WOW! WOW! again. That’s the brief description of our first two
days in northern
Our flight from 
The passports were returned and we went on through customs, where
machines that look like the baggage x-ray machines are used to check luggage
for animal or plant material, to prevent diseases and unwanted organisms from
being brought into the country. No
worries here, either. Wrong. The machine detected a necklace made of dried
seeds that Anne had bought at the Ayers Rock Resort. We had to open the suitcase and find it and
then convince the authorities that the seeds had in fact come from
By the time we were through with all that, we were the last
people from our flight to emerge from the customs area. Fortunately, our transfer driver was still
there with his “McElvaine” sign. The
ride from
When we reached the Hibiscus Gardens Spa Resort, reception was closed, but they had left our room key. We were delighted with the room, although we couldn’t see much of the rest of the place in the dark.
We had to get up very early Saturday morning to be picked up
to go back down the
Seeing in daylight the
Our boat for the trip to Michaelmas
Cay and Reef, the Ocean Spirit II, was excellent, especially with only about 70
people aboard a vessel with a capacity of about 150. I was wearing my Rutgers Alumni t-shirt and
soon after we boarded a young man passed and said, “You guys had a great
football season!” It turned out that he
is from
When the boat put down anchor off Michaelmas Cay, we moved with a small group onto a semi-submersible boat. I think it was about like an iceberg: 9/10 underwater. The underwater part has glass sides, and we got breathtaking views of the Reef—more varieties of coral than can be comprehended, colorful fish, sea turtles, etc. It was dazzling.
The colors of the coral are not as vivid as photos lead you to
expect, but the whole spectacle is amazing, with spaghetti coral waving in the
water, and corals of every imaginable shape and color. Of course we saw only a tiny part of the
On Sunday, we went to the Daintree
Rainforest, just north of Port Douglas.
It is a national park and part of the Wet Tropics of Queensland World
Heritage Area and is the oldest continually existing rainforest in the
world—older, though much smaller, than the Amazon.. Our guide, Grant, was wonderful. He could be a standup comic. There were only five people on the tour, in
addition to Grant. Anne and I liked one
of the others, Verity, from somewhere in
We drove through Mossman, to the north of Port (as the locals call Port Douglas) and it was dead on a Sunday morning. Grant pointed out the sign on the front of the hotel saying “What’s On” and “What’s Next” with nothing written under either.
Grant stopped by a field and asked us what we thought was
growing on the plants. Someone finally
said “tea,” which was correct. Grant
then told us about a young American woman—from
We passed a dead feral pig along the side of the road. It was on its side and stiff, rigor having set in. Grant said he’d like to stop and stand it up to see how passersby would react. He didn’t stop, though.
We spent more than an hour at a gorgeous beach just south of
the
couple went kayaking, Grant, Verity, Anne, and I waded in the clear, shallow
water. Looking back at the almost
completely deserted white sand beach with various shades of blue and green
water in front of it and the rainforest with mangroves, palms, and other trees
behind it whole tiny waves lapped at our feet gave us the feel of
Paradise. Then, as we were making our
way back to shore, a sting ray darted towards us. There always seems to be a serpent or
something in
After a dip in a cold stream and lunch under a cloth canopy
beneath the rainforest’s tree canopy, we went for a walk through a portion of
the rainforest where no one other than Grant’s tours goes. We learned a great deal about rainforests,
including the competition for sunlight that is only won by a few very tall
trees, the competitive “strategies” of some of the plants, such as
“stranglers,” which use another tree to climb to the sun at the top of 
the
tree canopy and then gradually surround and strangle the other tree to take its
place. Two wild pigs were charging
through the forest nearby, and we saw a Boyd’s forest dragon (lizard) on a
tree.
On the way back to Grant’s vehicle, he showed us green tree ants and told us that Aborigines consider them a delicacy. He talked us into licking the rear portion of one, which is supposed to taste sweet. The last thing we expected to find ourselves doing was the licking the arse of an ant, but . . . you only live once.
We closed out the afternoon on a boat on the