Kuranda

We arrived in Cairns late on Monday night and took a cab over to the B&B.
Tuesday morning we got up around 6 and were eating breakfast at 7. Food was great, I had toast and jelly, some fantastic scrambled eggs and bacon and a variety of fruits. Passion fruit is a bit strange but yummy. Pat at the B&B arranged for a day trip for us to go up to Kuranda. We took a train up through the mountains in the rainforest on a rail that was built before 1900. The train made one 10 min stop on the way up so we could get out and check out Barron Falls. Even though it isn't the rainy season in Cairns there was quite a bit of water flowing over the falls. Really a cool site! We got back on board and made our way to the top of the mountain.
Once there we went through a butterfly exhibit with hundreds of butterflies and all different types fluttering about. We listened to the tour guide say how the butterfly eggs are harvested every 90 minutes so that microscopic parasites don't have time to find them... sounds like an interesting job title, "Butterfly Egg Harvester" :)
After that we walked around and looked at a bunch of parrots, my favorite of which and also the meanest (it bit Anna) finally walked onto our hands for a picture once we found a grape to coax it with.
Next we went on to see and feed some kangaroos and wallabies. We saw several Koalas and they were all awake. One Koala got pissed at another who was climbing down a tree and stepped on the other Koala's head. They swatted at each other like cats for a few seconds before one Koala climbed away.
After the animals, we got into a cable gondola and proceeded down the mountain over the tree tops. We made a few stops along the way to change cars and took the opportunity to walk down and shoot some pictures at the lookouts. This time we got to see Barron Falls from the other side of the Barron River. We were a lot closer and the roar of the water crashing on the rocks was awesome.
At the bottom of the ride we walked over to an Aboriginal park where we learned about some Aboriginal history and threw boomerangs and spears. I sucked at throwing both but I think I was the only one to throw my spear completely over the 20' shrubs that lined the field. :)
It was a long day filled with lots of walking and seeing, once again we were crashed by 10pm and ready for our next big day of snorkeling.