The Land Down Unda: Hartley's and Daintree

On our second or third day in Australia we took a ride up to the Daintree Rainforest. On the way there we passed a big field that's full of wallabies. There were hundreds of them!

We took a cruise on the Daintree River, which is filled with saltwater crocs. They can live in fresh OR salt water, so they come up from the ocean and hang out in the rivers. That's the greatest thing about northern Australia: you can be eaten by a giant saltwater croc whether you're in the ocean OR a freshwater river.

This is one of the big boys we saw along the way.

A shot of the beautiful Daintree River.

Another croc sunning himself on the shore. He was smaller - it would probably take him a couple of meals to devour you.

Jacey's rocking her sweet cat sunglasses.



I think Tukk was doing his Titantic impression here.



This is a small offshoot that juts out from the main river.



The cruisn' crew.

The kiddos had fun wrestling this fake croc out in front of the tour building. Rand took it pretty seriously. He felt confident he could've saved any of us from a croc attack.  

We also spent a day at Hartley's Crocodile Farm. We LOVED their croc feeding show. The two guys running it are nuts. One of them would step outside the cage and run past these gigantic crocs, WHILE they were feeding them. Crazy. 

This is a Cassowary, a giant killer bird with 3-inch, razor-sharp talons that can kick a human AND slash open his jugular all in one motion.

AND MY BABY IS FEEDING IT. 

Rand was brave. I was terrified. 

The Cassowary still haunts my nightmares. 

I'm pretty sure this was the world's largest known saltwater croc. Maybe? Or second largest. Let's just say it was the largest. And that his name was Billy. It seems to fit him.

This is how Tukk would look when getting chomped by a croc. He really thought I needed that visual.

Hartley's also had some cuddlier inhabitants. Caulder loved the koalas. He got to pet one. He said they're super soft, but a little stinky. We learned that eucalyptus leaves have hardly any nutrition and have some toxins in them, but they're the only things koalas can eat. They're so sleepy all the time because they barely get enough nutrition to survive. 

Poor little buggers. Their favorite food is nutritionless and toxic, very similar to my favorite food: chocolate chip cookies. But we both just keep eating them.

I feel you, koalas. I feel you. 

Hartley's has an owlery, just in case you need to send a letter home.

And they have a huge wallaby enclosure where you can go to interact with the critters. (I'm almost 40 - I can start using words like "critter.")

The littles thought feeding them was amazing.




Tukk and Kory had some bonding time. Little does Tukk know that physical touch is anathema to Uncle Korndog. Heh heh heh. (Using a big fancy word like anathema makes up for using a word like critter, right?)

And one of the nights (things were still a bit blurry that first few days - jet lag is real, people) we visited a park in downtown Cairns that has electric grills you can cook on, plus this awesome swimming park. It has a sandy bottom and a gradual incline out into the deep water where the fountains are, so it's perfect for little dudes to play around in the shallow while the big kids splash in the deep end. The boys loved it. 

The Land Down Unda: Getting to Cairns

YOU GUYS!

We went on the vacation of a lifetime in May, and I haven't even had any time to blog about it. My computer was dying so I couldn't download pictures, I was having a mid-life crisis, and life was heavy. Very heavy. 

BUT I'm in the middle of a life makeover (perhaps I'll tell you about it sometime) and I'm trying really hard to get back to the things I love, like blogging about our adventures. 

Starting with our trip to Australia. AUSTRALIA!!!!

We finally got to go see Kory and his gang, and it was magical. I mean, there were like 17 things that could've killed us just in the two weeks we were there, but still... MAGICAL. 

(There will be a lot of caps lock and exclamation points in this post. Just get emotionally prepared now because IT IS HAPPENING!!!!)

First, we had to get there. 

Maybe you didn't know this, but Australia is so. far. away. 

First, we flew standby to LAX. The earliest flight there had the most seats open, so we dragged the kids out of bed at the butt crack of dawn, landed in LAX, and then spent all day at the airport. Luckily LAX isn't one of the world's busiest airports or anything, so there were plenty of places for us to relax while we waited for our flight to Sydney. 

We chose to sit in a dirty corner right next to the stinky bathroom. 

Actually, there were no seats anywhere. We would've had to death-match fight other travelers for a seat, and we were too tired. Seriously, people were circling the seats like birds of prey, waiting to dive down whenever someone stood up. 

It was dirty bathroom corner or possible jugular slashing by bird of prey passengers. We chose dirty bathroom corner. 

 Then our departure gate changed, so we dragged all of our crap over to the new terminal. And guess what? THERE WERE SEATS THERE! It was like discovering a new land where you could sit in a chair like humans and not have to fear getting your eyes pecked out.

Still, it wasn't exactly that fun. Luckily Cole had his lovely eye mask and special blankie.

After about 12 hours, we finally got to board our plane to Syndey and sit for 14 more hours.

 

It was actually nice to be on a red-eye flight, though, because we all got some sleep.

Then we got to Sydney, and waited in a dirty airport some more to catch our flight to Cairns, where Kory's gang lives.

Rand was a wreck and we were too tired to even care. The Botts were in Australia. I'm not sure Australia was ready for us.

After around 40 hours of driving/flying/sitting/flying/sitting, getting on yet another plane was excruciating. Just multiply the amount of time you've been bored from reading the first part of this post by 100 and you'll be close to the amount of pain we felt.

We were basically zombies by then (you should've seen Cole and me trying to figure out how to book a standby seat from Sydney to Cairns - we were soooo stupid by that point that it was just ridiculous), and we all passed out the second we got on the plane, so the 4 hour flight flew by. (See what I did there? Ha!)

And it was all worth it because look who was waiting for us in Cairns!!!!

This is the face he pulls when he's super excited to hug his sister. Kory loves hugs.

Through the jetlag/travel fog we said hello (I think?), drove to Kory's house (I assume?), ate something (maybe?), and then fell asleep on our faces all night. We did not move. It was the best sleep of our lives.


We woke up the next day happy to see that it wasn't a dream - we actually had made it to Australia and weren't still sitting in a dirty corner by an airport bathroom.

HOORAY!

So of course we went to the beach!

Look at this amazingly beautiful beach with NO ONE on it. Sure, part of the reason no one is on this beach is because there are man-eating crocodiles everywhere in Cairns, but still... GORGEOUS!

We also hiked to Fairy Falls.


Cairns is on the northeast coast of Australia, and it's a rainforest, so the scenery is incredible.



This is Jettlyn and Jacey's cousin Miami. She is awesome and spent a lot of time helping us keep an eye on Rander Mander.







The hike follows a river, and guess what we found in the river....


A turtle! Australia has turtles just hanging out everywhere.



This is the base of Fairy Falls.

The scenery was breathtaking. 

(Seriously, there's no way Australia was ready for the Botts.)

We hiked up to the top and jumped off the rocks into the pool the waterfall drops into. Jettlyn and Miami were the best at it - they climbed those rocks like monkeys. Cole and I tried to keep up, but then we remembered that we're old and fluffy. Being old and fluffy inhibits the climbing skills, BUT we had the biggest splashes when we jumped in. So that's something.