charles dancing down in front of her- and two dudes ran up on stage behind her with their shirts tied up and did this whole coordinated dance behind her! It was f’ing hilarious! Luckily, JR got it on video: