Kuranda

Today we had a nice outing to Kuranda, a small hippie enclave/tourist mecca in the mountainous rainforest above Cairns. The main draw is not just the town, but the modes of transport used to get to the town. The most popular choice is to take an old railway up and then bring a gondola down, both of which afford spectacular views of the rainforest, mountains, gorges, waterfalls, ocean and city. Of course, you could also simply drive there, but what fun is that?

So, at 9AM we boarded the train to Kuranda. It's a beautiful old restored train and the 1.5 hour journey up to Kuranda flew by. The town itself is really quaint and beautiful, the surrounds are incredibly lush, but it is quite touristy. As we are tourists, we quite enjoyed it! We shopped a bit, and each came away with something to remember Australia by.

We also visited an area called Koala Gardens. After falling in love with the koala's the other day, we really wanted to see them again and this place offers you the chance to cuddle the koala's (for an extra price, naturally). Anyway, it was quite worth it, the animals are just gorgeous and so cuddly, they snuggle right into your arms and clutch on much the same way Liam does. In fact, when I held the koala Liam was looking pretty jealous. Elle fell a little short of the height requirement, but seeing the look on her face, the zookeeper relented and brought out a smaller koala for Elle to hold. It was a super sweet moment in our trip.

We boarded the gondola for the quick and smooth and scenic ride back to Cairns. Towards the bottom we noticed what appeared to be water-skiers skiing around a lake, but there were no boats in sight. As we got closer we could more clearly see what was happening. The skiers were on a snowboard type water ski and were being towed by a cable attached overhead. They were able to maneuver to jump ramps on either side of the cable while moving continuously around the lakes edge. Very strange and cool, we had never seen anything like this before.

Tomorrow is our last day here, and we plan on laying low by the pool and at the beach (on the sand).